Director Philippe Mora has made some distinctively ropey films throughout his massive 49 year career (he's still making movies), but The Beast Within, a film you could easily mistake as a werewolf picture, is certainly one of his best. Loosely based on Edward Levy's novel, Beast is a slow-burner, but nevertheless features some satisfying scenes of gory horror, and one mutation scene that is still pretty impressive today. But there's no werewolves here; the 'beast' of the title is somehow a cicada, something that, due to studio butchering (when will they learn?), remains unexplained and confusing, putting a bit of a downer on what is a perfectly passable 80's horror.The movie begins with happily married couple Eli (80's rent-a-b*****d Ronny Cox) and Caroline MacCleary (Bibi Besch) breaking down near a small town in Mississippi. As Eli wanders off to search for help, Caroline is attacked and raped by a beast lurking in the woods. 17 years later, and Michael MacLeary (Paul Clemens) is the result of that rape, and is in hospital dying from a strange condition that has left the doctor's baffled. Desperate for answers, Eli and Caroline return Nioba, the town in which the incident occurred, only to find secretive townsfolk and a possible cover-up. Michael escapes hospital and, apparently driven by an external influence, murders and cannibalises Edwin Curwin (Logan Ramsey), a man possibly involved in what happened 17 years previously.It will hardly give the likes of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Sam Raimi sleepless nights, but Beast is very well-made, with care taken to develop an intriguing plot and a creepy atmosphere. It's all anchored by an impressive performance from Clemens (whatever happened to him?), who spends most of the film looking as if he's about to explode. The change scene is hardly on par with An American Werewolf in London (1981), but it's a very good scene, and when Michael's head swells up to the size of a medicine ball, it becomes inadvertently funny in a what- the-f**k kind of way. When the 'revelations' come, it will leave you scratching your head, but it does not ruin what is a well-directed, character-driven horror that features plenty to appease gore-hounds and casual viewers alike.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Eli and Caroline MacCleary are on their honeymoon driving through the middle of nowhere in Mississippi when their car gets a flat. Leaving his wife with the car, Eli hikes off to find a tow truck. While he's gone, a mysterious creature attacks and rapes Caroline. Upon returning, Eli rushes his wife to the hospital. Seventeen years pass. Caroline bore her rapist's child and she and Eli have raised the boy, Michael, as their own. But now Michael is suffering some inexplicable health problems his doctor can't explain. Whatever it is he's got, it's genetic.Eli and Caroline decide that their only hope for a cure is to find Michael's biological father: Caroline's rapist. They head back to the town where she was raped and begin asking around about violent crime. All they can find is a newspaper clipping about the notorious Lionel Curwin's house burning down. Nearly everyone in town is related to Lionel, and all of them are rude and openly hostile to the couple.The only person who is at all nice to them is Sheriff Bill Pool, who isn't related to the Curwins. He explains that Lionel was a very unpleasant man who had a rocky relationship with another local, Billy Connors, who disappeared.Meanwhile, Michael escapes from his hometown hospital and on some impulse drives to the town where he kills and partially eats the Curwin who runs the local paper. He is found and his parents take him to the local doctor, Dr. Schoonmaker, who pronounces that Michael has somehow gotten better! Or so it seems. Something is growing inside of Michael, something that hates the entire Curwin family and wants to destroy them.The Beast Within is an excellent little horror film, based on a novel by Edward Levy. The plot, involving a pregnancy with a monstrous origin resulting in a seemingly normal but still unusual child, and the small town conspiracy to keep the crimes of the Curwin family a secret are all quite Lovecraftian in nature.On a note of parenthood, I liked how Eli accepts Michael as his son even though he isn't. I expected him to despise Michael and see him as living evidence of his wife's rape. Instead, Eli loves Michael and is willing to do whatever it takes to try and find out what is happening to him. Caroline likewise loves Michael dearly despite how he was conceived.The cast is amazing. Ronny Cox as Eli is warm and appropriately fatherly. Bibi Besch as Caroline is also quite good, playing a very strong woman who doesn't let her traumatic rape haunt her. Special mention should also go to L.Q. Jones as the helpful and sympathetic Sheriff Pool, and especially R.G. Armstrong, who delivers an excellent performance as the kind and gentle Dr. Schoonmaker.Really, the only dud in the cast is Paul Clemens as Michael. He's just bland and has little to do except growl and snarl. The script is partially to blame here, as we don't get a chance to know Michael at all. The first time we meet him, he's lying in a hospital bed. This is not a good way to introduce your protagonist if you expect the audience to care about him! Despite this, The Beast Within succeeds and is very interesting. And no review would be complete without mentioning the special effects. When what is happening to Michael reaches its zenith, he undergoes a horrifying transformation that is definitely the highlight of the proceedings.

The changing into a monster of a young man is used as a metaphor for boys growing into men. The body goes through changes and urges become more primal. Suddenly playing center field for your baseball team is less alluring than chasing skirts. THE BEAST WITHIN perfectly captures this sentiment.The film focuses on teenage Michael (Paul Clemens) who has an illness that the doctors can't identify. It seems that young Michael is changing into a beast--one that resembles a humanoid creature that sexually assaulted his mother seventeen years ago. His parents, played by Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch, try to learn more about what happened seventeen years ago and venture to the town where she was raped by the monster: a sleepy, backwoods Mississippi community. They leave Michael at the hospital but he breaks out and some urge lures him to the small town his parents are visiting.While in this small Mississippi hamlet, Michael begins to succumb to urges: eating flesh and chasing the local hotty (Kitty Moffat). But these urges aren't your normal teenage male pursuits and Michael fears for Amanda's (Moffat) safety when he learns that members of her family are being targeted by a serial killer--the beast within.STORY: $$$ (The story is quite interesting. We get a nice little isolated setting with eccentric hillbilly characters who all seem to harbor a dark secret. Cox and Besch as the concerned parents try their hardest to uncover the secrets so they can save their child. The script builds enough suspense to sustain interest but the falling down of females in the woods seems a bit foolish. Bibi runs into a tree and Kitty looses her bearings too easily).ACTING: $$$$ (A helluva lot better than you see in the usual B-Rate film. Clemens is terrific as young Michael. His scenes where his body changes are brilliant displays of acting. He masterfully portrays agony. L.Q. Jones shines as the town sheriff, Mike's parents only real ally in the backwoods community. The underrated Ronny Cox is great as Mike's dad. He knows that Michael isn't his son but still shows him the amount of love he'd show a boy direct from his loins. Don Gordon and John Dennis Johnston are effectively slimy as backwoods villains and Kitty Moffat is solid in the role of Michael's forbidden fruit. But the best piece of acting belongs to Bibi Besch. There's little for her to do in the script but Bibi gets more out of this character than most actresses could extract. There's a scene, in which Miss Besch has no dialogue, where she learns that her son is becoming something akin to the monster that raped her years ago. Bibi exhibits such raw emotion in the scene that you, the viewer, know exactly what is going through her mind without her having to say a word. Give Bibi a standing ovation).NUDITY: $$$ (What would be a movie about teen lust without a little titillation? Bibi is stripped bare in the woods by a monster at the beginning of the film while Kitty Moffat suffers the same treatment at the close of the film. Creepy morgue attendant Luke Askew also spends some time ogling a buxom dead body in his morgue).

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 ****