In Nioba Mississippi in 1964, newlyweds Eli and Caroline MacCleary (Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch) are traveling late at night when their car gets stuck in the mud. Eli leaves Caroline with the car and heads back to the gas station they had just been to. Caroline lets their dog out of the car to pee. When she hears sounds of distress from the dog, Caroline goes looking for him. She finds the dog’s mangled body. She runs but is knocked unconscious when she runs into a tree limb. Caroline is then brutally sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant. The rape results in the birth of a child.
Seventeen years later the child, Michael (Paul Clemens), is experiencing some health issues. According to Doc Odom (Boyce Holleman), Michael’s pituitary gland is overactive resulting in what appears to look like rapid aging. Michael is dying. Eli and Caroline decide that, to help their son, they need to go back to Nioba to try to find out who raped Caroline. With that information they may be able to find the medical records of the assailant. Then perhaps they can figure out what is wrong with Michael and if he can be helped.
Eli and Caroline return to Nioba. Michael breaks out of the hospital and follows them. The MacCleary’s find their inquiries blocked but Caroline finds a report in an old copy of the town newspaper about the murder of the town’s mortician, Lionel Curwin.
In the meantime, Michael’s condition worsens. He begins to exhibit signs of being possessed by the spirit of one of the town’s former residents, Billy Connors. Connors disappeared before Curwin’s death. As his psychosis deepens Michael embarks on a mission to kill anyone responsible for whatever happened to Connors in the past. As he is running around killing people, Michael is slowly changing into a monstrous cicada creature.
“The Beast Within” was released in 1982 and was directed by Philippe Mora. It is an American psychological and supernatural body horror movie. The movie was loosely based on the 1981 novel “The Beast Within” by Edward Levy, however, the actual novel wasn’t finished so Producer Harvey Bernhard had writer Tom Holland create the screenplay from scratch.
The X-rays used in the movie to illustrate the physical changes in Michael were actually of actor Paul Clemens. The abnormalities in the x-ray were done by attaching strips of metal to Clemens’ body. Clemens being double-jointed helped him to twist himself into unusual positions during his transmutation into the cicada creature.
The movie is quite creepy and bloody. The plot is rather intricate and not totally disclosed until the end of the film. The story was shortened and some of the back story was condensed which caused the movie to be seem a little implausible, even after the explanation of how Michael turned into a giant cicada. Farfetched perhaps, but still a fun horror spectacle.
The big plot hole and the back story: Lionel Curwin caught his wife having a tryst with Conners. He chained Conners in the basement to starve to death. He then killed his wife and tossed her body in the basement with Connors. Connors had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. This tipped Connors over the edge. He then prayed to a Native American cicada god to curse the family and allowing his spirit to be passed down to his son. After Lionel’s death the other members of the Curwin family kept Connors alive by feeding him the bodies of the dead people that were sent to the mortuary, until Connors escaped. All of this is well and good except that the plot hole, the cicada part, isn’t really explained in the film very well.