As described in a film magazine,[1] scientist Dr. Gregory Sinclair (Connelly) and his fellow explorers find a man, Howard Hillary (Houdini), frozen in solid arctic ice and chop him out and then thaw him.

When Dr. Sinclair returns home, he learns that his ward's father, Dr. Crawford Strange, had set out to join him in the arctic but was lost.

According to the film's press book, Burton King's directing was supposedly usurped by Houdini's "supervision," but there is little evidence that this was true.

[2] The Man from Beyond is in some ways Houdini's attempt to reconcile with his erstwhile friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The pair had a falling out when they attended a seance in which the "spirit" of Houdini's mother (who had only spoken and understood German while alive) communicated to her son in English.

The Man from Beyond ends with the words "You must believe" and the spirit of the vintage-1820 Felice entering the body of the 1922 model, a replication of the cover of Doyle's 1918 spiritual treatise, The New Revelation.