THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974)
Article 3605 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-13-2011
Posting Date: 6-28-2011
Directed by Paul Annett
Featuring Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing, Marlene Clark
Country: UK
What it is: Werewolf mystery

A millionaire invites several people over to his estate for the weekend, one of which he believes to be a werewolf, though he’s not sure which one. His aim: to hunt and catch the werewolf.

For the second day in a row, I’m watching an Amicus movie featuring Peter Cushing, and, like the framing story in ASYLUM, this one also revolves around the mystery of trying to pick out a specific person from among a group of people. It’s kind of a cross between THE WOLF MAN, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, and an old dark house mystery, with a William Castle-like gimmick thrown in for good measure. In general, Amicus’s anthologies were superior to their non-anthologies, and this one is fairly weak in spots; the pacing is a bit turgid at times, and for those of you hoping to pick out clues as to who the werewolf is, all I can say is that the movie doesn’t really give you any good clues and when the “werewolf break” comes, you’ll just have to make a wild guess. There are some decent twists at the end, and the cast (which also includes Charles Gray and Anton Diffring) give it their best shot, but for the most part, this is fairly ordinary.