The Beast Must Die (1974)

Touches You

People are voting emotionally.

Fantastic!

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

Not Cushing's best work by any means, but still a fairly entertaining film. I do wonder how much he was paid for this job; he seems to spend a lot of time in the background. Good storyline that doesn't make blacks look inferior like so many films; Calvin Lockhart plays a rich man with power and money lording it over the whites, quite a change. The story is a nice variation from your standard guests-invited-to-a-mansion-and-being-killed-off-one-by-one. You'll have an interesting time figuring out whodunit, and the ending provides quite a shock. It is a pity movie-makers don't make films like this anymore; the plot was simple, yet entertaining and interesting to watch.

Tom Newcliffe is a rich hunter who has invited specific people to his big estate. He believes one of them is a werewolf, and has set up a vast network of security system. He intends to find out who it is, and hunt it down.The movie invites audience participation to guess which character is a werewolf. There is a Werewolf Break near the end for the audience to decide.This is definitely a slightly different movie experience. Sure the audience usually makes these deductions anyways, but rarely would a movie demand it so forthrightly. It concentrates the mind, but on the other hand, it highlights it's artificialness.I wish the writing and acting wouldn't be so cheesy. Peter Cushing is probably the most recognizable name. Even he couldn't deliver these over written lines with complete effect. The worst has to be Calvin Lockhart who delivers his lines trying desperately the accentuate the horror. All it does is to sound like a bad count Dracula.

After the rather slow first ten minutes, "The Beast Must Die" turns out to have some neat stuff. When a millionaire (Calvin Lockhart of "Cotton Comes to Harlem" and "Myra Breckinridge") invites several people to his mansion, the audience is told to guess which of these individuals the werewolf is.The opening sequence made me think that a bunch of rednecks were chasing the main character, but the movie contains no redneck characters. Instead, there's Peter Cushing as an archaeologist, Michael Gambon as a pianist, and some others. This is far from the best Amicus movie or werewolf movie, but it's still pretty entertaining. Probably worth seeing once.

The Beast Must Die is out of Amicus Productions, directed by Paul Annett and written by Michael Winder from a short story by James Blish. It stars Calvin Lockhart, Charles Gray, Peter Cushing, Michael Gambon, Tom Chadbon and Marlene Clark. Music is by Douglas Gamley and photography by Jack Hildyard. Plot has Lockhart as eccentric millionaire Tom Newcliffe, who invites a group of people to his stately mansion, where he reveals that one of them is a werewolf. He intends to flush the werewolf out with a series of tests. Death, suspicion and shifty shenanigans will follow…..They really should have stuck to doing creepy anthologies. Amicus that is. For if this turgid, thrill less hack job is anything to go by, it clearly was a stretch too far doing a one premise narrative. Led by the woeful Lockhart, who thinks he's doing blaxploitation, film plays out like a poor imitation of Ten Little Indians and The Most Dangerous Game as the guests are picked off by an Alsatian Dog, and that really is all there is to it. Only it doesn't have Agatha Christie's nous behind it. It's never scary, Cushing is wasted and the introduction of a Werewolf Break gimmick (we the audience have 30 seconds to guess who the werewolf is before the reveal) just comes off like a cheap knock off of something William Castle did years previously: only it doesn't have the glint in the eye that Castle had. Even the Technicolor photography is lifeless.3/10 for Gambon's efforts.