Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Koosh_King01 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.

Scott LeBrun "The Beast Within" is a highly amusing, over-the-top, endearingly senseless combination of a monster movie with a "Bad Day at Black Rock" type of story. Future director Tom Holland supplies the story for these macabre theatrics.A couple honeymooning in 1964 have car trouble after which the new wife is raped by a humanoid thing. 17 years later, and the now teen aged product of that rape is going through some pretty ugly growing pains, periodically killing and eventually transforming into a monster himself. Adding to the melodrama is the back story of that long ago rapist's pitiful existence and a cover up that had been engineered by the bigwigs of the local small Mississippi town.Many things come together in this movie that makes up in panache what it may lack in any sort of logic. It's just oozing with foul and sordid backwoods atmosphere, and the makeup effects and gore courtesy of Tom Burman are well worth a look; the climactic transformation that is trumpeted so proudly in the theatrical trailer can't compare to the likes of what we saw in "The Howling" or "An American Werewolf in London", but it's not bad either. It's only the final monster incarnation that disappoints, as it's obviously a man in a clunky, none too convincing costume. Still, monster movie lovers such as this reviewer can still delight in a fun little movie that does things in such an old-fashioned way. The score by A.I.P. pro Les Baxter is full of doom, and the movie looks just great in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Philippe Mora directs with efficiency; he was hired for this project based on his direction of the 1976 favourite "Mad Dog Morgan". A rock solid cast treats the insane material with gravity; Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch are the perplexed, truth seeking parents, and Paul Clemens the tormented teen. Clemens really gives his all in what is truly a wild role. Excellent character actors also help, including Don Gordon, who erupts into a scenery devouring frenzy before the picture concludes, R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, Logan Ramsey, John Dennis Johnston (playing the role of a stereotypical hostile redneck to the hilt), Ron Soble, Luke Askew, and Meshach Taylor. Co-star Katherine "Kitty" Moffat is a lovely and appealing gal in the part of the love interest.An overlooked and under appreciated flick as far as 80's horror goes, "The Beast Within" is deserving of cult status - simply put, it's trash at its finest. You can just turn your brain off and enjoy the lurid thrills, which it delivers for a well paced 99 minutes of mayhem. Eight out of 10.

FlashCallahan So the film starts with a Rosemary's baby type scene, where a woman is molested by a beast, in order to carry on his cycle or something or other...Flash forward and we have Ronny Cox and family showing off about how he wrote the country and western music for this film and how he will be two of the best films of the Eighties.For some reason his son is ill, I really didn't understand why, something to do with his pituitary glands, but soon he gets out of bed and starts slaughtering specific people.Turns out he has the soul of someone with really bad teeth in him, and he is taking revenge...This movie is bizarre, and mostly awful, the two extra stars are for the woman who plays Amanda,as she is really easy on the eye, and the hilarious head pull of scene.The rest of it is abysmal. one tag-line says 'we dare you not to leave your chair for the last thirty minutes'. I now know what they meant.The transformation scene is okay to begin with, and then it just drags...., and drags......, and drags.It feels like forever that these people are watching in aghast, this man changing, and it ruins the scene, as does the actor who plays Micheal, as he is just too bloody ugly to pull a girl like Amanda.There really isn't anything good to say about his, Cox is okay.

sddavis63 In order to appreciate this movie you have to be able to accept it for what it is: not a top-flight, high budget star-powered horror movie, but an attempt to create some good, campy horror fun, and in that it succeeds in spite of a number of inconsistencies in the plot that are pretty glaring and do detract somewhat from the story's credibility. The somewhat cliché opening doesn't really draw the viewer in: a couple's car gets stuck on a lonely road in the woods and while the husband leaves to get help, the wife is attacked by an unknown creature. She isn't killed, though - she's raped and impregnated. Seventeen years later, the child born to her becomes ill, and the couple return to the place of the attack looking for answers.The acting here was generally pretty decent. There were no mega-stars involved; the best known actors were probably Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch as the couple struggling to save their son. Paul Clemens (as Michael, the son) came across as a bit wooden to me, but aside from that, things were pretty good in the acting department. The plot had problems. For example, after Michael's first murder - which was very bloody - there was not a drop of blood on his clothes. Given the nature of the murder, that would seem highly unlikely. Also, MacCleary (Cox) - who as far as we know was not a cop and was a complete stranger in the town - was accepted far too easily by the sheriff, and actually seems to become part of the investigating team. Also, when Michael is caught in Amanda's room, the best the sheriff can say is "he was trying to protect her." Really? What about trespassing? Break and enter? So, there are plot problems. Basically, though, it's a decent B-movie sort of production which features an interesting creature (a cicada-type monster) and an equally interesting transformation scene. And, remember - it's all in good fun!