"Every man, and every woman is a star." ---Aleister Crowley
"Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?" --Edgar Allan Poe
Beyond the Wall of Sleep isn't going to be some timeless-classic, but it's a very solid piece of Lovecraftian cinema. A good-portion of the original 1919 short is present here, with some of the usual liberties taken. The bulk of the story is here: Joe Slater, a Catskills inbred is found in his home screaming indescribable-utterances, and begins attacking his neighbors who have come to see what the commotion is all-about. With super-human strength, he attacks one of his neighbors, ..."leaving behind an unrecognizable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before." In short-order, Joe is taken in-chains to an asylum by the State Police. It appears he has a growth on his back that resembles a face, and two-hands...as though someone was trying to escape his body. Things get-stranger from there. At times, the inbred seems to be inhabited by a superior-intelligence, babbling strange-utterances of no-known language.
In the film, Joe (played with skill by the great William Sanderson who is now seen as the Mayor in the Deadwood series) flees and is eventually caught by a sheriff's posse (changed to State police, led by Tom Savini), followed by a party of local inbreds. Things get-darker at this point. This is all fine-and-well, so I don't want to seem like some Lovecraft-fanatic splitting-hairs. Some alterations work, some don't. The face on the back is still there in the film, and while you might believe it is an undeveloped-aspect, Lovecraft didn't do much with it either.
One major-change works well: changing the narrator. In Lovecraft's tale, it is the intern who tells the story after it has happened--with the characteristic lack-of-context of how-much later it's happening, or even the name of the narrator himself. Nobody who knows Lovecraft well would say his writing was always good, but there were things that the filmmakers left-out that I found confusing. Namely, the nature of the being inhabiting Joe Slater. In the original-short, the being is not necessarily evil or malefic, though sometimes destructive and unpredictable. It's as though it struggles to merely exist in Slater's body, seemingly trapped in him. Evil? Maybe, though not on a cosmic-scale, that seems evident in Lovecraft's original short-story.
Quite the contrary, the being is attempting to destroy another being known as "the adversary" out of revenge. It struck me that the adversary is supposed to be like the devil, or some truly malefic-being, while the being inhabiting Joe Slater is of a lower-order in the cosmos. "Good" and "evil" become meaningless in the Lovecraftian cosmology, so I found this too-simple. The original short has the being leave Slater's body, becoming a star that attempts to eclipse and destroy the adversary-star in another realm of the cosmos. The tale ends with the "good" being losing, the event being viewed by astronomers as a nova, then dying.
Ironically, I believe this could have been done more-economically than the Cthuloid-being that was created with CGI. The tales becomes one of a summoning, when the original is really about the escape of an entity that has been trapped in the body of an imbecile. This, then, is probably my main-problem with the film, but the theme of dreams being more-real than our own reality is still present and well-expressed in the editing and imagery. The images of the children are very-interesting, because it reflects H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic-horror so well. The children are subdeities toying-with humanity, much like the Archons of the Gnostic-cosmology.
It should also be noted that early-Christianity held that all people had a star for themselves in the cosmos--it was what we became after death. The ancient Gnostics felt that a select-few people in the world were part of a "starry race", or "knowers" of the divine. They were supposed to hold a "divine-spark" within-themselves, and Gnostics (especially Sethians) believed they were not of this world, but of this race. How Lovecraft embedded similar-concepts in his shorts is a mystery, since most all Gnostic-texts have only come-to-light since 1945--eight-years after his death. I also have to wonder how Crowley had-access to these Gnostic and Hermetic-concepts, it is puzzling as many of the Gnostic-ones simply weren't considered even to exist. It's a shame, but this wonderful mystical-aspect is almost absent in the adaptation, and it bothers me. However, the film is still very good for Lovecraftian cinema. It accurately reflects how brutal turn-of-the-century America was, too.
I especially enjoyed the opening-prologue with the time-date slate, showing us when the recounting of the tale happens (1979). American Mental Institutions were notorious 100-years-ago, so the context of the tale is solid. Maybe some of the production-design could have been better, but this is micro-budget cinema and the film is a great achievement, nonetheless. The subplot with the trepanned-girl (lifted from "Hannibal"?) was good, but I thought could have been pared-back to the very-end, this might have been more-effective in making it unsettling. We should remember that the short is a little over four-pages, so its addition is understandable and sets-the-stage for the intern's and Joe Slater's fusion with an electronic-apparatus.
The gore is stupendous, and I really enjoyed the mixing of black & white photography with color (color denoting that Joe's dream-reality has intruded into our own). The super-fast editing was also very good, and there are some truly unforgettable-images in this film. But remember: this is low-budget cinema, it was probably made for a couple-million dollars, possibly less. But it works, it's respectable horror. Lovecraft is about imagination, unfortunately the makers of this movie forgot that this is the key to his horror.
"Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?" --Edgar Allan Poe
Beyond the Wall of Sleep isn't going to be some timeless-classic, but it's a very solid piece of Lovecraftian cinema. A good-portion of the original 1919 short is present here, with some of the usual liberties taken. The bulk of the story is here: Joe Slater, a Catskills inbred is found in his home screaming indescribable-utterances, and begins attacking his neighbors who have come to see what the commotion is all-about. With super-human strength, he attacks one of his neighbors, ..."leaving behind an unrecognizable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before." In short-order, Joe is taken in-chains to an asylum by the State Police. It appears he has a growth on his back that resembles a face, and two-hands...as though someone was trying to escape his body. Things get-stranger from there. At times, the inbred seems to be inhabited by a superior-intelligence, babbling strange-utterances of no-known language.
In the film, Joe (played with skill by the great William Sanderson who is now seen as the Mayor in the Deadwood series) flees and is eventually caught by a sheriff's posse (changed to State police, led by Tom Savini), followed by a party of local inbreds. Things get-darker at this point. This is all fine-and-well, so I don't want to seem like some Lovecraft-fanatic splitting-hairs. Some alterations work, some don't. The face on the back is still there in the film, and while you might believe it is an undeveloped-aspect, Lovecraft didn't do much with it either.
One major-change works well: changing the narrator. In Lovecraft's tale, it is the intern who tells the story after it has happened--with the characteristic lack-of-context of how-much later it's happening, or even the name of the narrator himself. Nobody who knows Lovecraft well would say his writing was always good, but there were things that the filmmakers left-out that I found confusing. Namely, the nature of the being inhabiting Joe Slater. In the original-short, the being is not necessarily evil or malefic, though sometimes destructive and unpredictable. It's as though it struggles to merely exist in Slater's body, seemingly trapped in him. Evil? Maybe, though not on a cosmic-scale, that seems evident in Lovecraft's original short-story.
Quite the contrary, the being is attempting to destroy another being known as "the adversary" out of revenge. It struck me that the adversary is supposed to be like the devil, or some truly malefic-being, while the being inhabiting Joe Slater is of a lower-order in the cosmos. "Good" and "evil" become meaningless in the Lovecraftian cosmology, so I found this too-simple. The original short has the being leave Slater's body, becoming a star that attempts to eclipse and destroy the adversary-star in another realm of the cosmos. The tale ends with the "good" being losing, the event being viewed by astronomers as a nova, then dying.
Ironically, I believe this could have been done more-economically than the Cthuloid-being that was created with CGI. The tales becomes one of a summoning, when the original is really about the escape of an entity that has been trapped in the body of an imbecile. This, then, is probably my main-problem with the film, but the theme of dreams being more-real than our own reality is still present and well-expressed in the editing and imagery. The images of the children are very-interesting, because it reflects H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic-horror so well. The children are subdeities toying-with humanity, much like the Archons of the Gnostic-cosmology.
It should also be noted that early-Christianity held that all people had a star for themselves in the cosmos--it was what we became after death. The ancient Gnostics felt that a select-few people in the world were part of a "starry race", or "knowers" of the divine. They were supposed to hold a "divine-spark" within-themselves, and Gnostics (especially Sethians) believed they were not of this world, but of this race. How Lovecraft embedded similar-concepts in his shorts is a mystery, since most all Gnostic-texts have only come-to-light since 1945--eight-years after his death. I also have to wonder how Crowley had-access to these Gnostic and Hermetic-concepts, it is puzzling as many of the Gnostic-ones simply weren't considered even to exist. It's a shame, but this wonderful mystical-aspect is almost absent in the adaptation, and it bothers me. However, the film is still very good for Lovecraftian cinema. It accurately reflects how brutal turn-of-the-century America was, too.
I especially enjoyed the opening-prologue with the time-date slate, showing us when the recounting of the tale happens (1979). American Mental Institutions were notorious 100-years-ago, so the context of the tale is solid. Maybe some of the production-design could have been better, but this is micro-budget cinema and the film is a great achievement, nonetheless. The subplot with the trepanned-girl (lifted from "Hannibal"?) was good, but I thought could have been pared-back to the very-end, this might have been more-effective in making it unsettling. We should remember that the short is a little over four-pages, so its addition is understandable and sets-the-stage for the intern's and Joe Slater's fusion with an electronic-apparatus.
The gore is stupendous, and I really enjoyed the mixing of black & white photography with color (color denoting that Joe's dream-reality has intruded into our own). The super-fast editing was also very good, and there are some truly unforgettable-images in this film. But remember: this is low-budget cinema, it was probably made for a couple-million dollars, possibly less. But it works, it's respectable horror. Lovecraft is about imagination, unfortunately the makers of this movie forgot that this is the key to his horror.