Review of The Beast Must Die (1974) by Jason R — 13 Jun 2009

Its no wonder that they stopped making werewolf pictures for so many years. Prior to the excellent werewolf FX in THE HOWLING and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON you had guys imitating Lon Chaney Jr.'s makeup from THE WOLFMAN.

And what looked scary at the tail-end of the 1930s Horror boom looked pretty lame by the early 1970s. So the makers of this film decided to train a large German Shepard with bad hair extensions and cast it as the werewolf.

I think I'd have prefered the guy in the hokey mask...Anywho, the film's premise is clever. A millionare big game hunter (Calvin Lockheart) invites a group of people to his estate. All have been associated with 'mysterious deaths' in the past and Lockheart believes one of them is a werewolf and plans to hunt them for sport when the full moon rises.

Lockheart is supposed to be a crack shot but misses the werewolf with both his high-powered hunting rifle and later a submachinegun (but that would have resolved the plot and ended the movie rather quickly, I suspect).

I appreciated the premise and appearance of Peter Cushing as one of the suspected werewolves, but not the shaggy dog with hair extensions.