The Beauties and the Beast

Beauties and the Beast, The (1974)

** (out of 4)

What's better than nudity and a Yeti? This soft core romp has plenty of both as a lonely Yeti stalks the woods kidnapping beautiful women and taking them back to his cage. He's in luck as some hippies and a couple other ladies (one played by Swedish bombshell Uschi Digard) come to stay for the weekend so he has plenty to pick from. I love Yeti movies but this here is one of the wackiest out there even though it contains absolutely no plot. I'm still not quite sure why the Yeti here was taking the women to begin with as he never does anything with them except throw them in his cave and we never find out what happens to any of them. The main reason this film was made was to show off countless nude women and especially the 44-26-35 Digard who many will remember from Russ Meyer's CHERRY, HARRY & RACHEL!. As far as soft core flicks go this one here is pretty good but at only 66-minutes there's not too much going on and that includes everything with our hairy friend Mr. Yeti. I'm still not sure what the point of throwing him in here was for because we really don't get enough of him and when we do see him he's usually just carrying the women around. The idea of a horny Yeti wasn't started here as BIGFOOT beat this one by a few years and it had the added bonus of John Carradine. The main reason to watch this film is just for the nudity and some really bad sex scenes including one of the most hilarious "make out" sessions I've seen from any movie. This here takes place inside a car and you certainly won't forget it due to how stupid it is.

An old codger mired in a clump of bushes recites the history of the Yeti and Sasquatch, warning us, "The story you're about to see could be true."

A furry creature with bad teeth tippy-toes around the woods. It kidnaps a topless sunbather and a hiker and hides them in a cave. Meanwhile, city girls Mary and Ann vacation at an isolated cabin, sleep in the same bed, and skinny-dip with two 70's hippie couples who've gone back to nature.

The hippies leave table scraps for the grateful creature, who repays them with some old doubloons. Two psychotic criminals, laying claim to the coins, tie-up and terrorize the young people. One of the crooks murders an old prospector, which enrages the monster. Both are killed. The enormously big-breasted Uschi Digard -- who stars in this makeshift mess -- and her friends get away. We never find out what happened to the women in the cave.

Released on video as THE BEAUTIES AND THE BEAST, this is the only X-rated Bigfoot movie I have seen. Two surprising near-porn sex scenes probably kept the film out of most drive-in theaters (where it played in 1973 as THE BEAST AND THE VIXENS). Every time Uschi drops trow, which is often, the soundtrack plays stripper music. Watch at your own risk.

It's a wonder this film is not available from Something Weird Video. Some movies wait until the end to show the monsters. Not this one. Bigfoot is grabbing women from the get go. At the end we never even find out what happened to the women in his cave! Who cares about the loose ends. What matters is that there were sex scenes with hairy males... and Bigfoot gets to do some molestin' too. A couple of the girls are beautiful. The film teases for a while, cutting away several times right before showing nudity below the belt. Be patient. I had to be very patient since my VHS tape did not play on the first two VCR's I tried it on. A mostly silly movie with even sillier music plus one brutal rape attempt. See it.

Usually bigfoot movies and sexploitation are a winning combination whether they're arty ("La Bete"), cheesy ("Monster at Camp Sunshine"), or somewhere in between ("Tanya's Island"). This movie, however, is just boring. Actually, it's really two different boring movies with only the most tenuous connection between them. In one movie a ridiculous bigfoot-type creature kidnaps naked women. But all he does is seal them in his cave (if you're looking for some bestiality here, forget it). In the second movie, a bunch of hippie campers sit around talking endlessly, playing godawful guitar music, and having a lot of sex. And even the latter is boring because the incompetent filmmakers always managed to find the most unappealing angle from which to shoot the action and then held the same shot practically forever. It's hard to believe a movie like this that is barely more than an hour long (and at least half of which is devoted to sex scenes) could seem to drag on forever, but it does. Some of the more rabid Russ Meyer fans might appreciate the appearance of the top-heavy (if otherwise totally untalented) Uschi Digart. I really wouldn't recommend this to anyone else though.

I love how this movie opens with an sincere on screen narration about scientific facts, examples of newspaper clippings and alleged factual sightings of an American Sasquatch monster, and then stupidly continues by saying "the story you're about to see COULD be true…". Well of course it could be true! Stuff like this happens all the time! Not a week goes by or I read something in the papers about lewd and nakedly parading around wenches getting abducted in the woods by Sasquatch himself! "Beauties and the Beast", like the title implies, is a rancid and utterly nonsensical sexploitation product of the early 70's; simultaneously cashing in on the Bigfoot hype in horror cinema at that time as well as benefiting from the always popular concept of voluptuous girls practicing the Free Love principles. It's Big-foot meeting Big-boobs, as Russ Meyer regular Uschi Digard (with her lovely Scandinavian accent and her even lovelier triple-D balcony) and her friend drive up to a remote cabin in the woods where a big and perverted guy in an ape suit resides. In earlier sequences we already witnessed how he collects scarcely dressed girls and stores them in a cave without even sexually harassing them. Now, that is weird! I personally expected at least one repulsive monstrous rape-sequence, to be honest. Anyway, the girls encounter a bunch of hippies (who have been there since 8 months but never spotted the Yeti…) and subsequently some thugs in search of golden coins, so the monster never really has a proper chance to demonstrate to Uschi what a hot date he is. "Beauties and the Beast" is a pretty lousy but undeniably entertaining piece of trash, with a large amount of unintentionally hilarious sequences (for example the guy running away naked upon spotting the Sasquatch; leaving his girlfriend behind) and harmlessly tame sexual footage. The last fifteen minutes are quite strange. It feels as if, after a whole movie of redundant sex images and pointless padding, the story suddenly becomes ambitious and eventful. There's violence and rape, new characters and the titular beast actually becomes the day-saving hero! In the end, they all live happily ever after in harmony, and nobody even bothers anymore about the Yeti's first victims, who are mostly likely still entrapped in the cave.