The Beast (1977)

Just perfect...

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

What a film! And what a task it is to undertake an appraisal. To defend the indefensible? The Voltaire quote at the start suggesting that unquiet dreams are in reality a transient madness is intriguing as I have always wondered how our own dreams could so disturb as to wake us. Hard to tell here, however, what the real nightmare is. Certainly the decrepit faded glory of the overdressed household and the scheming to inherit is bad enough without the intervention of the church and accompanying and oh so obliging young boys. No by comparison the dreams of young girls seem far less worrying ( and more fun to watch). Lisbeth Hummel and Sirpa Lane excel in their explicit and convincing performances. Never has cavorting with the devil looked so good and Borowczyk does an amazing job of conveying such awfully brazen sexuality without it either seeming too awful to look at or too wonderful to be concerned about. This is a unique look at the power of sexuality, the importance of instinct and in particular the female urge, at least as imagined by Mr. B!

i saw this movie years ago - i think i watched it on HBO or something - i really cannot remember. i just remember that i loved it - i thought it was one of the most sexual movies - even graphic - i had ever seen on TV. it was kinda of silly in some parts but very very sexual and stimulating at the least. it is all about a young sexually frustrated girl who gets all excited about a hairy type beast in the woods. first of all in the beginning she watches two horses getting it on and gets all excited. then she is married to some guy who never gives her any. then one day while hunting for a lost sheep - she get chased by some monster type beast (ape) or what ever it is. then the beast ape masturbated a gallon all over her. the beast ape is hung like a horse and she likes that as well. then there is a scene where she masturbates the ape man with her feet - again he shoots off a gallon. finally the ape man gets her good and she loves it. i thought it was pretty good - got me all excited as well as my girlfriend at the time. - if you love good old fashioned bestiality - this movie is great for you. as for me - i just loved it and want to watch it again if i can find it on DVD.

Notorious Borowczyk film, often dubbed 'art porn'; its infamous reputation is derived from prolonged scenes in the woods where the beast graphically despoils the maiden. None of this is coy or erotically suggestive, at some point a malformed penis ejaculates in front of the camera.But that vision is properly internal, a sexually-charged dream. The girl who's having it has been brought in a lavish mansion to marry the son of an aristocrat. There is no love between them, not even the chance to tease it out. It's all a ploy devised from the parents, both driven by ulterior motives.It is all a maddening, feverish coupling between these two notions; animal impulse seething deep inside the soul and how far social appearances, the world of organized cruelties, can be bent to mask or sublimate the impulse in more acceptable games of power or money.So this is the monster's function, a monster nurtured with the bile of emotional pains. It articulates purely in terms of images about a state of mind. Structurally however, it's all dependent on how well the filmmaker can shift this internal vision around in the level of reality in order to probe into those unspoken corners of the soul that elude us in real life. Cronenberg and Zulawski - another Polish expat - both went on to deliver similar but better films because they had a grasp of this; the monster itself was our in-sight of the inverted world. In The Fly Cronenberg also riffed in and out of the classic Beauty and the Beast story, like Borowczyk does here, but as part of an overall prosthetic worldview powered by a damaged mind. In Possession, even better, every increasingly depraved exchange and utterance was a wound of the heart. Here, the monster stuff is its own secluded world.This predates those films, and might have been considered cutting stuff at the time, but is mostly unwieldy now. The greatest contribution of the Polish to cinema is the flow of sliding narratives; there is little of that here, except as we wander around the house and woods. But when we reach the grounds of the mansion, our first sight is of horses coupling.Of course the official representatives from god reach there too late, and only to provide their moral decree.

Another variation and improvisation on the famous and beloved children tale, La Bete (1975) aka The Beast tries to imagine (in very graphic and what may seem offensive and disturbing but in reality rather silly and comical way), what actually happened between Beauty and the Beast? I am amused by many reviews and comments that seem to look too deeply into this movie. I would not go so far as saying that it is a serious and dark exploration of such subjects as sexual frustration, longing, fulfillment, or satirical criticizing of the catholic Religion. I would not even call it a horror-erotic movie. It's more of the parody on all genres it touches or mentions even though it's got some shocking moments in all departments that sure will stay in your memory.The long (way too long) scene between an Aristocratic young woman and the supposedly horrifying but the most laughable I've ever seen in the movies creature with truly impressive...well anatomy, is set to the clavichord music of Scarlatti and is hysterical. My husband and I both laughed out loud at the exaggerated details of the encounter. The moral of the scene is - beauty can and will defeat the monster. The question is - who is the target audience for the film? For an erotic picture, it is too verbose; for an art movie - it's got too many jaw-dropping scenes of sheer madness and I'd say an abrupt ending. IMO, the film creator did not mean for it to be a serious drama. As a parody of art house/horror/erotica, it is funny and certainly original. Have a good laugh and try not to look for some deep meaning. This story of the curious Beauties and the lustful Beasts certainly is not recommended for co-viewing with the children. The opening scene that may shock an unprepared viewer much more than the infamous scene of bestiality can be successfully used On Discovery channel for the program like "In the world of animals - mating habits and rituals of horses".