The troubled distribution history of Walerian Borowczyk’s most notorious and outrageous film, THE BEAST, is almost as fascinating as the pic- ture itself. Like its predecessor, it was refused a certificate by the BBFC in the UK, though the dis- tributor, New Realm, had removed two minutes of footage before presenting it to the Board. The ma- jor concern for the chief censor, James Ferman, was less to do with the explicitness of its sexual detail but rather its (wholly artificial) depiction of bestiality, which could result in a prosecution under Britain’s confusing and unworkable Obscene Publi- cations Act. Ferman was largely sympathetic to the picture, describing it as “
...clearly fantasy, and quite beautifully photographed fantasy at that,” while recognizing that the film under submission was “the most explicit treatment of bestiality we have ever had.” Ferman then suggested that because further cuts could damage the film artistically, THE BEAST could be presented to the GLC in its pre-cut version for a London-only “X” certificate—as had been done with IMMORAL TALES. Much to the distributor’s relief, the film was accepted by the GLC and offi- cially premiered at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square in September 1978. In 1987, the BBFC were confronted with THE
BEAST once again, this time for a home video cer- tificate. The version submitted was the US release, retitled DEATH’S ECSTASY (!), which was already shorn of 8m, thereby presenting the Board with little in the way of censorship problems. However, what the distributors and censors were unable to remove
entirely was its inherent theme of bestiality. With the dust having settled on the initial controversy over the nature of the film in the late 1970s, the BBFC were comfortable with this heavily-cut ver- sion, and so passed the film for the first time with an 18 certificate in June 1988. Twelve years later, THE BEAST would be sub- mitted again to the Board, this time in its uncut form. A combination of regime change at the BBFC and a considerably more liberal and open-minded approach to film censorship in Britain resulted in the picture being classified with an uncut 18 certifi- cate in February 2001, 28 years after being screened in its full version at the London Film Festival and 31 years following its “scandalous” appearance as a short at the same annual festival. THE BEAST first came to life in 1972 when pro- ducer Anatole Dauman asked Borowczyk to film a new ending to Alain Fleischer’s Les rendezvous en forêt (MEETINGS IN THE FOREST). Fleischer was unhappy with the Beast costume constructed by Borowczyk and subsequently went to court in an effort to prevent Borowczyk’s ending from being
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shot. Ever the craftsman, Borowczyk decided to uti- lize the costume in a short film based on the legend of the beast of Gévaudan, which initially appeared as the aforementioned story contained in IMMORAL TALES. The director would then remove this episode entirely and expand it into a completely new feature, the original short now serving as a dream sequence. THE BEAST opens with a startlingly graphic scene of horse copulation witnessed by Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti), the son of the Earl of Esperance (Guy Tréjan). With his right hand and forearm heavily bandaged, Mathurin is preparing for the arrival of a beautiful American heiress, Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel, who had replaced former Play- mate and singer Jeane Manson), whom he is to marry in an attempt to revive the status of the fam- ily. Yet they represent the worst type of aristocrat, corrupt and self-obsessed. In true Borowczyk fash- ion, their mansion is full of relics from the past: ancient ancestral portraits, books containing dried pressed leaves, a corset displayed in a glass cabi- net. Lucy’s husband-to-be is the victim of a family curse, revealed in a dream.
In the 18th century, Romilda (Sirpa Lane, from Roger Vadim’s CHARLOTTE, 1974) observes a lamb escaping from a meadow into a nearby wood, and pursues the little animal deeper into the forest. She stumbles across its torn and bloody carcass before being confronted with a hairy beast with a shock- ingly large phallus. The beast’s subsequent rape of Romilda is transformed into an act of self-destruc- tion: Romilda’s sexual voraciousness proves too powerful for the beast, and it effectively orgasms itself to death. It’s an undeniably absurd “Beauty and the Beast” scenario which can only be read as pure fantasy, underlined by the jaunty Scarlatti harp- sichord piece which accompanies the proceedings and by the fact the “Beast” is very much a cos- tumed actor, which only reinforces the fantastical nature of the sequence (Borowczyk’s use of pros- thetics would anticipate Tinto Brass’ use of rubber devices in some of his later works).
Upon awakening from her dream, Lucy reveals a sexual passion of her own (she masturbates with a rose) and Mathurin dies in his sleep, at which point his physical deformities are fully revealed— he possesses the arm and tail of “the Beast.” The film is a sly black comedy, with more than a hint of Luís Buñuel in its anti-clericalism and emphasis on deviant behavior taking place against a backdrop of affluence and formality. It’s one of Borowczyk’s most consistently entertaining films and a fitting conclusion to this collection.
The special features consist of an introduction by critic Peter Bradshaw; “The Making of THE
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