Lovecraftian

 

 (themoviedb.org)

FROM BEYOND-1986-Dr. Tillingast (Jeffery Combs) is accused of killing his superior Dr. Pretorius (Ted Sorel) who's found decapitated. He says something bit off Pretorius' head. They were working on a machine dubbed “the Pretorius resonator”) that stimulates the pineal gland. A notorious psychiatrist Katherine McMichaels (Barbra Crampton) doesn't believe Tillingast is insane and takes him back to where they were experimenting. Police Sgt. Brownlee (Ken Foree) accompanies them. They turn on the machine and meet the nude reanimated body of Dr. P. He turns into a whatziz and almost eats them but Tillingast turns the machine off. McMichael becomes obsessed with learning more. After almost being eaten again, she escapes and after doing her famous s & m scene has to fight the bizarrely transformed Pretorius. Later everyone thinks she's insane. A crazed female doctor wants her to have shock therapy. She escapes and Tillingast runs around the hospital killing people. When she returns to destroy the resonator, Tillingast kidnaps her. Pretorius somehow returns and terrorizes her. She defeats him and goes insane. 

A lot of disgusting SFX (by a huge crew) made this a cult film but Crampton helped too. She was later on the TV soap operas “The Guiding Light” and “The Bold and The Beautiful”. Conceptual art by Neal Adams. An Empire Pictures release, filmed in Italy, Charles Band was one of the producers. 

Director Stuart Gordon had already become a cult like director after making RE-ANIMATOR (1985), also with Crampton & Combs. Producer Brian Yuzna co-wrote the screenplay with Dennis Paoli based on the HP Lovecraft short story “From Beyond”. A more recent adaptation of the same story is BANSHEE CHAPTER (2013).

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Deadly Dolls

 

 (wikipedia)

DOLLS-1986-After she has a daydream about her teddy bear growing and killing her parents, a young girl named Judy (Carrie Lorraine), her dumb father David (Ian Patrick Williams) and her horrible stepmother Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) seek shelter from a storm at the home of doll maker Gabriel Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe) and his wife Hilary (Hilary Mason). During dinner they are joined by another traveler, the nice but naive Ralph (Steven Lee) and two idiotic punks. Everyone stays the night. After a while it turns out Hartwicke's dolls are alive and into killing not nice people. The dolls are pretty vicious, using knives, hammers and saws on their victims. They make Rosemary jump out a window and pull out the eyes of one of the punks. The other punk puts up a good fight but is shot by some toy soldiers. Some more dolls almost kill Ralph, but Judy convinces them to stop. David thinks Ralph killed his wife, so when he tries to kill Ralph, Hartwicke turns him into a “Mr. Punch” doll! The next day Ralph and Judy leave for Boston where her real mother lives. Mr. Punch bids them goodbye. Everyone else is now a puppet and a new couple arrives. 

This imaginative little movie from Charles Band's Empire pictures was the brainchild of writer Ed Naha (who later wrote the screenplay for HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS) and director Stuart Gordon (REANIMATOR). The funny violent dolls were created by David Allen.

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