The Beast Must Die

Anonymous

at 9:14 am

I love this film! It was`nt really meant to be taken that seriously back in 1974 when it first appeared, almost 30 years on, it can only get better! The parts that are meant to be funny are good, the parts that are NOT are even more hilarious! You can’t help but think that everyone on set had a great time making this film and it shows. Highlights include; Peter Cushing’s dodgy accent, meant to be German but frequently sounding Indian, Calvin Lockhart’s accent and mannerisms, The werewolf who looks more like an Alsation dog, the dodgy (but funny) bad acting in general, groovy 70’s tunes plus fab clothing and to cap it all the legendary ‘Werewolf break’. You`ll have to watch the film to know what I’m on about. All in all, a great comedy/horror with groovy 70’s funk capped with a copious amount of cheese, making for an entertaining and hilarious night in front of the box. Highly recommended.
Rating: 5 / 5

Anonymous

at 12:14 pm

Make no mistake, ‘The Beast must die’ is not a good film. But that is hardly the point is it? The fun here derives from the endearingly absurd plotline, the timely but rather hopeless use of Calvin Lockhart as the male lead, and the spectacle of a distinguished cast keeping their chins up despite it all.

The controversial ‘Werewolf break’ too may not be to everybody’s taste (the voiceover sounds distinctly louche to be sure) but it at least provides some colour to an otherwise rather forgettable experience.

Peter Cushing is over the top(but who cares), and Michael Gambon and Charles Gray are marvellous – however they are all given too little to do; Calvin Lockhart is left centre-stage much of the time and (whatever his Shakespearian past) he doesn’t have the screen presence to save us from this film’s many longueurs.

Enjoy this as a period piece and a rather camp part of Amicus history, but don’t let a DVD commentary and an interview with the director (available in the Amicus box-set)persuade you that this is a classic – it ain’t.
Rating: 2 / 5

Amazonian Native

at 2:48 pm

I am a big fan of this movie and already have it under the ‘Euroshock Collection, also being a region 1 version, that you will see here if you do a search, it’s the cover with the yellow circle with a picture of the werewolf in the middle.

I bought this version here because of the extra features, I read on the box this version had a new 16X9 anamorphic widescreen transfer,and I wondered how the picture quality compared to my previous version so I played them to compare, to my amazement the picture quality on this disk is terrible and much worse than the Euroshock version, in this version they have cleaned up the picture by taking out all those little flecks and speckles that are constantly flashing about on the screen, something you saw all the time at the movies in the 70’s, and despite this the picture quality is dramatically worse, it looks like video quality! it is smooth, blurry and the colour and detail are terrible.

I looked again at the Euroshock version and it had better colour, far greater clarity and looked pretty good for a movie from that era, but having said that, what I was really interested in was the special features, as so often old movies released on dvd almost never have any extras, so this quite a rare find, the original trailer is included, commentary and stills gallery, but perhaps the best is the featurette ‘Directing the Beast’.

If you want this primarily for the movie, buy the Euroshock version, if you want the special features buy this, as for the Region 2 version of this, I believe it is 4.3 full frame and doesn’t have any extras on it, although I couldn’t swear to it as it’s only what I’ve read online, so now you know.
Rating: 4 / 5