User reviews

"The Beast Within" was a staple of TNT's MonsterVision many years ago, and its unique (yet often convoluted) premise reveals why: how many movies have featured a bloodthirsty cicada monster? Based on the novel by Edward Levy (adapted by future "Child's Play" director Tom Holland), the plot has happy newlyweds Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch running afoul of terror along a backwoods Mississippi road, where Besch is raped by some vague, subhuman creature; 17 years later, son Paul Clemens is exhibiting some extreme growing pains that include the occasional ghastly murder when his parents return to the scene of the crime looking for answers. While the plot never really comes together as well as it should, "Beast" is a model of B-movie efficiency that utilizes atmosphere, location, and some supremely grotesque special effects to leave the viewer rattled (director Philippe Mora also has an excellent grasp of light and shadow to create mood). In hindsight, the film has the type of contained, small-town-America aesthetic that has become the watermark of Stephen King's prose, and the cast is appropriately comprised of rather typical faces, not marquee stars. In the end, "Beast" is a wonderfully ghastly little flick with a creepy story that's executed just well enough to overcome some poor acting and an occasionally sluggish pace.

I am going to disagree with most of the reviewers in here and say that I found the story to be quite intriguing. Some of it was a little out there but the crux of it ( the town conspiracy ) was quite well done. What wasn't so great was some of the acting and some of the things people do to get themselves in trouble.

The film starts off with Ronny Cox and his wife traveling down some lonely Mississippi road in the dead of night. They spin off the road and the front of his car ends up on some moist land. His tires spin and spin but they will not respond. The car is stuck there. Now instead of A) trying to push the car out or B) both of them walking back to the gas station for a tow, Cox tells his wife that he is going back to that gas station for a tow. He playfully tells her to stay there and to lock the door ( he says it as though nothing bad could have ever happened on the side of the road in Mississippi. Does anyone ever remember MISSISSIPPI BURNING?)

Okay, we have all seen too many horror movies but that is just dumb, horror movie or not. You never leave someone alone, on a deserted road while you are surrounded by the dense bush. Anything could happen. Bigfoot could jump out. Jason could be close by. The thing from THE PREY could pop and get you or more realistically you would just be too afraid to stay by yourself because it is dark. But she does and of course something attacks her and rapes her and then the film jumps ahead 17 years where of course she had the baby. This is another part when we all go " Oh Come ON!!! What are you, stupid?" If some big disgusting swamp thing with calves the size of the Caveman in Scooby Doo episodes raped you, you get an abortion, right away. But again, this is a horror movie and people have to do stupid things to get themselves into the prediciments that they are in. If you can get past some of this sheer idiocy, the rest of the story is quite good. It is not on par with some of the greats but it is a worthy addition to the early 80's horror.

One by one, the slimy town folk are being attacked and devoured by a beast. Now we don't know why these people are being stalked, only that they are suspect looking to say the least. There is obviously some town secret that is being swept under the proverbial rug and these people are the main culprits.

The final thirty minutes is quite good. I can remember being about 13 when me and my friends rented this film for the first time. We accepted the challenge on the front of the box where it dares you to watch the last thirty minutes without chickening out. And when you are 13 and are challenged like that, you eagerly accept. None of us were horrified but we sure thought it was cool. Now that I have more of an appreciation for horror and the effects that go into it, I have to say that the creature effects were astonishing here. Rick Baker would be proud of Thomas Burman. This is on par with Baker's work in AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. The transformation scene is truly a work of art. Perhaps people will say that it is dated because now a days they use computer graphics to make everything look real but let me tell you, give me guys like Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Thomas Burman and I would rather watch them at work than a chip and a computer program that does the same thing. This is fun to watch and I believe more work and innovation goes into the process.

I would give this film a 6 out of 10. The story is intriguing and the plot is carried out quite well. And look at it this way. Take most horror films from today like URBAN LEGEND, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID..... and so on and compare them to this one and others like it from the 70's and early 80's. Most 90's films can't hold the director's Cole's Notes to how to make an affective horror film. The Beast Within is better than 95% of the horror that was released in the 90's. It is getting better now with stellar efforts like FINAL DESTINATION, BLAIR WITH, SIXTH SENSE, STIR OF ECHOES and even STIGMATA. Their roots lie with films like this.

If you like low to medium budget horrors with plenty of gore, you will not be disappointed in this and Paul Clemens does very well in the lead. Nobody else seems to try too hard, they seem more interested in outdoing each other in wearing the most outlandish wigs. Very watchable despite its shortcomings although it almost comes to a halt on several occasions. The set up is fine, if a little predictable, but the wild and terrible story could have been better told. At first this seems like a Jekyll and Hyde variant, then a vampire tale before it gets back to what it really was at the start, a gruesome tale of rape and impregnation by some swamp like creature. Nice idea and lots of nastiness but not very convincing and too many people wandering in and out to little effect. Have to say though, one amazing and absolutely disgusting transformation sequence at the end.

Philippe Mora does has made lots of very strange movies in his underrated career, some good, some truly awful. This is one of the better ones. If you analyze the plot too much the holes become big enough to drive a truck through, but just ignore the urge to do that, and you'll find you're watching an near-classic of transformation horror.

A newly-wed (Bibi Besch) is raped by a mysterious beast on her wedding night. Seventeen years later her son (Paul Clemens) is dying of an unknown illness. She and her husband (Ronny Cox) return to the scene of their past trauma to try and get some answers. They find some strange townsfolk who appear to be hiding some mysterious secret. Exactly what it is I won't say. It would not only spoil the movie, but I must admit I'm a trifle confused myself at the "explanation" for the weird events depicted on screen! Like I said, think about it too much and you'll ruin it. Just go with the flow...

'The Beat Within' contains plenty of creepiness and some gruesome murders. An added attraction for film buffs is the interesting supporting cast, which includes Peckinpah veterans R.G. Armstrong ('Predator'), L.Q. Jones ('Casino') and Luke Askew ('Easy Rider'), and character actors Don Gordon ('Out Of The Blue') and Mora semi-regular John Dennis Johnston. ('Flesh & Blood')

'The Beast Within' rarely gets mentioned in discussions of 1980s horror movies, but it should. It may not be up there with the best of Cronenberg, Carpenter, Romero, or Raimi, but it's well made, original, strongly acted, and damn good fun!

The Beast Within tells the story of a woman who is raped in the forest by a mysterious creature. Cut forward 17yrs and her son has developed an ailment that has left doctors baffled.

Based on that alone you've likely just worked out about 50% of the plot, the other 50% is very generic cliched stuff about a conspiracy in small town USA.

With the likes Ronny Cox the movie has some acting heavyweights behind it, they also clearly had a very competent sfx team whose creature effects are above par for this early in the 80's.

Sadly it doesn't flow very well, I found the lead rather obnoxious, the leading lady barely got any screen time and it just feels like they made a lot of real schoolyard errors here.

If you like cheesy 80's creature features you might actually get a kick out of this as it does tick plenty of boxes, it just missed out on a few that are too important to me personally.

The Good:

Ronny Cox and L.Q. Jones

Decent sfx

The Bad:

Lack of flow is noticeable

Paul Clemens

Woo-hoo! This freaky puppy needs to go on a leash! The Beast Within is highly entertaining 80's pulp that regretfully got ignored over the years, along with so many other B-movie goodies from that decade like "Dead & Buried", "Basket Case" or "From Beyond". I hope that too many people won't be biased about the gory, cheap looks of this film, because it actually has got more to offer than you'd think! The Beast Within fits perfectly in the "the little town with a secret"-sub genre that I personally adore. The screenplay (written by Tom Holland of "Fright Night" and "Child's Play") handles about a newlywed couple facing a nightmare when the wife is raped by a hideous creature on a remote Mississippi road. The "miracle of life" takes place and 17 years later, the progeny of this unpleasant meeting begins to undergo a bizarre metamorphosis. The adolescent Michael is aggressive, weak and goes prowling overnight. The victims of these nightly hunts all share a common secret that slowly unravels itself and leads all the way back to the night of the rape. The plot contains quite some holes (big ones!) and logicalness is totally out of the question! Hopefully, you'll be able to look passed these flaws and see how director Mora attempts to add tension and atmosphere to his film. The obvious aspect to love naturally is the blood and gore! The Beast Within features an infamous and nearly classic transformation and this scene alone makes the film worthy. A catchy (country) soundtrack and fairly good acting complete my overall positive opinion on this overlooked cult gem. Ronny Cox is quite convincing as the "official" father but it surely is the young actor Paul Clemens himself who impresses. His ultra-mad grimaces while attacking the hillbillies form the best parts of the film.

I think they tried so hard to make this a murder mystery as well that I completely lost track of what the film was actually meant to be about.

'The Beast Within' is also more of a possession tale rather than a werewolf story, but this is a preposterous story in general and hard to swallow. The film tells of a newly wed couple, Eli and Caroline, who got stranded next to the road at night. When Eli went for help, Caroline wandered into the woods after their dog, where she was raped by a beast - assumingly a werewolf.

Seventeen years later their son, Michael, becomes terminally ill. Knowing Eli is not the father, the couple decide to go back to the town where Caroline was raped to try and find out who the father was, in case the illness is genetic. As they continue their investigation, Michael becomes possessed, killing members of the Curwin family, who hides a terrible secret.

Paul Clemens wasn't believable as Michael. The other actors were pretty good, but the characters were not all that interesting. The director also made a few strange decisions. There's so much missed opportunity here. Ultimately, the film completely falls to pieces as it tries to be more clever than it really is. Michael's transformation scene was very well done, though, and rather gross. The finale isn't too bad.

If you're into werewolf movies - 80's horror in particular - I recommend 'The Howling' and 'An American Werewolf in London', both of which are far superior to 'The Beast Within', and not as complicated.

Would I watch it again? No.

I agree with many points made by fellow commentators. This was one of director Philippe Mora's best efforts: atmospheric, grisly and featuring an extraordinary cast of slumming actors. The makeup transformation effects by the Burman studio are quite well done. BUT...

Why isn't this called The BUG Within? This poor kid doesn't turn into a beast - he turns into a gosh-darn GIANT CICADA! WTF? Where did that come from? There's no explanation in the script, and according to those who've read the source novel, it's completely different from the original story. I remember seeing this at a United Artists screening in Los Angeles back in 1982. My buddy Mike and I were big horror fans, and after the screening let out we kept asking each other, "But why did he turn into a BUG?" Neither of us could come up with an answer then and obviously, even after all these years and with all these discussions on IMDb, no one else has either.

Screenwriter Tom Holland probably could however. Certainly he's proved himself a talent in the horror genre, with his terrific script for the first Psycho sequel and subsequent work on the first Child's Play and his directorial debut, Fright Night.

Philippe Mora has had a more checkered career. A strong visual stylist, he's struggled with poor choice of material such as the infamous sequel Howling III: The Marsupials.

The Bug - sorry, BEAST Within is definitely worth a look for horror buffs, but when you watch the big transformation scene two-thirds of the way through, I guarantee you'll be scratching your head afterwards. The makeup FX are pretty cool though.

If you enjoyed "The Terror Within" or "Humanoids From the Deep", then this movie is for you. It is a classic early eighties horror film about slimy creatures that rape young women, only to repeat the cycle at the end of the film. Special effects (by today's standards) are pretty thin, but still worth seeing.

****SPOILERS**** The best I can make out of this bloody mess of a movie is that a while ago a religious lunatic, Lionel Curwin, in the town of Nioba Mississippi found his wife Sarah and the towns "Nature Boy" Bobby Conners in bed together. Lionel murdered Sarah and locked "Nature Boy" Bobby Conners in his basement and fed him Sarah for dinner. Later with the help of the town undertaker Dexter Ward, Luke Asks, Curwin supplied Bobby a study diet of human flesh that, with him being locked up, drove Bobby insane. All this was all covered up by the judge of the town of Nioba Judge Curwin,Bruce Gordon, Lionel's brother.

Years later in a breakout from the basement Bobby killed Lionel and then while out in the woods found a stranded motorist Caroline MacCleary, Bibi Besch, who's husband Eli, Ronny Cox, was away looking for help, and raped her. It later turned that Bobby went back to the Lionel Curwin home and shortly died there.

Caroline later became pregnant and gave birth to Michael, Paul Clemens, who in reality in this movie was Bobby Conners reincarnated. Michael like a Cicada insect who after 17 years started to morph into a new Bobby a monstrous like creature and began to go out at night to kill all those in the town of Nioba who did him in.

Ridicules movie thats almost incomprehensible to follow due to the many sub-plots as well as plot-holes in the film that make no sense at all if you really sit down and think the movies bizarre story-line. Michael also becomes involved romantically with a local girl Amanda Platt, Kitty Moffat, who's father Horace is not only a double-murder, who killed his wife and her lover, but got away with it by being Judge Curwin relative. Horace was also involved in the torturing and ultimate death of Micheal's former incarnation "Nature Boy" Bobby Conners.

In a short time Michael goes on a gory rampage and murders against all the people involved in his suffering as Bobby Conners including Judge Curwin, who he decapitated, but ends up getting shot to death by his mother Caroline when Michael is just about to kill his father Eli!

Meanwhile the person whom Michael raped Amanda, and who's father Horace was one of those that he killed, had in fact impregnated her with himself who's, the coming blessed event, now well on his, or its, way to be born in and start the ball rolling all over again.

This movie is for the birds, or better yet for the insects, with one of the craziest stories you'll ever see on the big or little screen. It's a good thing that those who made "The Beast Within" never got around to make "The Beast Within part II".

You ever see a movie where they spent so much on the special effects they had nothing left for a screenplay?

I have, lots of them. And here's a good example....

"The Beast Within" shows a lot of what they call "bladder FX" to show someone morphing into a monster, and those scenes are actually pretty well done. But the rest of the film feels like it was just tacked onto an FX loop.

What actors like Besch, Cox, Armstrong and Jones are doing in this mess is anyone's guess, and I'll bet they're trying to figure that out to this day.

I won't go into too much detail but just to say that things end for a sequel. If there is any shred of decency in the festering depths of Hollywood, they WILL NOT make a sequel to "The Beast Within".

Let's all hope.

One star, for the FX. But everything else winds up in the negative numbers, including the IQ points of all involved herein.

So it may not be Rosemary and it may not be at all really connected, especially this going full gore. But there are some similarities and the inciting incidents is one of them. I did have an issue with how that was handled in the Polanski movie, this one does a "neat" trick by jumping forward timewise, so we don't really see how this is handled after the fact.

Now you may like that or hate it, but it is what it is. When you get over that, you get quite the tense story and quite the explicitly shown violence on screen. The effects may have looked better to the viewers back then (didn't really survive the test of time entirely), but they still are something to be amazed by. If you can remember the time they were made and everything they had in their power to do them. No CGI obviously and the story is predictable to say the least ... it is the horror aspect that will either get you or leave you cold

This horror film, about a woman brutally attacked one night, and years later has to relive the memory when her son becomes the suspect in a series of brutal murders, is appalling trash, utterly without value. Story is pure crass exploitation, not to mention utterly ridiculous and ultimately nonsensical. Good actors wasted in this junk, further ruined by some dreadful F/X, especially the big transformation sequence in the hospital, which looks like it was made for 25 cents, so unintentionally laughable is the end result.

Directed by Philippe Mora, who would go on to direct the equally bad "Howling II & III".

Film is decent enough,typical 80s acting,effects and filming. If your a fan of 80s horror like me you will like it. Reviewers saying its a B movie obviously haven't watched alot of 80s horror. Its not a B at all its a 80s shot film,its not going to be all big budget and special effects etc.

Not much to add to the previous comments, they covered the plot remarkably well, at least as much plot as there was in the movie.

I'll add a few observations. The acting was actually somewhat better than expected in a movie of this type. They caught some decent performers either on the way up or the way down in their careers who agreed to do it. The special effects, for 1982, were pretty decent although the rubber masks in the transformation sequences were pretty unconvincing. They also got carried away with the air bladders under the skin blowing them way too high to be credible.

Now the weakest link, the plot. Although it had high ambitions it fell flat due to the inability to come up with anything resembling an explanation for the transformation of Michael.

Allegedly a local loser was discovered with another man's wife and was chained in the cellar for years and given cadavers to chew on. Conveniently the cuckolded husband was the local undertaker. Apparently the monster-to-be used to pretend as a child that he would come back someday like a cicada. Somehow they tossed those concepts together to get a completely nonhuman monster who could, in addition to the physical changes, transfer his mind and memories to his sperm. A neat trick but kind of silly. Hard as it is to fathom, the movie "Child's Play" actually had a better explanation than this one. I never thought I'd be saying that.

If they had thrown in almost any sort of rational explanation I would have enjoyed the movie more. Heck, I would have accepted alien experiments. The lack of an explanation kept bugging me, no pun intended, for most of the movie.

Overall it was worth renting on DVD and watching. It was certainly no worse than a lot of movies before and since. If you turn off the critical thinking you'll enjoy it more.

One of the better, and most overlooked, monster films of the 80's is this fun and effectively creepy B horror film.

On a dark and stormy Mississippi night, a woman is attacked and raped by a mysterious monster. Now, seventeen years later, her ill teenage son is starting to display some murderous behavior that keeps getting worse...

The Beast Within (based on the Edward Levy novel of the same title) is too often bashed by critics. Many complain that the storyline is convoluted, but frankly if everything were explained it would lose its sense of chilling mystery. There is much to be enjoyed in this off-beat creature flick. The story is nicely creative with a hint of old school horror and a good dose of building tension - all of which is dotted with some startlingly good murder scenes. The gruesome makeup effects aren't bad, this film has one wild transformation scene. Direction wise Philippe Mora does well in giving the film a great southern Gothic vibe as well as an oppressing atmosphere of dread.

The cast holds their own too. Ronny Cox (of Deliverance fame) and Bibi Besch do solid performances as the understandably troubled parents of our title character. Paul Clemens is also good, and strangely alluring, as the teen with the savage side. Supporting performances from Don Gordon, R.G. Armstrong, Katherine Moffat, and L.Q. Jones are good too.

The Beast Within is one under praised horror film. So what if there's a few plot holes, so what if it doesn't follow the book it's based on to the letter - it's a truly memorable horror ride that never has a dull moment. Check it out creature feature fans.

*** 1/2 out of ****