#39 -- The Beast Within (1982)

Director: Philippe Mora

Rating: 2 / 5

I find myself wondering if I've already seen all the good b-movies there are to see. I've seen a lot, and a lot of them I like. But lately I've been stumbling upon the not-so-good ones. So I ask: where have all the good b-movies gone? This wasn't too horrible; it just wasn't what I expected. What I expected was a horror comedy, but what I got was something different. Usually you can tell when a movie is purposely stupid, but I think this one genuinely tried to be scary. But with the story they came up with, that was just not in the cards. 

A married couple gets into a car accident and ends up in the woods. The man goes for help and leaves his wife and dog at the car. The dog starts barking like crazy, so the lady lets him out of the car and ends up following him deeper into the woods. The dog is killed - smashed against a tree - and the woman is raped by a big hairy creature. 

Seventeen years later, the couples' son is having medical problems. He suffers from an out-of-whack pituitary gland, rapid growth, and constant visions of a strange house. He is afraid he is going to die, and the doctors don't know what is wrong. They believed, at first, that the problem was genetic. But upon testing both of his parents and realizing that they are fine, they don't know what else to do. But Mama knows. She knows that her husband is not the biological father, but rather the man beast that raped her seventeen years ago. So they go on a quest to find that man to get medical records and such, hoping to save their son's life. They travel back to the place of the incident, and start digging around. It is apparent that people in the town do not want them to know anything. The judge refuses information, and the newspaper man is evasive. The only help they get is from the sheriff, who tells them that, around the time of the incident, a man was killed - partially eaten and his house set on fire. 

Meanwhile, Michael (man-beast-child) has escaped from the hospital and is roaming around the town his parents have traveled to. He kills newspaper man and returns to the hospital. It is very obvious that his health has drastically improved. He escapes the hospital and then is captured so many times I lost count. It actually starts to get annoying after a while. 

Anyways, there isn't much to this movie. It's a little bit boring. Much of the time we spend watching is waiting for Michael to transform into a werewolf - because we know that's what it is. Well, I think it was supposed to be a werewolf anyway. But he's going around town killing members of a certain family. He develops a crush on a girl from that family and warns her to leave town. On her way, though, she crashes her car and ends up not leaving at all. We eventually learn the story. A woman cheated on her husband with Michael's father. When Husband found out about this, he killed his wife. He then locked Michael's father in the cellar. He knew Daddy was a werewolf, and being an undertaker, it wasn't difficult to acquire food for him. But he eventually died down in that cellar. And now, it seems, his spirit has returned to possess his son. 

And that's the gist of it. There's really not much more to it. The best part was when Michael FINALLY transformed. It was incredibly AWFUL. CGI does terrible things to people - like make them look like retarded aliens of the asian persuasion. 

I can't make any excuses for this one. Some people might say, "Well, what do you expect from the '80s?" But I happen to love '80s horror movies, and I have seen FAR better. Like I said before, it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen. But I won't be watching it again, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than people like me. If you want to see every horror movie ever made, then of course check it out. Otherwise, you're not missing much.