Edward Levy - The Beast Within

[dem bones]

Edward Levy - The Beast Within (Hamlyn, 1982)

Blurb:
Deep in the mountain forests a child is born.
A seed of evil about to bear fruit...

THE BEAST WITHIN
Michael MacCleary seemed a perfectly healthy, normal child. But, unknown to his parents, something monstrous and unnatural is growing inside him — something he cannot control or understand ... A dark secret which transforms him from a happy, contented young boy into a maddened beast, scouring the woodland in search of living prey.

For inside Michael is a wild animal, clawing and clamouring to get out...


Pea Ridge, a small Missouri community in the 1920s. Old Henry Scruggs, impoverished farmer and Religious fanatic, takes a reluctant Sarah Louis, 19, for his wife, the bride's papa profiting from the union to the tune of two cows, a pregnant sow and three sacks of potatoes. Sarah knuckles down to her new life of endless toil and misery. She's a game girl, rarely complains, and does her best to make Henry happy. Maybe she might one day get to love him. Trouble is, Henry has been reliably informed by God that sexual congress, even between man and wife, is an abomination, and he don't wanna hear that filth coming out of Sarah's mouth again! Sarah, now more depressed than ever, resigns herself to dying a virgin. Until.

One day Scruggs invites a handsome, much-travelled Bible salesman to dinner. Connors, who is a bit of a ladies man, takes a shine to poor Sarah, who adores him from the moment she sets eyes on him. Could he be the one to deliver her from this living death? Was he just kidding when he said he'd like to show her Paris? That night she creeps into the guest room, throws herself upon the startled, if delighted, Connors, and beseeches him to make love to her. Too bad Old Henry isn't as asleep as she thought!

Connors regains consciousness to find himself imprisoned in the root cellar, his arm shackled to a bolt in the wall. For several days, Scruggs starves him of all save a daily cup of filthy water. True, Scruggs' first thought had been to kill the fornicator, but that was before God informed him that Connors is, in fact, the Devil, and must be kept alive so all the world's sin is confined in this one dark, filthy cell. But what of Sarah Louis? God's answer to that is she's a witch and must be tortured until she confesses her sins. Whereupon it's Henry's duty to purify her with the cleansing fire.

Henry Scruggs makes a good job of it.

Scruggs dumps the singed and broken corpse down into the root cellar, within reach of the ravenous and already half-demented Connors.

For the next decade, the filthy matted creature that had once been Connors rots in the cellar, surviving on a diet of remnants of swill so revolting even the pigs turn their snouts away in disgust, plus all the rats and insects he can catch.

Twelve years into Connors' captivity, Scruggs suffers a fatal heart attack while descending the stairs to the root cellar and pitches down before the beast, providing him the best meal he's had since Sarah Louis.

The bolt in the wall finally gives. The beast is free!

When, finally, he summons the courage to leave the farmhouse, Connors runs wild in the woods.

This is very bad news for Carolyn MacCleary.

Carolyn and Eli have been married two years, but, as yet, God has not seen fit to bless them with a child. Eli works long shifts at the Sawmill, so Carolyn's home most of the time, with only Charlie, the Golden Retriever for company. But she can't find that daft mutt anywhere! Last she heard, before he shot off into the trees, Charlie was barking like crazy! A yelp, and then ... nothing! She sets out to investigate .....

To be continued. Surely one of the most under-rated of the Hamlyn Horror/Occult/Nasty range.

[dem bones]

The good news is, Carolyn's pregnant. The bad news, it's by the thing that once was Connors, who raped her in the bloody remnants of the family pet. Still, what Eli doesn't figure out when the child is born won't hurt him.

And so we're into the story proper. By the age of four, Michael, bright as a button, but terrified of confined spaces , has taken to sneaking out after dark to attack local sheep and poultry. The neighbouring farmer, a miserable old git at the best of times, has sworn to shoot the psycho poacher on sight. Eli nails bars across the windows and a stout lock on the door to restrain the boy. Although Michael is initially mortified and his nights are a terror, Eli's harsh remedy seems to do the trick. By the time he begins school, Michael's "fits" are a thing of the past. Maybe.

Michael's MacCleary's school-days get off to a terrible start when he incurs the wrath of his form teacher, Miss Platt, who locks him in a broom-closet as punishment. He punches his way out and near gives her a heart attack. Next, he's set upon by Eddie "The Ape" Mathews, the official school bully, and retaliates by biting a chunk out of the big kid's arm. Michael overcomes this lamentable start to settle well. He's a quiet, thoroughly likeable lad who, by the time he hits his teens, is already something of a pin-up of the local girls. But Michael is his natural father's son, and, with puberty, comes the curse of the full moon. He's back to tearing apart the local livestock, eventually progressing to rape and murder. Nobody's safe, least of all Suzanne, his devoted girlfriend. Eli knows his son is a killer, but ain't no way he'll turn the boy in. But how can he save Michael from the beast within?

You'll have guessed by now that The Beast Within is a werewolf minus the Hollywood shape-changing, unique for a Hamlyn nasty in that the characters are most of them sympathetic, and the story is so engrossing that the absence of bad sex interludes doesn't matter. Very recommended.

[erebus]

Never Heard or seen this one about. Thanks for the info.
I had no idea the film was based around a book. Although in the film its a swampy style bug monster.
You learn something new every day.

[dem bones]

Oct 22, 2015 12:09:34 GMT erebus said:

Never Heard or seen this one about. Thanks for the info.
I had no idea the film was based around a book. Although in the film its a swampy style bug monster.
You learn something new every day.

Beats me why they didn't stick with the werewolf theme, and, from what I've read, the action takes place in the present day whereas The Beast Within gains much of its atmosphere from the depression-era setting. And why would a man imprisoned in a cellar for a decade mutate into a "swampy style bug monster"? It defies all logic. Mr. Levy's novel deserves better.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Oct 22, 2015 18:18:55 GMT dem bones said:

And why would a man imprisoned in a cellar for a decade mutate into a "swampy style bug monster"? It defies all logic.

There is much that your so-called "science" cannot explain! This is obviously one of those things.

[bluetomb]

It's been some years but if I recall right the film just starts with the monster rape, no prologue. Was a good watch on the whole I thought (decent cast, dark atmosphere, fun grisly effects), but it sounds like it only kept basic similarities. 

[Deleted]

Oct 23, 2015 8:12:18 GMT bluetomb said:

It's been some years but if I recall right the film just starts with the monster rape, no prologue. Was a good watch on the whole I thought (decent cast, dark atmosphere, fun grisly effects), but it sounds like it only kept basic similarities. 

I haven't read the book but I watched the film fairly recently (on blu-ray no less!) and you're quite right that it lurches straight into things. The man-to-mantis transformation at the end is fairly spectacular, too, but apart from that not a whole lot happens.

[kooshmeister]

Oct 22, 2015 18:18:55 GMT dem bones said:

And why would a man imprisoned in a cellar for a decade mutate into a "swampy style bug monster"? It defies all logic.

As I recall, he was still human, but feral, when he attacked and raped Caroline. I think Erebus is talking about what Michael, not his father, turns into over the course of the film. It has the same premise, but Billy Connors is much different than in the book. Prior to ending up locked in the cellar, he was into Native American mysticism, particularly the idea that one can do as cicadas do and hibernate for seventeen years before being "reborn." He figures out how to do this by impregnating a woman, but never actually attempts it before getting locked in the cellar and fed corpses. After his captor (named Lionel Curwin, not Henry Scruggs) dies, Billy Connors escapes and attacks and rapes Caroline as in the novel. After this, he's killed by a posse who'd been hunting him. What seems to happen is part of his essence or spirit is passed on to Michael, and in seventeen years, as per the cicada motif, Billy's consciousness begins gradually supplanting Michael's, causing him to seek out and kill members of the Curwin family and also slowly transform into a humanoid cicada abomination through black magic, suggesting Michael was never fully human to begin with.