31 Days of Halloween 2013: From Beyond (October 19th at the Capitol Theatre)

[FROM BEYOND screens Saturday October 19th at the Capitol Theatre as part of 12 Hours of Terror. Event starts at 8:00 pm and goes until 8:00 am the next morning.]

Review by R.J. Justavick

By 1986, us horror movie fans had thought we’d seen it all. Zombies taking over the world, check! A hideously burned monster that attacks us in our dreams, yep! A deformed killer in a hockey mask killing anyone that gets in his way, sure thing! A machine that stimulates the human pineal gland and turns people into sex crazed brain eaters while also opening up a dimension to another world full of terrible, nasty creatures, oh sure we...wait, what?

Crazy machines! Goopy, gross monsters! A pretty lady in dominatrix gear! FROM BEYOND has it all! But the best thing this gem has going for it is its director, Stuart Gordon. Gordon, who had proved his abilities to deliver on what horror fans craved with the gloriously gory RE-ANIMATOR the year before, again takes a story from the great horror author H.P. Lovecraft as his inspiration for this film.

The Lords of Salem (now on home video)

[THE LORDS OF SALEM is now available on home video.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Despite the profits generated by his remake of HALLOWEEN and its obligatory sequel, director Rob Zombie's follow up THE LORDS OF SALEM came and went from theaters so quickly and with so little fanfare its likely many horror fans didn't even know. While not quite as ignominious as Ryuhei Kitamura's MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN and Joel Schumacher's BLOOD CREEK being dumped into bargain theaters for one week to fulfill the bare minimum contractual obligation of a theatrical release, that's probably only because all the bargain theaters seem to have closed down. And like those earlier films, the reason doesn't seem so much to do with quality (have you seen some of the films given wide releases this year?) as it does commercial concerns. Because whatever else one may say about THE LORDS OF SALEM, it is a personal and uncompromising film that cares little about appealing to mainstream horror movie audiences, nor to the die-hard gore hounds who made Zombie's first two films (HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) respectable indie hits.