The Beast Within

1982's THE BEAST WITHIN came during that "golden" age of exploitation horror when teenage boys like myself would salivate over whatever new shlock was to open at the Cross County 8 theater.  Or play on HBO or Showtime. Alas, this is another one I somehow missed.  I did devour movies in those years, but I also had something that resembled a life.  So here in my 50s I'm catching up with so much that I missed.  It's been mostly a worthwhile mission, while some, like this one, might've been best left to the cinematic dustbin.  Merely wondered about rather than seen.

Michael (Paul Clemens) was a normal kid, but lately he's been undergoing severe medical and emotional problems.  Possibly a delayed, inevitable reaction - his conception seventeen years earlier was via a brutal rape by a mysterious hairy legged creature.  His parents Eli (Ronny Cox) and Caroline (Bibi Besch) had been driving through Mississippi on their wedding night.  Now they've returned to the flyspeck town to get info on the rapist, which may help them learn about their son's illness.  The hayseed locals are stereotypically less than helpful, and sport those familiar visages seen in B-movies when someone is hiding something.  Is there a conspiracy? Hotbeds of secrets? 

It all plays like some cheap Southern Gothic, with periodic (so-so) kill scenes as Michael goes on a rampage.  But is it really Michael, or is he possessed by something?  He is the spawn of some kind monster after all.  There is a late transformation scene that seems inspired by the previous year's werewolf films AN AMERICAN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and THE HOWLING (and the body horror works of David Cronenberg).  It's intermittently impressive, but also unintentionally funny, like much of this movie.

Director Philippe Mora does manage some decent atmosphere and a perpetual air of dread, but Tom Holland's script, based on a then unfinished novel by Edward Levy, is just trashy and melodramatic.  There may be statements here about the pro choice movement, but that's a reach.  I was even wondering if this was an extreme allegory for tinnitus suffering. This all could've been workable, I guess, but the film is decidedly low grade and just gets more ridiculous as it drones on.  One character's dramatic removal of a toupee might be the film's highlight.

The veteran cast, which includes L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, and Luke Askew as a really creepy mortician, is OK.  Les Baxter's score is appropriately intense.

Best viewed with a heckling audience.