This is the classic story of "Boy Meets Girl" except the boy is hearing a voice in his head guiding him on a revenge quest as he slowly transforms into a monster. The Beast Within is based on Edward Levy's novel of the same name and begins with something that, I have to admit, took me a little off guard. The film begins with Eli MacCleary (Ronny Cox) driving through Nioba Mississippi in the middle of the night with his wife Caroline. (Bibi Besch) Eli misses his turn and gets his car stuck in the mud, so he has to walk to the nearest gas station for a tow truck. (life sucked before we had cellular phones) While he's away, Mrs. MacCleary's dog runs out of the car and she goes chasing after it. She finds the dog, mangled beyond all recognition and is chased by a creature in the woods. She knocks herself out by running into a tree, and then, BAM, monster rape. We're not even ten minutes in and we've got a slimy beasty having his way with unconscious lady-folk. In retrospect, The Evil Dead did have tree rape, so I guess I should have seen this coming.
So, after that, we jump ahead seventeen years to the MacCleary's teenage son, Michael, (Paul Clemens) who is slowly dying due to a problem with his pituitary gland. His mother thinks he might have been conceived as a result of her attack, so she and her husband head back to Nioba to try and find out who or what raped her seventeen years ago. Then, the movie gets weird. Michael starts having dreams about Nioba, hears a bizarre voice speaking to him, and breaks out of the hospital to go to Nioba himself. There, he meets a nice girl named Amanda (Katherine Moffet) and starts to develop a romantic relationship with her, as he casually murders those who wronged his real father seventeen years ago. The story has a running reference throughout to Cicadas, drawing a parallel to the strange life cycle of those particular insects to Michael's gradual physical and psychological transformation. While this film is grade A camp, through and through, it still has some charm to it. The gore is pretty sparse and the acting is far below acceptable with most of the actors chewing as much scenery as they can get their teeth around, with Ronny Cox being an exception. Where this movie flexes its muscle is in its story and atmosphere. Building a creepy atmosphere is key for a horror flick, and the swamps of Mississippi are quite unnerving with pools of still, dark water covered with a canopy of low-hanging tree branches. The story has a mystery element to it that keeps the viewer interested even through the slower scenes and some of the hammier acting. You actually want to find out what is happening to Michael and who he is going to kill next, and why.
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