Sunday, March 16, 2014

Movie review - "The Beast Must Die" (1975) *1/2

Amicus' last horror movie is one of their most bizarre: Calvin Lockhart invites a bunch of friends to a country estate hoping to expose one of them as a werewolf. It's a real mixture of things - you've got the blaxploitation element, with Lockhart cast in a very British story (which does make for some interesting colour blind casting); there's a Ten Little Indians type plot, with a bunch of suspects gathered at a house, only the gimmick being one of them is werewolf; there's a real mix in the cast, which includes Peter Cushing and Michael Gambon.

To make the experience even odder the filmmakers throw in a "werewolf break" where you get to guess who the werewolf is, a quite effective emotional ending where someone bitten by the wolf kills themselves, some terrible fashions and awful music. It feels like a wacked out episode of an early 70s British TV show.

Not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but at least different.

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