The Beast Within
So apparently supernatural rapists are a running theme this month. I didn't plan that and can't say I'm too fond of it, yet here we are.
We open on just-married Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch driving through the woods. Their car breaks down (because movies) and Cox goes to get help, leaving Besch to get raped by a creature in the woods. Cut to 17 years later and their son Michael is exhibiting strange behavior and alarmingly bad dental hygiene. I bet he never even sent the rape-creature a Father's Day card.
It's an oddly structured movie in that it's not a mystery, we know Michael is half-Carol Marcus and half-rapey-woods-monster from the beginning, but the movie sort of treats it like a mystery, as if that might be someone else tearing people's throats out in full close-up. There is a sort-of-reveal toward the end (along with one of the better decapitations I've seen in a movie, so it's got that going for it I guess) but it's deflated by how unsympathetic Michael is to begin with. He's already a part-time monster when we meet him, so we never really get a chance to know who he is outside of that.
The movie is notorious for a transformation scene in the climax, and it's impressively goopy but also very rubbery. While they use similar techniques to the famous transformation in An American Werewolf in London, it's nowhere near as effective and looks nowhere near as good.
It's not a terrible movie, but it's not a particularly good one either. As much as I love the commitment to 80s goopiness, the similarly-themed 50s classic I Was A Teenage Werewolf is still a more consistent and more interesting (and more fun!) watch. Better letter-jacket-attired-monster in that one, too.
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