La Bête

Notorious for more than a quarter century (and often banned), it's obscurity was its greatest asset it seems. Hey, it's often better to be talked about, rather than actually seen when you can't back the "legend" up with substance.

The film has played in Los Angeles a couple of times recently, and is available on home video, so that veil is slowly being lifted. While there is still plenty to offend the masses, it is more likely to bore them, than arouse much real passion. Except for a gratuitous and protracted XXX sex scene between a pair of horses ("Nature Documentary" anyone?), there follows nearly an hour of a dull arranged marriage melodrama.

Once the sex and nudity begins, it is a nonstop sequence involving masturbation, a looooooooong flashback to an alleged 'beauty and the beast' encounter, and a naked woman running around the mansion (nobody, even her supposedly protective Aunt, seems to even think of putting some clothes on her!). On video, I guess you can fast-forward thru the banality, but it's not really worth the effort. The nudity doesn't go beyond what is seen in something much more substantive such as Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS.

Try as one might to find some 'moral' or 'symbolism' in the carnality, I doubt it's worthy of anyone's effort. Unfortunately, for LA BETE, now that you can more easily see the film, the notoriety of something once 'forbidden' has been lifted. And this beast has been tamed.

If, like me, you like your films to be unique, and unlike the majority of other movies, then I wholly recommend that you check out The Beast. The film is a grotesque, erotic, fantasy fairytale that centres around a mythological 'Beast' that is rumoured to wander the grounds of a French mansion and lusts after women. The film is very daring with it's subject material, and that is something to give it credit for. The theme of bestiality is a definite taboo, and for good reason, I might add; but the film conveys it; straight and to the point. Like other films that handle a taboo subject at their centre, The Beast could have gone around it, and made us use our imagination to fill in the gaps, but Borowczyk didn't do that, and he is brave in that respect, especially as making a film like this will leave him open to all kinds of criticisms, but the fact that he went ahead with it, in my view, means a big thumbs up for the guy.

The film starts off with a sequence that sees a randy male horse mount a female. This opener puts an exclamation mark on the film and prepares the audience, in some ways, for the incredible, tour de force of eroticism that they are about to see. The scenes which see the beast mate with the woman are gratuitous and shocking, and are bound to offend many people (hence the reason it was banned for over 20 years), but these scenes are not merely an excuse for Borowczyk to shock the viewer; this film has a defining point. As said during the film; the only difference between man and beast is intelligence. Both man and beast have instincts, only man knows how to control them. The Beast explores this difference between man and beast through sexuality; the fantasy sequence in which the beast appears epitomises the control of human desire, and it is only when the central female character lets go of her control that she can see the beast. The film has strong themes of the age-old story of 'beauty and beast' weaved into it, and overall this is a shockingly morbid tale of lust, but not without a moral.

Many criticise the scenes around the film's shocking sex sequences for being boring, but these scenes are important to the film's story. Without these scenes, we wouldn't get to know the characters or the story of the beast, and, most importantly; the story of 'beauty and the beast' would not be able to have it's horrifying conclusion dealt to the audience, and as that is one of the key elements of the film; it would be a real shame. Besides that, Borowczyk keeps his audience entertained through these scenes, not with shocks, but with dialogue and the upper class persona of the family, along with the beautiful shots of the mansion's ground would not be seen, and therefore the stark contrast between that and the events later on in the film would not exist either.

Overall, The Beast is a shocking film. It's portrayal of a taboo subject and the shocking way it is portrayed will ensure that this film is not for everyone. However, if you can get over the film's shock, and embrace The Beast; what awaits is a skilful and beautiful piece of art that should not be missed by anyone that is willing to give this film a chance.

Youth, sexuality, and the French countryside -- one of the more unique films you're ever going to see. If you can see it that is, no mean feat considering how hard it is to find copies of it (a combination of scarcity and censorship.) It's sometimes erotic, sometimes disgusting, and occasionally funny. A trifle boring also in the middle, but all in all you can't call yourself an aficionado of bizarre film until you've seen this one at least once.

Banned for twenty odd years 'The Beast' has finally been unleashed, and believe me it is a movie quite unlike any other! This is a profoundly bizarre mixture of arthouse and grindhouse that is on the surface massively offensive (in a word - bestiality), but is presented in such a ludicrous fashion that the only genuine reaction is to laugh hysterically. The sequences involving the Beast which made the film notorious are only a small part of the whole. In fact it is the contrast between the Beastly and non-Beastly stories that make this movie so strange and difficult to explain. I don't know exactly what director Borowczwk was aiming for, and I'm not sure he did either. But if he was going for a strange mixture of the Gothic, the surreal and hysterical porno comedy he certainly succeeded!

NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Zachary George Najarian-Najafi for "Steve Pulaski Sees It."

Walerian Borowczyk's La Bête is a seriously grotesque film, but unless you have the patience to make it through about an hour of glacially paced exposition, you won't realize why. In terms of going from zero to one-hundred in terms of plot-escalation, La Bête takes the cake with positioning itself like an ordinary, albeit slightly off-kilter, melodrama about an arranged relationship in a close-knit family, before becoming a zoophiliac's ultimate cinematic desire.

The story opens following the death of a businessman named Philip Broadhurst, who leaves his estate to his daughter Lucy (Lisbeth Hummel) with the only condition being that she be married to a man named Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti) by the brother of Pierre's uncle within the next six months. Despite Mathurin's mental deficiencies and deformities, Lucy still agrees to marry him, with her and her aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza) taking a trip to the Pierre's brother's farmhouse. At the farmhouse, Lucy learns of a two-hundred-year-old fairytale about a beast living in the woods adjacent to the farmhouse.

For about an hour, we endure ostensibly neverending conversation between this enormous family-to-be, none of it really amounting to anything other than frustration due to the lack of human interest and a great deal of pointless sermonizing about family and the marital bond. It isn't until the hour mark that Borowczyk, also the screenwriter here, flips the switch and turns La Bête into something cruelly twisted. Without giving too much away, for much of the final thirty minutes of this film need be experienced, the film involves a dark, twisted dream sequence (or maybe not) of Lucy's intimate, sexual relationship with the aforementioned beast.

Borowczyk doesn't hold back in what he wants the audience to see in La Bête, so much so that he's willing to show us a bear ejaculating and performing cunnilingus on Lucy, resulting in Lucy enduring a series of bloody scratches. No taboo in beastiality is left untouched as the film details some of the most wicked sexual perversions you're likely to see come to life on screen in your life. Me being so young, I feel I have a ways to go, which only works to keep me up at night even more.

As an art film, La Bête is rather tasteful up until its final act. The film is nicely shot, with numerous, intimate camera angles taking the place of the predictable scuzzy aesthetic one would expect this film to have, in addition to having several nicely decorated sets and some solid exterior shots of the forest where much of this action happens. As a pornographic film, La Bête is most artful in a sense, but the porn itself is anything but erotic. It almost feels like shock value, especially when we must endure numerous closeups of a gigantic bear ejaculating repeatedly.

La Bête is a curious oddity, destined to gather dust on the seldom surviving, family-owned VHS stores where ultra-weird, almost unspeakable cult classic, and some just stopping at "cult," films precariously placed on towering shelves. I can almost envision an ordinary, black VHS tape with a color-faded, peeling white label with "The Beast" written in pencil, discolored and sun-damaged to look like simple hashmarks, sitting on the shelf looking unassuming and innocent but bearing quite the visual wallop. That's precisely what La Bête is; a visual wallop not for the faint of heart. I'm sure Lucy herself would say something similar.

Starring: Lisbeth Hummel, Pierre Benedetti, and Elisabeth Kaza. Directed by: Walerian Borowczyk.