The Beast Within (1982) on Netflix
After Caroline MacCleary is attacked in Mississippi, her son Michael falls ill seventeen years later. She and Eli return to find whether his condition is inherited, but the locals stay silent.
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- Netflix1.8/5
- IMDb5.6/105,422 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes17%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1964, Caroline and Eli MacCleary are newly married and stranded in rural Mississippi. Eli sets out for a service station to fetch a tow truck. While he is gone, something unseen gets free from a cellar close by and attacks Caroline. Eli and the attendant find her. Seventeen years later, the couple's son Michael, conceived when Caroline was assaulted, has fallen ill and shows strange behavior. The family returns to Mississippi to learn if Michael's condition is inherited and to seek information about the man who attacked Caroline. They learn of the unsolved murder of a mortician, Lionel Curwin, seventeen years before, but the town's residents, among them Judge Curwin and editor Edwin Curwin, will not tell them anything. Eli and Caroline question Sheriff Bill Poole about Lionel's death. Poole says Lionel's corpse was found partially eaten.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Beast Within (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming Caroline MacCleary's rape scene, Bibi Besch had to stay undressed in cold weather for a long time, and she was later rushed to the hospital as a result.
- Producer Harvey Bernhard bought the rights to Edward Levy's unfinished novel The Beast Within on the title alone; when Levy still had not finished it, screenwriter Tom Holland wrote most of the script from scratch, so the film differs greatly from the book.
- Director Philippe Mora said United Artists cut several scenes from The Beast Within which clarified some of the story's plot details, after filming concluded on April 10, 1981.
- Composer Les Baxter considered his score for The Beast Within one of his finest and it was his final feature-length film score; he told interviewer Tom Weaver that producer Harvey Bernhard later sent him a letter praising it.
