10/22/16 – day twenty-two of thirty-one days of horror!
Australian horror director Phillipe Mora is the architect of some
awesomely weird movies, (HOWLING 2 & 3, for instance), but his most
unsettling and effective offering has to
be THE BEAST WITHIN. It tells the heart-warming tale of a boy who
discovers that he’s got more problems than just the average teenage
hormones – turns out he’s the product of monster rape! Paul Clemens puts
in a fearless performance as the tormented teen, managing to illicit
both terror and sympathy from the audience, aided by some of the best
pulsing transformation effects this side of AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.
Always dependable Ronny (DELIVERANCE, ROBOCOP) Cox and Bebi Besch round
out the cast as the boy’s frazzled but loving parents, and screenwriter
Tom Holland would go on to make some 80s horror staples in the original
FRIGHT NIGHT, the surprisingly good PSYCHO II and the Chucky
franchise-starting CHILD’S PLAY. Less praised than those films, THE
BEAST WITHIN nonetheless stands as an influential coming of age tale
about the monster inside of us all, an important entry in the halcyon
wave of post-grindhouse early 80s horror, one that fully deserves your
undivided, skin-crawling attention.
