RETRO REVIEWS - THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974)

“This is a detective story in which YOU are the detective…”

For a period of time, the length of which I can’t be bothered to google, titans of U.K. horror, HAMMER and AMICUS, fought increasingly bloody and exploitative battles for box office supremacy. HAMMER were renowned for classy, thoroughly British chillers, while AMICUS were kinda like a seedy porno theatre that exclusively screens snuff movies. While HAMMER produced films of debatably higher quality, there was something distinctly cheap and (un)cheerful about AMICUS’ output. They were a bit more subversive, a bit more pulpy, and, as a result, a bit more fun. Curiously, neither company ever produced more than one werewolf movie apiece; HAMMER’s wonderful THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF and this, AMICUS’ truly fucking terrible THE BEAST MUST DIE a.k.a WAIT, IS THAT AN ALSATIAN IN A RUFF?

Tom Newcliffe (CALVIN LOCKHEART) is a successful businessman and an expert hunter. He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. He’s a boardroom predator and some people even call him The Space Cowboy. He’s invited six guests to spend the weekend with he and his wife, Caroline (MARLENE CLARK), on their sprawling country estate under the assumption that one of them is a werewolf. Here’s how he came to that conclusion: -

That’s some watertight science right there, son.

Shortly after an opening sequence which shows the timeless image of a black man running away from armed authorities, Tom lays out the rules of engagement before his guests; you’re all locked in this fucking house that’s surrounded by a complex series of microphones, CCTV cameras and pressure pads until I work out which one of you is a werewolf. He then rattles off the list of crimes and suspicious activities associated with each of his guests.

Now, one of the most daring (read: utterly fucking ridiculous) things about BEAST is the WILLIAM CASTLE-esque interactive element and the addition of the “werewolf break” which gives the audience a solid 30 seconds at the end of the movie in which to determine who amongst the assembled guests is the alsatian in a ruff werewolf, and scream their answer into an ocean of people who don’t care. You’re supposed to be able to do this by carefully assembling all the clues which are presented to you during the course of the film, but I’ll be fucking fucked right in the fucking ear if I can find anything even remotely resembling a clue during its runtime.

However, since we’re in this for the long haul, and in the spirit which the film itself suggests, I put together some dossiers on the central characters to help us out: -

Note - I ran out of notepaper towards the end hence why there’s a slight but barely noticeable change in the type of paper being used.

Now that shits outta the way, we can get down to some serious detecting…

The first thing that becomes very apparent is that Tom is a total fucking lunatic, and I’m starting to think that my initial assessment of his chances of being the werewolf were totally off base. He struts and cajoles like he’s treading the boards in the world’s worst theatre production of “THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLAY AND YOU WOULD BE BETTER SERVED REPEATEDLY SLAMMING A FRIDGE DOOR ON YOUR TESTICLES”, and at one point informs his wife through the medium of mime and onomatopoeia that if she turns out to be the werewolf, he’ll explode her head like an apple being crushed between the thighs of a Russian wrestler.

Further demonstrable insanity follows as one of the guests, Jan, breaks rank and makes for the fucking hills because he understandably feels that this entire enterprise is as mad as a bag of dicks. To be fair, he ain’t wrong, as Tom chases after him in a Land Rover and then deliberately sabotages the other vehicles so no one else can tear ass outta there. To their credit, the guests do their utmost to present themselves as perfectly respectable members of society (with the exception of Paul who takes a shot at Tom with a bow and arrow, and inhales a bunch of poppers takes a shitload of sleeping pills before trying to climb a tree and falling like a piss sodden washcloth to the floor).

Ultimately, Tom is determined to find and execute the werewolf at any cost, but his first night out on the hunt is an absolute, cacophonous shit show. Using directions being fed to him by Pavel who’s back at the house, Tom fails spectacularly to hit a static target at 80 yards with a hunting rifle that’s designed to shoot the pubic lice off a squirrel’s balls from 3 miles away. The werewolf heads to the manor in pursuit of Pavel because it sensibly deduces that all the fucking shouting that’s going on is Tom being directed by a disembodied voice.

Tom arrives on the scene all too late as Pavel has been turned into beef brisket and the control room smashed to fuck. Sleeping guests who have been alerted to the scene outside of the control room by the fizzing of electronics and the wailing of a man they had no knowledge of are dismissed by Tom. Not being one to be disheartened, Tom drops a line to the honky security agency to request additional support - - because if an intricate, covert detection web didn’t work, a fucking helicopter fucking will.

Further failure is encountered as the werewolf, now being pursued by Tom in the Tom-Copter, retreats inside a barn and mortally wounds Caroline’s dog. In trying to prevent the enraged lycanthrope from biting the head off of the helicopter pilot, Tom once again spectacularly misses and instead hits the helicopter which erupts in a ball of flame. All in all, it’s been a pretty bad night but not nearly as bad as that time I was almost kidnapped and buggered by a man on a moped who was wearing a skull mask (true story).

Now it’s time for the werewolf break. Who exactly is the werewolf? We’ve only got 30 seconds to compare notes and arrive at a decision! Here’s mine;

SHOCK! Turns out Caroline was the werewolf…but wait a second…she was present when the werewolf attacked Tom and mortally wounded her dog…so that must mean…

Oh SHIT! It was fucking Jan all this time! That motherfucker. His moustache and bouffant hair should have been a dead giveaway, not to mention his attempt to escape the grounds earlier on.

Following his ad-hoc mauling of Paul, Jan, now in full wolf mode, high tails it outta the house and into the grounds. During the life-or-death struggle twixt man and adequately trained dog, Tom is wounded and therefore doomed to walk the earth looking like the worst furry that accidentally stumbled into a Wisconsin VFW. Realising that he has no option but to lock lips with the barrel of his hunting rifle, Tom retires to the dining room and finally manages to hit a target he’s aiming at. Thus ends the sad tale of Tom Businessman Boardroom Hunter

Of infinite amusement to me is that Pavel, having previously been mauled to death by the werewolf, and left in the parlour, is never mentioned again. By the time the finale rolls around and Tom has blown his own brains out, none of the survivors are aware of the rotting corpse of a security specialist located mere yards away from them in a room full of busted up machinery, and that makes me laugh a lot more than I’d consider reasonable.