One of the things I like to do while I am home alone during the day is to put on whatever old horror film I can find included in my streaming services. The cheesier, the weirder, the more off-putting, the better. I often don’t even watch the film; I just put it on and walk away. Sometimes it’s nice to have some noise in the house, you know?
Some greatest cinematic hits of this pastime are Running Man, Big Trouble In Little China, and Prince of Darkness. It’s no surprise, I think, that two of those are John Carpenter films. There are also lots of more niche horror and science fiction films in the mix. Suspiria. The Beyond. The Visitor. The House By The Cemetery.
You get it.
A few days ago I picked From Beyond, 1986’s best Lovecraft adaptation. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s a Stuart Gordon classic and it’s got everything: gore, nudity, intense practical effects, Jeffrey Combs. Everything! The film is wild and tasteless and messy and great. If you care about horror cinema, you need to see it. In all likelihood, of course, if you care about horror cinema you’ve already seen it.
As I ate my lunch and watched Jeffrey Combs’ pineal gland erupt phallically from his forehead, I thought to look up the short story the film is based on. I’d never read it before and discovered that it’s only like 10 pages long. The perfect length for a “get back in the saddle” episode of The Black Laser Reads. And that’s what I did.
I spent two hours on this yesterday. The total run time is just over 19 minutes. That works out to about 6 hours 20 minutes per finished hour of audiobook. Seems like a lot, right? But if you consider how long I spend to cut a single 30 second TV commercial, this ratio starts to look pretty good.
Anyway! The story is embedded below or you can find it on my Bandcamp where you can download it for absolutely nothing.
The text for this episode came from Standard eBooks. If you are interested in reading “From Beyond” which is found in Short Fiction, you can download a public domain e-book here.
I’m working on the first full novel of this series and it’s taking me quite a while to work through. I will probably post another couple shorties in the meantime because they are nice palate-cleansers for when I need to taste something other than hard-boiled detective on my tongue. I promise the next one won’t be Lovecraft.
