It’s a truth well accepted that there are three truisms of the works of HP Lovecraft. Firstly, that they were pivotal in creating modern horror and, to a great extent, modern sci-fi. Secondly, that they often show quite how much of a bigoted dickhead he was. And, thirdly, that they shouldn’t be committed to film because he was all about the cosmic horror of what you couldn’t see (and not that he hit on a cheap way of making the reader do all the work). Well, Stuart Gordon (Director) and Jeffery Combs (actor) put paid to that, twice!, with 1985’s Re-Animator and, ridiculously quickly, 1986’s From Beyond. Re-Animator is, justifiably, more known, but From Beyond is more “out there”, plus it’s on Netflix right now and I wanted to use it as the first Trash Or Treasure LIVE!
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From Beyond (1986)
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If there’s one thing Roger Corman likes in his movies, beyond wild excitement and firm budgetary control, it’s knowing that it’s going to make money. Sometimes that means going with a hunch and betting on an outsider idea capturing, and monetizing, the zeitgeist. Sometimes, like here, it means going with what’s been proven to work and hoping that there is enough of a wave of other people’s work to ride into the black on. Or, more specifically, several somethings that have been hammered together and, hopefully, won’t show the welds too much.
I first heard of this film when I was 10, reading a preview in Sky Magazine. The basic premise had everything my young mind needed: the promise of robots, onscreen dismemberment and a snappy title. They were simpler times then, and Terminator was the apex of cool, so I thought watching it would have just been the greatest thing ever. Needless to say, I didn’t, because my parents weren’t mental and neither were those anyone I knew, so this sci-fi horror went into the “must watch, eventually” pile at the back of my mind. Snap forwards to a few weeks ago and, in one of its few moments of usefulness, Amazon Prime suggests I might want to watch it. “Yes”, says I, “Yes I do!”. But for all my anticipation and childlike excitement, the older and (possibly) wiser me was worried it would turn out to be trash. And I was right, but it was still a really good laugh.
There is a good chance you haven’t heard of this Keanu Reeves starring-and-produced film, even though he is one of the hottest properties in cinema right now. Produced in 2016, sold on before it’s 2019 release, and allegedly passed over by Nicholas Cage, it’s box office bombing should have been the talk of the town. Instead of it becoming a cause célèbre, it just got shuffled off the big screens at a rapid pace, another miss in a summer of hits. It then rolled into the Amazon Prime bargain bucket of Amazon Prime in the middle of the year and then on Netflix this month. So, is it as bad as the odd critic has tried to make out?
Trash or Treasure 