Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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164 of 171 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beast, The... / La bête (1975) d / w: Borowczyk, Walerian, February 4, 2002
Born in Poland Walerian Borowczyk is both known as a painter and a movie director. His first introduction to film was creating posters for Paris cinemas in the late 1950s, since then he has ,made over a dozen films, and has placed himself in a class by himself. Once a respected producer of fine art, he quickly became renown in the low brow community after releasing this film. This DVD has been a highly sought after film in the Borowczyk catalogue, and is considered by some to be "...the most controversial film of the decade". An insane adult reworking of `The Beauty and the Beast' tale. Forbidden for over 25 years, its is only now finally available uncut in North America. This erotic fable was originally to be part of the Immoral Tales (1974) [Anchorbay Entertainment] anthology, yet was put aside due to it's controversial subject matter then later transformed into this film. Any arthouse crowd respect was probably lost within the first ten minutes of the film. The opening close-up of a horse's throbbing vagina gave me a bit of a shock, and I soon realized that I was in for a very interesting ride. The financially unstable son, Mathurin (Pierre Benedtti), and very rich, and horny Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel) are soon to be arranged in marriage at the failing Mathurin estate. The home is full of history relating to the families most famous ancestor, Romilda. Lucy immediately becomes fascinated with Romilda, and stumbles upon her diary. The tale is told of the day she was brutally attacked in the woods by a comical man / beast creature with a extra large penis. This scene is both shockingly powerful and hilariously funny all at once. Combining black humour, with graphic sexuality. "...And this beast, possessed of a giant phallus and an insatiable lust, set upon the beautiful young lady of the house. Two centuries later, the tale of the beast would return in the dreams of an American heiress contracted to carry the male descendant of the same crumbling artistocratic family and their secret..." Borowczyk's erotic masterpiece forbidden for many years is now available uncensored on DVD for the first time from Cult Epics. My mouth was left a gasp from beginning to end with this outrageous film, even without any extras it is well worth the purchase.
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56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
should have been left in Immoral Tales, April 5, 2003
By A Customer
As legend has it, Walerian Borowzcyk originally intended the short version of "The Beast" to be part of his compilation film "Immoral Tales". Due to the nature of "The Beast", it was cut from the original film and put on the back-burner till Borowczyk decided to turn it into a full-length feature. I feel this decision was a poor one. The short version of "The Beast" is the best thing about this film, which essentially tries to pad out the original's 20 minute running time to an hour and a half. This wouldn't be so bad if the padding weren't so boring. Aside from the rose-masturbation scene, which is intercut with "flashbacks" to the short film, there really is not much else that would make this a worthwhile purchase for fans of erotic cinema. The notorious scenes of horse-copulation are distasteful and verge on disgusting for anyone not turned on by beastiality. Instead of this "hype" film, I would recommend you take a look at Radley Metzger's "The Image", another controversial film that actually goes beyond "The Beast" as far as inclusion of graphic content. As an added bonus, all the sex in "The Image" is of the human variety.
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65 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delivers much more than expected., August 24, 2003
Okay, the first, what, 15 minutes is spent watching horses copulate. Not quite my cup of tea, but the rest of the film is.
Anyone who gives this film a low rating obviously was not aware of the director's genre. As a euro-sleaze film, it delivers up the goods way better than most others in its class. W. B. (the director) finally goes where his "Immoral Tales" failed, and by that I mean filming an erotic sequnce to completion (and boy did The Beast complete himself....many many times). It's actually quite hilarious how the beast just has to find whatever it can to rub itself against. But the beautiful lady it gets to have its way with--and the lady fantasizing the whole thing while explicitly romancing the flower--make this an erotic winner. Excellent quality picture for its age, as well. If you're into nude women and just-short-of-porn behavior, it doesn't get any better than this. This is the definitive Euro-sleaze title. Like I always say, if American actresses went this far it would be a much better world. This sort of film is--or was--apparently the norm across the water, while this is hardcore compared to what we call erotic over here.
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