The Beast | |
---|---|
Directed by | Walerian Borowczyk |
Produced by | Anatole Dauman |
Written by | Walerian Borowczyk |
Starring | Sirpa Lane Lisbeth Hummel Marcel Dalio |
Cinematography | Bernard Daillencourt Marcel Grignon |
Edited by | Walerian Borowczyk |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Argos Films |
Release date | |
Running time | 98 minutes |
Country | France |
Language | French Italian English |
The Beast (French: La Bête) is a 1975 X rated French erotichorror film written, edited, and directed by Walerian Borowczyk. Although sometimes compared with Beauty and the Beast, there are no parallels in the plot except that it features the relationship between a beast (monster) and a woman. The film was noted for its explicit sexual content upon its initial release. It has become a cult film.
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Background[edit]
A loose adaptation of the novella Lokis by Prosper Mérimée was originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own. However, Borowczyk later rendered Lokis as a story (La véritable historie de la bête du Gévaudan) in Immoral Tales (1974), which was envisaged to be a film of six stories.[1] After Immoral Tales was remastered as a film of four stories, the footage became the dream sequence of The Beast.[2]
Plot[edit]
Businessman Philip Broadhurst dies and leaves his estate to his daughter, Lucy, on the condition that, within sixmonths of his death, she marries Mathurin, the Marquis Pierre de l'Esperance's son, and be married by Cardinal Joseph do Balo, the brother of Pierre's uncle, the crippled Duc Rammaendelo de Balo, who shares their crumbling farmhouse with Pierre's daughter Clarisse, and their servant Ifany.
Mathurin, who manages the family horse-breeding business, is dim-witted and deformed, and has never been baptized. Pierre summons the local priest to the house for the baptism, but Pierre, by promising the priest repairs to his church and a new bell, performs the ritual himself so that the priest will not find out the truth about Mathurin.
Lucy and her aunt, Virginia, are driven by their chauffeur towards the farm but their way is blocked by a fallen tree. They find a back route to the house at a back door to the house, where Lucy asks Rammaendelo about rumors. Rammaendelo, who is not in favor of the marriage because he is dependent on Mathurin to look after him, shows her a book that describes the beautiful Romilda's fight with a beast in the local forest 200 years ago. Lucy comes across several drawings depicting bestiality, and becomes sexually excited at the thought of her impending marriage, even though she has never met Mathurin.
Pierre blackmails Rammaendelo into persuading his brother to perform the marriage by telling him that he has proof that Rammaendelo poisoned his wife. Rammaendelo is unable to get through to the Cardinal on the telephone, so Pierre sends a telegram, assuring him that Mathurin has been baptized and urging him to attend this evening.
Everyone assembles for dinner, and Mathurin's uncouth manners become apparent. Lucy and her aunt try to leave, but are persuaded to stay. Everyone having drunk too much wine, most of the assembly fall asleep while waiting up for the Cardinal. Lucy retires to her room, undresses, puts on her thin wedding dress, and dreams that she is Romilda, playing a harpsichord. Seeing a lamb straying into the forest, she chases after it to find that it has been torn apart by a black hairy beast.
Pierre overhears Rammaendelo on the telephone to the Cardinal trying to dissuade him from performing the marriage. Angrily interrupting the conversation, Pierre slits Rammaendelo's throat with a razor and tears the phone out of the wall. In the ensuing comic dream sequence, the beast with a large visible erection chases Lucy through the forest. She loses most of her clothing in the process and ends up hanging by her arms from a branch, and the beast licks her and masturbates. Lucy wakes in a sweat and wonders if it was merely a dream. She tiptoes to Mathurin's room but he is asleep, fully clothed, on his bed. Lucy returns to her room, masturbates, and dreams that the beast is copulating with her. She wakes again and is convinced that Mathurin must have visited her. She visits his room again but he is still sleeping soundly.
Lucy returns to her dream. The beast continues to masturbate and Lucy rubs his ejaculate all over herself. Eventually the beast dies of exhaustion. Lucy wakes and walks into Mathurin's room to find him dead on the floor. She runs naked through the house screaming, and everyone runs to her aid. Virginia examines Mathurin's body and discovers that a plaster cast on his arm is concealing a claw for a hand. Pulling his clothes off reveals both that he is covered in thick black hair and that he has a tail. They run out of the house in terror as the Cardinal arrives. Virginia comforts the terrified Lucy as they speed away in the car, and Lucy dreams that she is naked in the forest again, burying the beast.[3][4][5][6][7]
Cast[edit]
- Sirpa Lane as Romilda de l'Esperance
- Lisbeth Hummel as Lucy Broadhurst
- Elisabeth Kaza as Virginia Broadhurst
- Pierre Benedetti as Mathurin de l'Esperance
- Guy Tréjan as Pierre de l'Esperance
- Roland Armontel as Priest
- Marcel Dalio as Duc Rammaendelo De Balo
- Robert Capia as Roberto Capia
- Pascale Rivault as Clarisse De l'Esperance
Release[edit]
The film premiered on 6 January 1975 at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival[8] and was released theatrically in Germany on 6 February 1981.[9]
Reception[edit]
The film did well in Europe, but the run of the film in France and the U.S. ran into controversy due to its erotic nature and show of bestiality. Many felt the film went over the top with its sex scenes, leading to its withdrawal from film for several years. In the UK the BBFC refused to classify a heavily cut version for general cinema release, and the same cut print narrowly avoided prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act by the Director of Public Prosecutions when it was shown with Greater London Council approval at the independently run Prince Charles Cinema in London in September 1978.[10]
Further reading[edit]
Kerri Sharp. 'Hairy Hands Make Light Work'. UK: Headpress19: World Without End (1999), pp. 37–40.
References[edit]
- ^'Polish culture: Walerian Borowczyk'. Archived from the original on 3 October 2013. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
- ^LOKIS Le manuscrit du Professeur WITTEMBACH
- ^Review with several screenshots at devildead.com
- ^DVD: Beast, The, 3-Disc Limited Edition / La Bete (1975), by Mark R. Hasan
- ^MITTERNACHTSKINO - La Bête – Die Bestie
- ^Bildstoerung » LA BÊTE - Die Bestie
- ^Paszylk, Bartłomiej (March 2009). The pleasure and pain of cult horror films: an historical survey. McFarland. p. 148. ISBN978-0-7864-3695-8. Retrieved 23 January 2011.
- ^La Bête – Die Bestie ¦ DVD ¦ Schnitt Online
- ^Schwarzglut - Bête, La (Frankreich 1975) - Review
- ^BBFC Case Study of La Bête
External links[edit]
- The Beast on IMDb
- The Beast at Rotten Tomatoes[dead link]
- Online review from Moria
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=La_Bête_(film)&oldid=897333667'
SYNOPSIS:
The head of a failing French family thinks that fate has smiled down on him when the daughter of a wealthy man agrees to be married to his son. The daughter and her aunt then travel out to the French countryside to meet with the family, unaware that a mysterious ‘beast’ is stalking the vicinity.
REVIEW:
The Beast (La Bete) has one of those opening scenes that you will never forget, no matter how hard you try. After a couple minutes of introductory credits, we watch a fully erect male horse walk around a female horse, then mount her, then “mate” with her until completion. Not what you might expect from a “horror” movie, but interestingly enough, also not the strangest part of Polish writer/director Walerian Borowczyk’s 1975 film. In fact, unless you’re a creep, it’s really not even an obscene shot; maybe jarring as the intro to a film, sure, but not obscene.
Before I continue, I will note that the cut I have of The Beast has overdubbed voices as opposed to subtitles. Unfortunately, the overdubs are often put in at the same volume as the original voices, so it is very hard, and often next to impossible, to understand a lot of the dialogue, and there are a lot of echoes going on throughout the film. So bear with me here; we’ve been in this situation before, and I’ve always tried to do my best, so I’ll try not to let you down.
Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel) and her aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza; see also Stuart Gordon’s Castle Freak) are on their way to a home in the woods where Lucy will meet the man she is to marry, Mathurin de l’Esperance (Pierre Benedetti). We watch as Mathurin’s father tries to get him cleaned up and presentable to make a good impression, as Lucy has money in her family. They shave Mathurin, get him squeaky clean, and even get him baptized by a priest and his two young boy servants (which becomes a creepy situation as the night goes on), but they can’t do anything about his sad personality or the cast on his arm. Meanwhile, Lucy is having the driver stop every now and then so that she might snap off some Polaroid photos, sometimes in the forest, sometimes of the stream, sometimes of the horses getting it on, until finally they reach their destination.
At the house, we have a variety of strangeness going on. Mathurin’s father pushes an old man in a wheelchair (Duc Rammendelo De Balo, played by old time Hollywood star Marcel Dalio) to entertain the lady visitors. Meanwhile, Mathurin’s sister, Clarisse (Pascale Rivault from Lady Chatterly’s Lover), and the servant Ifany (Hassane Fall) are doing their best to get busy while they have the chance, which we soon see is rare, with Ifany constantly being called back to work, leaving Clarisse frustrated enough to try and finish on the bed frame. Lucy keeps finding strange bestiality pictures in various places throughout the house, in books, behind framed paintings, everywhere, and it starts getting her a bit aroused. And then there is the legend of Romilda de l’Esperance (Sirpa Lane, from Nazi Love Camp 27, Beast in Space, and Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals), whose mysteriously clawed-up corset is still on display in the house.
But we still haven’t gotten to the weird part yet.
There is a scene where Lucy masturbates looking at the photos she took of the horses. There is another scene where she touches a real flower against her metaphorical flower. There is a scene where Clarisse and Ifany have to cut their love-making short, after which Clarisse lets two small children out of the closet in the same room. There is the priest giving the boys candy and then giving them full-mouth kisses. And then there is the finale, when we see why Romilda’s corset was clawed up. As it turns out, there is a beast in the forest, one that has an apparently insatiable sexual appetite, that first kills a sheep, then comes after wandering Romilda. It is at this point in the movie when we finally get the “weird” part, a very long sex scene involving a woman, a “beast,” and copious amounts of bodily fluids (which were foreshadowed in the opening scenes), not to mention the strangest x-rated sex scene I’ve ever seen.
It seems that Borowczyk was trying to make a statement about our animal-like urges, or maybe our sexual desires at their most basic and instinctual level. Maybe. It also appears that The Beast may be based, at least in part, on a late 1860’s novella by Prosper Merimee (who also wrote Carmen, the basis for the opera) called Lokis, which is kind of a reverse Beauty and the Beast story about a man who is half-human, half-bear. Whatever his modus operandi, the director left us with a very strange, part horror, part erotic tale that once seen, will not soon be forgotten.
The Beast 1975 Free
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
The Beast 1975 Watch Online
- New high definition digital transfers of the feature and the shorts
- Uncompressed Mono 2.0 PCM Audio
- Optional English subtitles
- Introduction by film critic Peter Bradshaw
- Venus on the Half-Shell (1975)
- The Making of ‘The Beast’: camera operator Noël Véry provides a commentary on footage shot during the film’s production
- Frenzy of Ecstasy, a new visual essay on the evolution of Borowczyk’s beast and the sequel that never was, Motherhood
- Theatrical trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original poster design
- Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Daniel Bird and archive pieces by David Thompson and Craig Lapper, illustrated with original stills