The Beast Within (1982)

 Of course Universal would drop the "Halloween Kills" trailer right in the middle of this film throwing me off big-time. I will say what really turned me off with this film is something that also left me very uneasy with Humanoids from the Deep (1980)...the really repulsive rape scenes. One at the beginning and one at the end, with "Billy Connors" sort of/ kind of responsible for both. Not only does director Mora hold the camera on the Cicada creature stripping the unconscious women (Bibi Besch and Katherine Moffat) in the Mississippi woods. 

Now, this film was shot about four or five hours from where I live so I think that is quite a neat factoid tied to me. Filmed a lot in Jackson, Mississippi, I live Northeast of the state, but it is still a cool piece of horror history
just the same. 

Mora has Thomas Burman's team just go full tilt boogie on the bladder effects, really blowing up Clemens' face during his transformation into Cicada creature, as RG Armstrong, Bibi Besch, Don Gordon, and John Dennis Johnson looked on with shock and awe. 

Johnson, with a shotgun in hand, even gets two shots off right into Cicada creature, to no avail. Johnson is the abusive father of Moffat, very protective of his "little girl" (I felt all kinds of incestuous vibes, with Moffat seemingly always nervous and shaking, not knowing just when her unstable father will go off again and again), putting Clemens or anyone else on notice that no one could be coming near her. 

The creature costume looked really heavy and cumbersome for Clemens, but that wasn't near as tiresome as I imagine all that makeup effects were. Clemens has to really project this intense duality inside him fighting for control, as Billy Connors' "vengeful spirit" wants to get revenge on the Curwins (Don Gordon, the mayor, Logan Ramsey, the coroner, and Luke Askew, not related but provided bodies since he was the mortician). 

Obviously Billy wins, taking full control, eventually locating (this is ludicrous, considering he was at the jail to take Gordon's bald head off from the neck after bursting through the wall of a cell) Moffat, who drives out of town at Clemens' demands due to her safety being threatened, driving right into traffic stands blocking the way out of the county, following her into the woods. 

So basically Mora repeats the first scene where Besch went into the woods after her dog, walking into a tree that knocks her out, as the Cicada creature rips open the dress and away the bra and panties. And, again, Mora shoots Moffat running into the woods, running into a tree, falling to the ground unconscious, with another Cicada creature, with the nasty spirit of unhinged Billy, ripping away her dress, bra, and panties. 

Muddy, bloody naked women laying in the dirt of the woods, traumatized and pregnant with Cicada creature sperm...yeah, you won't be getting the greenlight from Hollywood for that ever again. 

The yucky, mutilated corpse of Ramsey, laying on his wrecked kitchen floor, with different parts of his body just gnawed open, after Clemens just goes to town on his throat while his legs kicked and blood drenched his shirt: this is quite a bloody red meat gore effects scene LQ Jones' sheriff has to encounter.

 Oh, I won't fail to mention Meshach Taylor in an early role as a deputy for Jones. Poor Jones just has his small town turn into a bloodbath, with even a former friend of Billy's dropped onto an electrical box while his doc (RG Armstrong, actually a decent old timer, going against his type, since he normally portrays jerks and assholes) gets beat up by his patient when Clemens has his outbursts. 

Circling back to Clemens' transformation, the inclusion of the split in the back of the neck that opens up is a whole other brand of gory yikes. But when the face stretches out and looks really latex, the special effects sequence (well, some of the balloon blowups of the face do, too, truth be told) does just go so overboard, it becomes rather cartoonish. You could imagine pros like Cox and Besch, Armstrong and Gordon, having to sell all of this must have required some type of dedication or determination...not to phone their performances in. 

I wish I could say Holland's script is as close in quality to Psycho II (1983), but the whole Cicada monster and Billy Connors' spirit emerging after we learn the back story on a man held prisoner in a cellar, his lover killed upstairs then dumped beside him to eat because of a Lionel Curwin's hostile reaction at their affair is just preposterous. What a mess. 

The film displaying the potential of makeup effects and a body going through a change will probably be what its most remembered for. As far as grisliness and as exploitation, this film stakes its claim early in the decade. It does feature a mortician found in the process of embalming with blood all over a room. I guess that's something you might be interested in. 2.5/5