31 Nights of Halloween Horror - The Beast Must Die

The Beast Must Die
93 mins.
Dir. Paul Annett
1974/UK


Our second Amicus and werewolf feature this month is a mystery in which you are the detective.  That's right, it is interactive fun tonight in the vein of William Castle as as take a look at Amicus' last production and only full-length entry in the werewolf genre.

Calvin Lockhart (king Willie from Predator 2) is an eccentric millionaire big game hunter.  He invites six people over to his mansion for the weekend to reveal that one of them is a suspected werewolf.  The standouts of our six suspected lycanthropes include horror actor supreme, Peter Cushing, Marlene Clark (Ganja and Hess & Switchblade Sisters), Charles Gray (The Narrator from the Rocky Horror Picture Show), Michael Gabon (a bunch of Harry Potter movies), Ciaram Madden and Tom Chadbon (who has mostly just done TV).  The surrounding grounds of the house are monitored by video cameras and microphones by Anton Diffring (Jess Franco's Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun and Faceless).



Night one, they are all having dinner and pass around a silver candlestick assuming that the one that is cursed would be revealed.  But apparently that only works when the pollen from wolfsbane is in the air.  So of course our host has wolfsbane on hand and later blows it into the air so that mishap won't happen again.  Later that night a large animal is detected on the grounds, so King Willie gets dressed up in leather and vinyl gear and grabs his fancy rifle to hunt the beast.  While out in the woods, the creature jumps right past him, and I mean right past him and our experienced hunter can't get a good shot at the beast.  The wolf makes its way to the house and attacks Anton and completely destroys the control room before King Willie can make it back.

Night two, with no more cameras or microphones, King Willie takes to the air and spots the beast from his helicopter.  With his high-powered automatic rifle, this guy couldn't hit Godzilla if it was standing five feet in front of him.  He chases the creature on foot and corners it in a barn and we finally get a glimpse of the beast.  The producers apparently had no money in the budget for any kind of real make-up effects, so the werewolf is actually a German Shephard with some kind of fur collar or something around its neck.  Think the reveal of the dog at the end of Devil Dog: Hound of Hell to get an idea of what this embarrassment of a werewolf looks like.


Night three, last night of the full moon, King Willie's last chance.  Who is the werewolf?  The film stops here for a werewolf break and gives us a 30 second countdown to discuss who we think the werewolf is before the big reveal.  Overall as cheesy as this film is, and this is straight cheese from a can, it is kind of a fun watch if for nothing else, but the gimmick of the werewolf break and Calvin Lockhart's over-the-top acting as if he was in a blaxsploitation film and not a horror one.  Amicus closed up shop not too long after this movie, which like Hammer who they somewhat mimicked, only had one entry in the werewolf genre with Curse of the Werewolf.  Which just goes to show us, that British film actors don't like to be bogged down by all that extra hair in werewolf make-up. 



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