The Beast (Wide Screen) > Reviews > Horse Porn, Flower Masturbation and Bestality

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Weak
How does it compare to similar films?	Not applicable

Advantages:	Quite funny, direction and cinematography
Disadvantages:	Guaranteed to offend 99% of people

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

The Esperance's were a once noble and revered French family who owned a multitude of lands, recently however they have fallen on hard times. They live in a crumbling house and their future now depends on an arranged marriage between their goofy son Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti) and an English noblewoman, Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel). From the outset it is obvious that there is something not right with the family and especially with Mathurin. The family is desperate to get a priest to bless the marriage, but he won't return their calls. The younger sister of the family, who is a bit of a hippy, is supposed to be babysitting but locks up the kids in the wardrobe so she can have sex with the black servant Ifany, but they keep being interrupted leaving the girl to finish herself of with the bed post. Also Mathurin, who has a dark secret, is more interested in watching his horses have sex.

Lucy is left to wander the mansion herself and finds the diary of Romilda de l'Esperance (Sirpa Lane), who had a much-fabled encounter with a beast in the woods that surround the house, and is the reason that the family reputation is in tatters. Lucy has a vivid dream about the encounter after being driven mad from sexual frustration.

Well what can I say; from the outset it is apparent that this film is no Disney movie. It started out as a section in erotic anthology Immoral Tales but was later expanded out. The film opens with some hardcore horse action, close ups of the erect penis, the twitching vagina and some oral action too. Easily offended viewers will turn off straight away, this is the Discovery Channel crossed with porn. The shock value of the film is signposted from the outset. The main theme of the film is bestiality and the director Walerian Borowczyk does not shy away from this and sex in general. If we are not seeing Lucy masturbating with a rose we are seeing well-endowed Ifany. All this is nothing compared with the Romilda sequence.

Romilda is pursued by the beast (a man in a monkey suit type thing) who gradually rips of her layers of clothing. He has a foot long erection, she tries to escape in the tree but as her feet dangles down she manages to give him a foot job? After a bit more of a struggle the beast rapes her, but she gives in and starts to enjoy it. Throughout the whole sordid affair the beast is constantly coming and Romilda eventually smears it all over herself.

This is basically an adult version of Beauty and the Beast but instead of dancing the night away whilst Mrs. Potts serenades them they are having sex in the woods. The sequence itself boarders on pornographic and it is easy to see why, until fairly recently, this film was banned in the UK. The sequence, as well as shocking, is also quite funny in a very, very wrong and twisted way, mainly because the beast costume is so silly and non-threatening.

There are some very disturbing elements to the film. The first is the way it supports the myth that all women enjoy rape. Sam Pekinpah got in massive amounts of trouble for the same thing in Straw Dogs but it happens twice in this movie, firstly Romilda enjoys the rape and also Lucy gets off on the thought of it, a double taboo. There is also a near racist element in the film, Ifany is portrayed as being quite animalistic in nature, carnality is the only thing on his mind, the connection between the black man and being an animal is quite troubling and also the well endowed black man is presented as being the thing that white woman most desire.

I'm extremely surprised that the BBFC let this film be released uncut, apart from the very pornographic opening sequence of horse copulation and the Romilda bit there is the whole issue of rape being portrayed in a sexual light. The BBFC take a very hard line on sexual violence, films like House on the Edge of the Park have been cut because they show rape in a titillating way, which the BBFC argues could induce viewers to copy it. Maybe because this is a foreign film, and is viewed as an art house film by some, they have been lax, they often are and that is the hypocrisy that is the BBFC. The scene where Romilda is running away from the beast and being systematically stripped would be arousing to more than a few people, and it is designed to be.

The film does have some redeeming qualities, the direction and the cinematography. Borowczyk, who later ended up directing films like Emmanuelle 5, can be accused of a lot in this film but bad direction is not one of these crimes. There is a visual beauty to this film and the soft focus; well-framed shots also aid this. Cinematographer Bernard Daillencourt captures both the more explicit scenes and the nice artistic shots, a corset floating in a desolate lake for example, with ease. There is also a rewarding contrast between the story and setting which demonstrates the wonderful art direction in the movie. The sleazy acts on screen conflict with the lavish period paintings and grand country house.

You have to give it to Borowczyk for his bravery. He has tackled a theme rarely covered outside of Amsterdam, bestiality head-on, many films allude to it, the whole werewolf genre in particular but he has gone all out. He has made some psychological connections that Freud would have been proud of. This film is definitely not for everyone, most people I know would find it the most disgusting film ever and think I was a sick bitch for watching it. If, however, like me you like to watch films that test the traditional boundaries of taste and suitability then seek this movie out. If you take it as a bit of a laugh then you may avoid the urge to burn it.