Review of Beast, The

Introduction

"Erotic Masterpiece" is a curious term to use for this distinctly odd movie, unless your idea of erotic is the sight of horses banging and young women being ravished by horny Dr Who monsters.

Made in 1975, The Beast is a French art house movie by infamous director Walerian Borowczyk (and don`t ask me how to pronounce it).

Viewing the film, it is easy to see why it was banned and why - particularly in Britain - it could only be available in heavily cut form before now. It is a riot of imagery designed to send the arbiters of taste and decency into paroxysms of horror, or even upset them.

Sirpa Lane as Lucy is a fetchingly innocent-abroad heroine, supposed to marry Mathurin, the heir of an ancient and distinctly potty French dynasty. She finds herself in a chateau-full or twenty-four-carat weirdoes, and becomes fascinated by the story of Mathurin`s ancestor the Marquise Romilda. She survived an encounter with The Beast of the title (the Beast didn`t - dirty girl). Interspersed with flashbacks of Romilda`s adventure in the woods, Lucy discovers Mathurin, dead in his sleep and when the body is stripped he turns out to have a tail.

Strange doesn`t quite do justice to this jolly tale of bestiality, which is vaguely reminiscent of a Russ Meyer movie (but without the pneumatic women). It`s a very French movie in style and execution.

Video

An acceptable anamorphic widescreen transfer for a mid-1970`s French movie. The image is soft and strongly coloured and wear and tear is unobtrusive.

Audio

Sound is in the original French (with burned-in subtitles), and is of course in glorious Dolby Mono.

Features

There is an odd, short movie about a young man who takes his sixteen year old cousin to the seaside for a little Gallic rumpy-pumpy while the tide comes in. There is also a stills gallery that is poorly presented and Walerian Borowczyk`s "Filmograpghy" (sic).

Conclusion

If you like the sort of movie Channel 5 shows late at night, or the stuff Revelation release on VHS and disk, then this is for you. Scenes of a sexual nature, while totally bogus, are graphic enough that extreme caution should be exercised unless one is extremely difficult to offend.