The Beast Within (USA, 1982)

The Beast Within is an oddity. It’s not overly different in tone from other horror films of its time, but it contains some rather nasty scenes and has a grimy, seedy edge to it that I associate more with the early seventies. It’s difficult to believe that a film about a blood-drinking teenage werecicada could be anything other than campy, but it manages to be tense and somewhat disturbing in places. Part of what makes it disturbing is that there are two rape scenes, which, while integral to the plot, will make the film repellent to some viewers. All of this may help explain why it’s less well-known than many other American horror films of the early eighties.

If your dog gets jealous, it will do anything to ruin a hot date

The script, freely adapted by Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play) from a novel by Edward Levy, tells the story of Michael MacCleary, a boy conceived after his mother was raped by an unknown man on her wedding night. We first encounter Michael at the age of seventeen, following his admission to hospital. He is gravely ill from an unknown disease which his doctor suspects to be hereditary. This leads Michael’s parents to try to discover the truth about his biological father, uncovering many dark secrets along the way. Michael, in the meantime, starts to change physically and mentally, following a path of revenge compelled upon him by his late father’s growing influence.

If you’re going to murder someone, doing so in a mortuary is considerate at least

One interesting aspect of the film, for me at least, is the Lovecraftian element, particularly in parallels with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. One plot thread of The Beast Within is Michael’s supplanting by the returned spirit of a dead ancestor, albeit in a very different manner to that of Charles Dexter Ward. The parallel is made explicit by one character in the film being named Dexter Ward and others identified as members of the Curwin family.

The special effects look somewhat cheap and dated, but are still effective and suitably disgusting in places. I’m not sure if they were an influence on David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly, but there are definite similarities in the human-to-insect transformations.

There is surprisingly little difference between monstrous transformations and extreme allergic reactions

If you can get past the rape scenes and the dated, low-budget look of the film, there is a lot to recommend The Beast Within. I wouldn’t describe it as one of the scariest or well-made horror films I’ve seen, but it deserves better than being forgotten. If you fancy some body horror, practical special effects and unexpected nastiness, you could do worse.

Le Orme/Footprints/Footprints on the Moon (Italy, 1975)

I may have started out the month’s viewings with a misstep. The problem isn’t that Footprints is a bad film — quite the opposite — but that I’m not sure it’s accurate to describe it as horror.

Footprints came to my attention a few months ago, when I was reading through various lists of recommended giallo films in search of fresh blood. If you’re unfamiliar with the term giallo (unlikely if you’re reading this) then it refers to a type of Italian thriller/horror movie inspired by the yellow-covered crime novels published in Italy from the late 1920s (giallo being Italian for yellow).  They tend to be blood-spattered mysteries built around a string of brutal murders, but the term can refer to thrillers in general.

Footprints is much more of a psychological thriller than a horror film. It tells the story of Alice, a Portuguese woman working as a translator in Italy who finds herself with inexplicable gaps in her memory. She is also haunted by dreams of a film she saw years previously, called Footprints on the Moon, involving an astronaut abandoned on the moon as an experiment in isolation.

Alice’s attempts to unravel the mystery of her missing time lead her to a resort town named Garma in an undisclosed country (the location used was Kemer in Turkey). The few residents seem to know Alice, although she remembers none of them. The more Alice discovers, the more unsettled she is about her own identity and the nature of the people around her, leading her to take increasingly desperate and bizarre actions.

The pacing of the film is slow, deliberate and atmospheric, and perfectly complements the grand locations and their unsettlingly small occupancy. It all builds toward a relatively predictable conclusion, but the journey is punctuated by enough oddness and imaginative imagery that it feels fresh anyway.

While there is little blood and none of the proto-slasher content of typical gialli, Footprints is most definitely nightmarish and unsettling. And maybe that’s enough to qualify it as a horror film.

I’ll try to find something a bit more visceral for tomorrow.