Not A Winner Of The Best Film Award At Cannes… Ever!
A review of "The Beast Must Die!"
by Rich Bruso
July 2002
Movie boxes are designed to sell the movie. This isn't a problem with good movies, as they usually contain a plot summary and perhaps some praise from critics. Mediocre movies tend towards scantily clad women and phrases like, "Only one man can stop them!" Bad movies, my kind of movie, have to resort to elaborate smoke-and-mirror descriptions. This is a magical land where "Action-Packed" means "Someone Gets Shot", "Supernatural Horror" translates to "Bad Vampire Effects", and "Murder Mystery" is roughly half right.
This month's feature, much to my delight, actually had the words "Mystery", "Werewolf", and "Action-Packed" on the box! The movie is called "The Beast Must Die!" One of the houseguests is a werewolf, and we will get a chance, during the patented "Werewolf Break", to review our notes and decide who it is!
The movie begins. A man is running through the woods. We occasionally cut to hunters in a truck, a helicopter following overhead, and a guy in a control room filled dozens of black and white TVs connected to video cameras throughout the woods. The controller appears to be communicating with the hunters and the helicopter, helping them to zero in on our runner. Something is not quite right, though. The control guy's jacket has lapels a bit wider than I was expecting. Then the music began. Disco!! Uh, oh. I grab the movie box and search furiously for a release date. There it is, 1989. And in a much smaller font beneath is the phrase "Original Release 1973." Bad news, but my pride forces me to continue to watch. I will regret this later.
I could write an entire article on the poor quality of the audio in this movie. Describing it as "muddy" would imply too much clarity. Remember playing telephone with a pair of Dixie cups and some string? Imagine if the microphone was stuck in one cup and the sound guy just walked around with the other cup. Full of lemonade. About twenty feet behind the actors. Facing the wrong way. I toy briefly with the idea of making this a silent film, but decide to press on in glorious surround-mumble.
The runner makes it near a house where several couples are sitting around chatting and drinking. The hunters arrive, aim, and shoot the runner, mercifully launching him clear of this wretched movie.
Fade in to a scene inside the house. Unfortunately for the runner, he appears to be alive, totally unhurt, and talking to the control guy. We find out this is the runner's house and the control guy is head of security. The owner was trying out his new foolproof security system. He is actually some sort of successful businessman as well as a big-game hunter. Picture a bad rendition of Shaft with a bit of good old Arnold from "Commando" thrown in. As the movie progresses, he acts less and shouts more. Thankfully, we can't make out half of the words.
The hunter has invited the houseguests to stay for the weekend. Over dinner, we are introduced to the hunter's devoted wife, a married couple of anthropologists who have eaten human flesh, the obligatory ancient werewolf expert with a vaguely Eastern-European accent, a leftover hippie type guy with a shaggy beard, and a couple of other instantly forgettable characters. With much drama, our hunter announces that one of these guests is a werewolf, and he intends to find out who it is. All communication has been cut off, and nobody is allowed to leave until the mystery is resolved. It's a shame that a fine movie like "Clue" has to be sullied by being lumped in the same genre as movies like this one. It's enough to make a grown man cry.
I will skip describing the alleged plot. Basically it is there to provide a connection, tentative though it is, between several really slow action sequences. The first of these is a laughable car chase scene where the hunter, showing his knowledge of the property, takes several shortcuts that miraculously leave him exactly the same distance behind the other car. Unbelievably, later scenes are actually worse.
We get the usual dissertation from the expert on werewolves, why it is a disease, how it spreads, why the full moon affects them, etc. You've seen it a dozen times. One slightly original idea is that silver won't kill a werewolf unless the moon is full and the plant wolfsbane is pollinating, which happens only in the fall. Amazing what some people will do to try and pad out a thin plot. Luckily, our hunter also happens to be a master botanist and has been breeding a special type of wolfsbane that blooms in the middle of the summer, coincidentally the weekend of this little party. Quite a talented guy.
As expected, the movie provides no real evidence on which to base a werewolf decision. We are treated to several thousand rounds of fake machinegun fire, an exploding helicopter, several red herrings, and the least realistic werewolf effects ever. Apparently, the makers of this film couldn't even afford the classic time lapse werewolf change technique used since the earliest days of film. Instead, when someone is going to change we cut to the reaction of the other people, then cut back to a rather large dog with what looks like a bad Tina Turner wig strapped behind its ears. Several times in the action sequences you can actually see the wig come off of the dog. Surely this qualifies as animal cruelty.
You know how people say, "Time flies when you're having fun"? It turns out the opposite is also true. Approximately 10 billion years later the movie stops, the werewolf break is announced, and we are given thirty seconds to decide who is a werewolf. Now, I'm not supposed to reveal the guilty party, under penalty of having to watch this movie again, but I can reveal that my time would have been much better spent watching "Home Alone 3."
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