THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*

It’s been some time since I read the James Blish short story on which this Amicus production was based, but I think the script by Michael Winder substantially captures the main feature of Blish’s narrative: the attempt to come up with a quasi-scientific explanation for lycanthropic transformation within the context of an “English country house mystery.”

To be sure, the “country house” is the manor of millionaire Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart), who has the entire grounds covered with monitoring equipment, though he makes do only with a small handful of servants and one security expert. Newcliffe, who normally lives alone with his wife Caroline (Marlene Clark), is a big game hunter in his spare time, and one night he invites seven people to dinner, informing them that he suspects that one among them may be a werewolf. I don’t remember if Blish provides the protagonist with any special reasons for suspecting these particular invitees, but the film’s script does not, and at a couple of points, Newcliffe isn’t even that sure about his own wife. His main obsession is to be the first man to hunt and kill a werewolf.

The problem with working a “Most Dangerous Game” trope into a mystery is that in order to keep the mystery going, none of the suspects can be killed by the lupine predator until over halfway through the movie. Newcliffe, drawing upon the lycanthropic research of scientist-suspect Lundgren (Peter Cushing), devises various tests for the suspects, but nothing pans out, and soon the werewolf shows itself by killing one of Newcliffe’s assistants. Maybe if Amicus had allowed the hunter to have a few more assistants as werewolf-fodder, BEAST wouldn’t suffer so badly from a lack of tension.

The revelation of the fuzzy fiend is slightly postponed by a “werewolf break” that ostensibly allows the audience to meditate upon the killer’s identity. But the script doesn’t play fair by providing valid clues. At best, viewers would have been taking shots in the dark, which may indeed be the way the writer decided “whodunnit.”

Since the format didn’t allow for any of the werewolf suspects to be developed, the script could have been a little less dull had it built up the character of Newcliffe, by having some fun with the idea of a hunter pursuing a lycanthropic opponent. But not only does the mighty hunter lack any worthwhile motivation, actor Lockhart seems to be phoning it in, and no one else, not even the always professional Cushing, does any better. Since the hunter in the short story was not Black, there are one or two lines that call attention to the racial identities of both Lockhart and Clark, but otherwise the script is essentially race-blind.