The Beast Must Die (1974) – Review

There have been adaptations of The Most Dangerous Game, where a millionaire big game hunter decides he needs a real challenge, but this film ups the ante by having the prey be a werewolf instead of a human, Yet that was not enough for Amicus Pictures as we also get an Agatha Christie “And Then There Were None” mystery and a funky ’70s soundtrack thrown into the mix. I give you; The Beast Must Die.

Our story follows millionaire Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart), a wealthy, eccentric big-game hunter who has decided that hunting lions, tigers, and bears just isn’t thrilling enough. No, he wants to bag the ultimate prey—a werewolf. He believes one of his invited guests is secretly a lycanthrope, and as any self-respecting, unhinged rich guy would do he traps them all at his fancy countryside estate, and then covers the grounds with hidden cameras and microphones. He then turns the weekend into a deadly game of “Guess the Werewolf.” With the help of Pavel (Anton Diffring), his head of security, he hopes to identify and track down the creature and kill it. Also, Tom is a man with priorities, and those priorities are: (1) yelling, (2) pointing guns at people, and (3) yelling while pointing guns at people.

“This is your 8:00 am wake-up call.”

His guests are a mix of aristocrats, intellectuals, and shady characters, all of whom could have skeletons (or werewolf pelts) in their closets. The suspects include:

• Arthur Bennington (Charles Gray) – A smug, silver-haired disgraced diplomat who looks like he’s hiding something (maybe just the fact that he’s in The Rocky Horror Picture Show the next year).
• Dr. Christopher Lundgren (Peter Cushing) – A werewolf expert because, of course, this party needed one. He drops cryptic knowledge bombs in that crisp, old-world accent.
• Jan and Davina Gilmore (Michael Gambon & Ciaran Madden) – A  pianist and his ex-student, who is now his wife.
• Paul Foote (Tom Chadbon) – An artist with a history of cannibalism that landed him in jail.
• Caroline Newcliffe (Marlene Clark), Tom’s wife, who’s far too cool and mysterious to be completely innocent.

“This whole event is grounds for divorce.”

Tom informs his guests that no one will be leaving until he discovers which one of them is the werewolf. Naturally, they all think he’s lost his mind – a fair assumption – but when night falls and bodies start piling up they realize that he might be right. As paranoia spreads, Tom becomes more desperate to expose the beast. He sets traps, passes around a silver candlestick – silver being toxic to touch if you are a werewolf – and he even fills the air wolfsbane to trigger a transformation. But the werewolf proves to be clever, staying just out of reach while attacking under the cover of darkness. And before you can say “Wolfsbane” poor Tom becomes more and more unhinged as things heat up; his head of security is savaged to death on night one and then his helicopter is blown up and the pilot killed on night two.

“Watch me do my impression of Shaft on a bender?”

Between bouts of suspicion, gunfire, and philosophical musings on lycanthropy, Tom plays cat-and-mouse with the werewolf, leading to a gloriously over-the-top showdown in which he tries to outmaneuver the beast in the woods. The final battle is full of snarling jaws and Tom’s unwavering belief in his own hunting skills, and as the full moon reaches its peak the werewolf will finally be revealed itself in all its shaggy, low-budget glory, leading to a violent and “bloody” climax. Tom, ever the determined hunter, gets his wish—a final showdown with the ultimate prey. But will he survive to gloat about it, or will the beast not die and take its revenge?

“Be sure to call me if you ever decide to hunt vampires.”

Stray Observations:

• The movie opens with Newcliffe being hunted by his own men – this is to test his high-tech security measures – but as his ultimate prey is a werewolf how is this a proper test?
• His guests are selected because death seems to haunt all of them thus one of them could be a werewolf, but what if more than one guest turns out to be a werewolf? Did his plans take this into account?
• Dr. Christopher Lundgren explains that lycanthropy is eventually fatal to the host, that after several transformations the blood weakens and the body loses its ability to fight off infections due to a weakened immune system. So, are we talking about some form of supernatural AIDS?
• Tom has surveillance cameras in all of the guest rooms, so if one guest was missing from their room that would be a big tip-off as to the werewolf’s identity, but this possibility does not seem to ever occur to him.

“We’re bad at our jobs, aren’t we?”

Released in 1974 and directed by Paul Annett, and based on the short story “There Shall Be No Darkness” by James Blish, this movie doesn’t just mix genres it throws them into a blender and forgets to put the lid on. It wants to be a suspenseful whodunit, a tense horror flick, and a high-energy action movie, but the result is an incoherent mess. Lockhart spends half the movie monologuing and the other half sprinting through the woods like he’s late for a 1970s fashion shoot. Meanwhile, Peter Cushing delivers his lines with the enthusiasm of a man who has already mentally cashed his paycheck. Then we have any ending is quite unsatisfying, wrapping up in a way that makes you wonder if the filmmakers just ran out of money and decided to call it a day.

Note: This movie suffers from some of the worst “day for night” scenes ever filmed. It is all too painfully obvious that the “night” scenes were shot during the day.

The action sequences? Hilarious. Calvin Lockhart, in an effort to be the coolest werewolf hunter ever, spends half the movie running around his mansion in black silk and leather, wielding a variety of guns and not once looking cool or even competent. But who needs skill when you’ve got 1970s fashion and indiscriminate firepower? And let’s talk about this “werewolf.” In theory, a horror movie about tracking down a lycanthrope should have a solid transformation scene, practical effects, or at the very least, a menacing monster. Instead, the “beast” is—brace yourself—a large, fluffy dog. The werewolf attacks—if you can call them that—are laughably staged, and the film’s attempts at tension are undercut by its budget, which seems to have been spent entirely on security cameras that barely function. It’s hard to be scared when the monster in question looks like it just wandered out of a dog show.

“Who’s a good boy?”

But it gets worse. In an attempt to bring something new to the genre, producer Milton Subotsky insisted on a gimmick called the “Werewolf Break” where there was a 30-second pause that would allow the audience time to guess who the werewolf’s identity based on clues from the film. That’s right, the climax is postponed and the movie grinds to a halt and then straight-up asks the audience to guess the werewolf’s identity. Imagine watching a whodunit where the movie itself loses confidence and throws the mystery in your lap because it doesn’t know how to make it compelling. It’s an interactive gimmick that would make William Castle proud, except it’s handled so clumsily that it kills any remaining tension (assuming you were still invested at this point).

And don’t worry, who the werewolf is doesn’t really matter.

Even the legendary Peter Cushing couldn’t save this mess. His performance is as professional as ever, but he looks bored as if he realized halfway through that this wasn’t worth his time. The rest of the cast struggles with awkward dialogue, oscillating between wooden and wildly exaggerated, ensuring that no one watching ever becomes invested in these characters. Then there are those many ridiculous chase scenes through the woods that seem to go on forever and it feels like the movie is actively trying to put you to sleep. By the time the big reveal happens, you’ll either be as bored as Cushing or too frustrated to care. 

Is this a “Whodunnit” or a “Who Cares” mystery?

Is The Beast Must Die a good movie? Absolutely not. Is it an entertaining movie? Oh, without a doubt. It’s got ’70s fashion, Peter Cushing trying his best to make sense of the nonsense, a werewolf that might be a dog and a protagonist who spends the entire film aggressively ruining his own party. If you’re looking for a film that’s gloriously ridiculous, give it a watch. Just make sure to guess the werewolf before the break—or else.