Rating: 
Summary: Banned?!
Review: 'It is to this day banned in England!' giggled a previous reviewer. Gosh - aren't you so much more sophisticated and liberated than we stuffy types back in the old-country.Well, I can't comment on the DVD version but I did laugh like a drain when I saw an (uncut) version of this on the telly (yes, the TV - in England, where, of course it's banned) a few months back. If a guy in an an unconvincing gorilla suit with a monster dildo masquerading as a real penis, splashing cream over a naked woman in the forest is your bag, then this is the film for you. Personally, I think anyone who (ahem) swallows this film as any kind of serious attempt to explore sexual taboos (or whatever it's supposed to be) has got to be up in the trees themselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Deserves Three Stars For Being Different
Review: ...I'm beginning to suspect the reason some of the more offbeat genre films that used to be so difficult to see were obscure because they weren't very good to begin with. My latest disappointment is Borowczyk's THE BEAST. It pretty easy to see which scenes contained the original footage and which were added to bring the film up to feature length. I liked the original scenes, but found the added footage a rather dull elongation of the basic theme. And it certainly doesn't take an Einstein to figure out the conclusion. A young girl, along with her mother, arrive at the villa of a seedy count whose only son seems to be girl shy. Around this point we see flashbacks about a female ancestor of the Count who was raped by a strange beast------who looks like a cross between a bear and a gorilla. The flashbacks showing the beast chasing the Countess and ejaculating constantly at the sight of her, take up most of the original footage. Oddly, if the struggles of the Countess to get away from the beast had been calculated to arouse him further, they couldn't have hit the mark any better. Regrettably for the future, the countess finds the beast is the man for her and excites him to a marathon encounter in the woods. Meanwhile, in the present, the son constantly keeps one hand bandaged with the excuse that he had an accident. Ahhh, the sins of the mothers. OK. It's different. The romantically shot sequences with the Countess and the beast in the past are quite good. Too bad they weren't left in IMMORAL TALES (a fine film!) rather than being used as an excuse to add an hour to a film to bring it up to length...
Rating: 
Summary: the sarcasm is the point!
Review: Anybody who does not realize the sarcastic twist to this "horror" or "erotica" really underestimates the wit of the polishness of Borowczyk. Personally I found it to be a brilliant hidden comedy all the way, I think the best I've seen. Everyone in the theatre absolutely loved it with laughter. The sexual elements of the plot were overdone on purpose, the "beast" character was meant to be ridiculous, and not a moment dragged. How could people not see this??? The seventies weren't that long ago, people had and awareness that a man in a furry wolf suit ... over, and over, and over, and over, was a sarcastic approach to sexualized content. This play made the film absolutely brilliant!
Rating:
Summary: should have been left in Immoral Tales
Review: As legend has it, Walerian Borowzcyk originally intended the short version of "The Beast" to be part of his compilation film "Immoral Tales". Due to the nature of "The Beast", it was cut from the original film and put on the back-burner till Borowczyk decided to turn it into a full-length feature. I feel this decision was a poor one. The short version of "The Beast" is the best thing about this film, which essentially tries to pad out the original's 20 minute running time to an hour and a half. This wouldn't be so bad if the padding weren't so boring. Aside from the rose-masturbation scene, which is intercut with "flashbacks" to the short film, there really is not much else that would make this a worthwhile purchase for fans of erotic cinema. The notorious scenes of horse-copulation are distasteful and verge on disgusting for anyone not turned on by beastiality. Instead of this "hype" film, I would recommend you take a look at Radley Metzger's "The Image", another controversial film that actually goes beyond "The Beast" as far as inclusion of graphic content. As an added bonus, all the sex in "The Image" is of the human variety.
Rating: 
Summary: Beast, The... / La bête (1975) d / w: Borowczyk, Walerian
Review: Born in Poland Walerian Borowczyk is both known as a painter and a movie director. His first introduction to film was creating posters for Paris cinemas in the late 1950s, since then he has ,made over a dozen films, and has placed himself in a class by himself. Once a respected producer of fine art, he quickly became renown in the low brow community after releasing this film. This DVD has been a highly sought after film in the Borowczyk catalogue, and is considered by some to be "...the most controversial film of the decade". An insane adult reworking of 'The Beauty and the Beast' tale. Forbidden for over 25 years, its is only now finally available uncut in North America. This erotic fable was originally to be part of the Immoral Tales (1974) [Anchorbay Entertainment] anthology, yet was put aside due to it's controversial subject matter then later transformed into this film. Any arthouse crowd respect was probably lost within the first ten minutes of the film. The opening close-up of a horse's throbbing vagina gave me a bit of a shock, and I soon realized that I was in for a very interesting ride. The financially unstable son, Mathurin (Pierre Benedtti), and very rich, and horny Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel) are soon to be arranged in marriage at the failing Mathurin estate. The home is full of history relating to the families most famous ancestor, Romilda. Lucy immediately becomes fascinated with Romilda, and stumbles upon her diary. The tale is told of the day she was brutally attacked in the woods by a comical man / beast creature with a extra large penis. This scene is both shockingly powerful and hilariously funny all at once. Combining black humour, with graphic sexuality. "...And this beast, possessed of a giant phallus and an insatiable lust, set upon the beautiful young lady of the house. Two centuries later, the tale of the beast would return in the dreams of an American heiress contracted to carry the male descendant of the same crumbling artistocratic family and their secret..." Borowczyk's erotic masterpiece forbidden for many years is now available uncensored on DVD for the first time from Cult Epics. My mouth was left a gasp from beginning to end with this outrageous film, even without any extras it is well worth the purchase.
Rating:
Summary: la bete one of a kind
Review: i bought this film from amazon a few months back and after seening it i have to admit its one of a kind that alone earns this film five stars. i have to say nothing like this can be found in this country now days. perhaps in the early days of video before the majors got their claws on the industry. seening this was almost a time trip back to the days when video librarys belonged to the adults, before the days of harry potter, or scary movie,scream or crossroads filled library shelves, yep them days seem long gone but, at least now we can buy most of thoese films thanks to companies like cult epics anchor bay shrik show and of course amazon. as for the brit who thought he had seen this uncut on brit tv . this movie is cut in england the bbfc would not allow the full version in without cuts (hey we end up with a lot of cut films from england over here although not this, simply becouse we share the same pal sys of tv happy to say once its found out that a print is from england everybody here avoids it like the plauge).
as a lot of others have already said the monster and his pivate parts dont look too real but thats the idea thats what makes it erotic if it was treated more realistic it would have been gross its the fantasy of the girl and the beast that is erotic not the reality. and it is dated (thank goodness for that iwould hate to see this look like lord of the rings), anyway if you like your films out of the ordinary or if you are sick of hollywood treating us all as teenagers then get a copy of this, put the kids to bed, grab the wife or whatever open your mind and go back to a time when adult film meant ADULT
Rating:
Summary: Save your money - stay away
Review: I bought this thinking that it would be an erotic feast. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a dismal movie, no story line, no beautiful bodies, no hot sex, nothing. The climax of the movie is when you see the heroine naked (just for a few minutes). Reading the reviews here, I thought that it would be full of wild hot sex. No such thing. This is a disgusting movie and a lame excuse to take your money. STAY AWAY.
Rating:
Summary: Garbage!
Review: I don't know what the director was thinking when he made this film. Who produced it? These guys must have been dropping some serious acid! The horse copulation scene was a bit too much. But the beast copulation scene was nauseating to say the least. The film had absolutely no plot whatsoever. The characters were wooden nymphos with serious psych problems. This film is wierd and one of a kind but the novelty wears off pretty quickly. In other words: AVOID AT ALL COST!
Rating:
Summary: International Horror Film Festival in San Francisco
Review: I just saw this film at the International Horror Film Festival in San Francisco (Cinemuerte), and I loved it so much (along with all of the friends I went with) that I had to buy it and add it to my collection of favorite films by Polish directors. This film is "artsy", funny, and sexy. It is to this day banned in England!
Rating:
Summary: Don't say I didn't warn you...
Review: I understand completely why some people would hate this movie, as is evidenced in the negative reviews. But this is one of those what-you-see-is-what-you-get deals, so I can't understand why these people would look at the cover art, and read the back, which describes, "a beast possessed by a giant phallus and an insatiable lust," and say to themselves, "now that sounds like the feel-good hit of the year!" If "giant phallus" and "insatiable lust" is not something you want to see, then please don't watch this movie, because they aren't fooling around.
The opening scene depicts horses mating, and it's painfully real. I'm not exactly sure why the director wanted to open the movie that way. And like many others have expressed, it's not something I really want to see, sex film or not, but I have to give him props, if only because it must have been very difficult to film! How do you direct animals mating? "Cut! Back up a minute, I'm not believing it!"
The story is an erotic take on the Beauty and the Beast tale. An American heiress, Lucy, travels to Paris to meet with her arranged fiance so that they can marry and produce an heir. The version I saw was a 3 disc special edition with a newly recovered complete version of the film with four minutes of extra dialog. Gee, it's a good thing they found that, because I'm sure that is exactly what fans of this movie wanted to see--more dialog! Lucy finds the diary of the Lady of the house from the 18th century, in which she describes being attacked by a beast living in the woods. And you know what's so special about this beast...
While Lucy is in bed feeling lonely, since she can't marry her new husband until tomorrow, she imagines what happened that day in the woods. We see a woman in a powdered wig being chased by what looks like a guy in a grizzly bear costume with a giant you-know-what protruding out the front of him. It seems that his problem is that he ejactulates over and over again, and never goes limp, hence the "insatiable lust."
Lucy's fiance, Mathuin, is feeling insecure about meeting her, because he feels ugly. He should really relax, because a woman who fantasizes about doing it with a "beast" isn't too particular about physical appearance. He sends a rose to her bedroom, which she makes use of in her nether regions. This didn't look like such a sexy idea to me, what with all the thorns and everything. But she's careful, and only uses the petals. The tight closeups mostly keep everything obscured by the petals, but offer breif glimpses of her womanhood. I appreciated that, just because I could imagine the no-lifers who rent this pervy thing rewinding, freeze framing, and getting more and more frustrated, until they realize they should just have stuck with the back room for their viewing pleasure. They could have their choice of DVD's that don't get convoluted with all the other garbage contained in "La Bete," that us more evolved members of the human race like to call, "story."
While all this is going on, we flash back to the woman in the woods. After being attacked, and taken by force, she changes course, and begins pleasuring the beast in a variety of ways. Her change in attitude is not sudden, and if you watch the actress, you can actually see it happen gradually. If this sounds disturbing, that's because it is. But I find it to be a very interesting reading of Beauty and The Beast. While the fairy tale has become a story of a female who learns to see inner beauty in a male she initially finds hideous, (while being valued mainly for her physical beauty by the male) it can also be interpreted as a story of sadism. A female has an undesirable situation forced upon her until she learns to embrace it.
As I'm watching the beast and the woman perform every sex act in graphic detail, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think of it. Is it supposed to be funny? Erotic? Scary? Shocking? I don't know. But I've always enjoyed erotic horror movies from the 70's that are neither sexy nor scary for reasons I can't explain.
I'll probably never watch La Bete again. Although I would recommend it, provided you're into this kind of thing, and you know what you're getting yourself into. It's pretty explicit, even by today's standards.
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