The Beast Within

When The Beast Within showed up on our front step we were like, "Goddammit!" Not like we haven't wanted to see this thing since, like, '95, but it'd been on the back burner for so long we plain weren't thrilled to have it in our hands at all. Just weren't in the mood, ya know? And most of the time if ya ain't feelin' it, it ain't worth it, right? But tonight we'd committed to watching something by Jove, and thankfully once we loaded the projector and fired the sucker up this flick turned out to be not so half-bad.

The Beast Within is a standard issue monster movie, the kind of old-timey picture that's an hour and fifteen of talking and a final ten to fifteen of darn cool special effects. That much we liked. That and the parade of under the radar character actors and early '80s film stock. But the thing troublin' us was why was such a piss poor etiology of why that teen turned into an insect monster in the first place. 'Cause he was possessed by ghost of a murdered townsman? Come on! If ya gotta get one thing right that's gotta be it, don'tcha think? We're fine with explaining one crazy thing (murderous half-man/half-insect chimera) with another (vengeful demon spirit), but we think these filmmaker guys owed it to us to hammer it home better than that.

Eh, oh well, guess that's what you get for doin' it when ya ain't in the mood.