It's amazing how you can come from a small country and think that, as a self-proclaimed film lover, you have a broad knowledge of everything that has been made in your country, but then discover there still exist interesting (but totally forgotten) films you have never heard of. "The Beast" is one of those titles that has fallen into total oblivion, and it's strange because it seems that in 1982 it was quite a prestigious project with international ambitions. Several prominent and influential names were involved, including lead actor Willem Ruis (a popular TV show-master from the Netherlands who died too young), producer and Flemish film guru Pierre Druot, directors Stijn Coninx and Harry Kümel, and respectable actors Ward de Ravet and Bert André.
So why did "The Beast" flop and became completely forgotten? I will come back to this. The idea of the plot certainly isn't the issue. The story starts promisingly with a yuppie businessman who gets a kind of epiphany when he runs over a dog. Harry Melchior was always a tough and ruthless real estate developer who expropriated families without too much mercy and built luxurious apartment blocks all over the city. When his next project, and hobbyhorse of his CEO Mr. Karlsen, requires for Harry to evict his own beloved mother from her house, his mind goes bonkers. Although his mother is coping with the loss of her home quite well, Harry becomes aggressive, dangerous, and even murderous.
Personally, I think the lack of credibility is the biggest problem of "The Beast". Harry's reactions and retaliatory responses against his (former) employers and against the authorities are totally disproportionate and massively exaggerated. And so thinks his wife and even his mother! Harry brutally chases away movers, runs over innocent people on the highway, kidnaps his boss's mistress, and runs amok in nightclubs. When his mommy then dies - and this has NOTHING to do with the expropriation - he turns into a true psychopath during a hunting party. That particular scene is too absurd for words, but at the same time it is perhaps the coolest and most theatrically violent scene in the film history of my small country Belgium. The hunting scene is simply something you must see if you like cult cinema!
Despite the interesting description, and of course with the exception of the hunting party sequence, "The Beast" is a fairly boring movie. The actors try very hard, but the events are too dumb for words, and everyone takes the film far too seriously. A few years after "The Beast", Willem Ruis died of a heart attack at the age of 41. Too bad this was his only film, because he had the looks of a young Robert Redford. That is to say, during most of the film he looks like Robert Redford, but when he is mentally insane at the end of the film he looks more like Brad Dourif.
