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at the turn of the 20th century in backwoods Appalachia, "Beyond The Wall Of
Sleep" tells the story of the frightening happenings at a decrepit mental
asylum. It's here that under the less than watchful eye of the asylum's
director, Dr. Fenton (Marco St. John, speaking with an accent that randomly
varies from British to German), ambitious intern Edward Eischel (Fountain Yount)
occupies the basement of the asylum, periodically snatching a patient to use as
a test subject in his experiments on the effects of electrical stimulation on
the brain.
One day, a local inbred yokel named Joe Slaader (William
Sanderson of "Blade Runner" fame) is brought in for observation after having
mutilated and decapitated his sister. During Slaader's interrogation by the
arrogant Dr. Wardlow (a sneering Kurt Hargan), Edward notices that Joe has a
grotesque growth on his back that appears to be a partially consumed conjoined
twin. Further examination reveals that the conjoined twin is indeed alive and
not only does it have a personality of its own, but it also has a name --
Amducious. Edward drafts Joe to be his new experiment subject, but communicating
with Amducious proves to be a big mistake, and lots of screaming and
bloodletting ensue.
Once this initial foundation is set, the script for "Beyond
the Wall of Sleep" gets murky pretty quickly, and as a result meanders about
aimlessly for quite a while. When things do finally get moving again, we're
treated to some non-specific rambling about breeding the vessel of a demon
through incest or some such. I'm not familiar with the Lovecraft story the film
is based on, but I would hazard a guess that the story made more sense than this
movie adaptation.
Not helping matters is the acting, which is amateurish
across the board, with the overall acting style seeming to come from '30s German
expressionistic and Hammer Studios horror films via a high school play. I
supposed this method was used in order to evoke the dark Gothic atmosphere of
said older films, but it elicits laughs more often than not. St. John appears to
be perpetually on the verge of a conniption fit, while Hargan chews the scenery
like it was his last meal. In particular, watching Hargan and St. John facing
off in a showdown of smirks had me in stitches. As the deviant intern Eischel,
Yount's performance is a mixed bag. In the subdued scenes, he's actually quite
effective at expressing repressed anger, but when he lets loose he overacts like
a low rent Crispin Glover.
But perhaps the most annoying aspect of "Beyond the Wall of
Sleep" is the visuals. They must have been serving Turkish coffee at the
post-production booth because the result can only be described as hyperactive.
There is hardly a moment in the movie where there isn't a secondary and tertiary
image flashing across the screen. Worst, those images appear to be the same half
dozen images put in a continuous loop. Quickly intercutting violent images in a
horror film is an effective and stylistic tool if used properly, such as in "Hellraiser"
and "Event
Horizon." However, "Sleep" employs this visual aid as its raison d'être. By
the end of the film, the technique will have either grated on your nerves or has
induced an epileptic seizure.
On the positive side, the filmmakers do a nice job with
color management, having the film periodically shift from black and white to
color and back again. The black and white sequences in the asylum are nice,
effectively using light and shadow to produce an eerie atmosphere. Unfortunately
these transitions are done with a subtlety that is sorely lacking in the rest of
the film's visual design.
"Beyond The Wall Of Sleep" is hampered with not just
stunted imagination, but also stunted funding. If some of the time spent in post
production was spent on refining the script to actually utilize Lovecraft's
donor material and to fashion some disciplined performances from the cast, this
might have been a low-budget shocker gem. Even an attempt to look at the film as
camp, to see if there was any 'so bad it's funny' charm to it, resulted in
boredom and further annoyance. Simply put, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" is 80
minutes of sneering and a lot of blinking lights. |
