|
U.S.A.
/ 1982
Directed by Philippe Mora
Starring
Ronny Cox
Bibi Besch
Paul Clemens
Color / 98 Minutes / R
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC)
MGM Home Entertainment
|
 |
|
|
|
Hold
your mouse pointer over an image for a pop-up
caption
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2007
Midnite Movies Edition
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Review
by
Brian Lindsey
|
 |
|
5
|
|
 |
|
5 |
|
10
= Highest Rating |
|
|
The
early 1980s saw a deluge of horror flicks featuring
transformation scenes involving elaborate makeup
effects. Despite a tenuous grip on logic, The
Beast Within — a
modern day "Southern Gothic" mixing monsters
and gore with small town secrets — remains
one of the best of these. Joe Bob Briggs screened
it a number of times (cut to ribbons, of course)
on his late-night TNT cable show Monstervision;
the film now comes to DVD courtesy of MGM's budget-priced
line of "Midnite Movies" discs.
In
1964 rural Mississippi, the honeymoon of newlyweds
Eli and Caroline MacCleary (Cox and Besch) is interrupted
when their car bogs down off a wooded country road.
While Eli jogs to the nearest town his bride is
attacked and raped by an unseen, bestial assailant.
She gets pregnant; 17 years later her son Michael
(Clemens) is dying from a strange, unknown disease.
The doctors are stumped. Caroline convinces Eli,
a loving parent who's raised the boy as if he were
his own offspring, that they must return to the
scene of the crime and try to learn the identity
of her attacker. It's their only hope — perhaps
the genetic makeup of the rapist holds the key to
Michael's illness.
The
couple begins their investigation in Nioba, the
sleepy Mississippi hamlet near where the attack
occurred. Caroline picks up a possible clue in the
records of the local newspaper; Eli is immediately
suspicious of Judge Curwin, the town's mayor and
chief magistrate, who is evasive when asked about
events surrounding the crime. Meanwhile Michael
— who's
been having strange visions of a run-down, abandoned
house in the country — sneaks
away from the Jackson hospital and heads for Nioba
on his own, compulsively drawn there by some kind
of supernatural summons. When he reaches the town
he finds the very same house he'd previously seen
only in feverish nightmares. And not long after
his arrival, a lot of bodies start turning up...
As
if a Fulci film, it's at this point that logic is
tossed completely out the window. The explanations
behind Michael's illness and the genesis of the
cannibalistic monster just don't make a damn lick
of sense. Yet The Beast Within
is an enjoyable B-movie horror that stands a notch
above the pack, due chiefly to some quality acting.
Cox, Besch and Clemens are quite good in the lead
roles, going above and beyond the call of the material.
Supporting them is a cast of fine character actors:
R.G. Armstrong (as Doc, Nioba's kindly physician),
craggy cowboy actor L.Q. Jones (Sheriff Pool),
Logan Ramsey
(creepy newspaper editor Edwin Curwin), Luke Askew
(as undertaker Dexter Ward — a nod to H.P. Lovecraft,
perhaps?), Ron Soble (Tom, the town drunk), and
Don Gordon (wig-wearing Judge Curwin, who knows
where the bodies are buried.) A youthful Meshach
Taylor (Mannequin,
TV's Designing Women) is on hand as Deputy
Herbert, apparently Nioba's lone African-American.
These performers all lend credibility to the nonsensical
proceedings despite some southern accents that don't
quite ring true. Actual rural Mississippi locations
give the film a measure of authenticity; veteran
horror composer Les Baxter's overly melodramatic
score even slips in snippets of original country
music (heard over the radio), with vocals sung by
star Ronny Cox.
The special effects are sufficiently gruesome and
should delight gorehounds. Wisely director Mora
keeps the monster, in its final form, mostly in
the shadows. However, the transformation scene in
the Nioba clinic — the supposed highpoint of the
film — is a prime example of too much of one ingredient
nearly spoiling the recipe. The sequence goes on
for nearly three minutes, with the attendant crowd
of witnesses simply standing there and gawking the
whole time at the horror unfolding before them.
Not one of them flees the room or starts seriously
freaking out. (Demons and
The Howling have similarly
problematic scenes.) In "reality" not
everyone would just stand around and watch
while a person horribly and painfully mutates into
a hideous, bloodthirsty creature. But in horror/sci-fi
films this happens all the time. (Explanation: It's
easier to edit a transformation scene when one can
cut back and forth between different stages of effects
makeup and endless reaction shots of the
horrified/disgusted witnesses. Easier, yes — but
also lazy filmmaking.) NOTE: Some folks might have
a problem with two scenes in which women are raped
by the monster. Though not
sexually explicit, it's plainly obvious what the
randy creature is up to.
|
|
|
| Like
most of MGM's Midnite Movie discs, the company's edition
of The Beast Within is
a bare bones affair. (Fall
of the House of Usher and Pit
and the Pendulum, which contain audio commentaries,
being notable exceptions.) The only extra is the original
theatrical trailer. But compared to the muddy, heavily-edited
pan and scan version seen on cable television, the
blemish-free widescreen transfer presented here (anamorphically
enhanced for 16x9 TVs) is like watching an entirely
different film. A new Dolby Surround audio mix significantly
enhances the mayhem.
8/23/01 |
|
UPDATE
This disc went OOP a couple of years after this
review was written. In September 2007 the exact
same transfer was reissued on a flipper disc pairing
it with The Bat People (1974).
|
HOME
| REVIEWS
| TOP
|
