Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Beast Within – 1982

     First off, you should understand that this movie is a perfect example of how in the early 80’s, the major studios realized that the B-movies were where the easy money was. United Artists made this movie, but if you didn’t see know that, you’d easily believe that it was a Roger Corman or AIP flick. And boy, does it sound like an 80’s flick. If you close your eyes, you might believe you were watching the original Friday the 13th.

And what a cast! First, there’s the late, great Bib Besch (Dr. Marcus of Star Trek: Wrath of Khan). And Ronny Cox from Total Recall. And there’s L.Q. Jones, who wrote, produced, and starred in the recently reviewed Brotherhood of Satan.

And there’s boobage in the first reel. Gotta like that.

Unfortunately, especially in the initial scene, its too damn dark to tell what the hell’s going on. I think they may have done that on purpose, so we don’t know what the monster looks like until the very end. But its still irratating.

There’s a scene in a kitchen where on of the “locals” is messing around with ground beef that is strangely disturbing. He’s just hand mixing in Worchestcher sauce into ground beef I can’t say what it is that makes it gross. But it is.

Pretty decent gore for an 80’s studio flick. And isn’t it funny that one of the characters is named Dexter Ward? I’m pretty sure that this is homage to Charles Dexter Ward of H.P. Lovecraft fame.

The weakest part of this disc is the total and complete lack of extras.

Three beers out of five. The beginning and the end are good, the middle is pretty slow.