The Beast - (La Bete) [DVD] [2001]: Amazon.co.uk: Sirpa Lane, Lisbeth Hummel, Elisabeth Kaza, Pierre Benedetti, Marie Testanière, Hassane Fall, Anna Baldaccini, Thierry Bourdon, Mathieu Rivollier, Julien Hanany, Walerian Borowczyk: DVD

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DVD Special Features:
Chapter points.
Picture Gallery.
Borowczyk filmography.
Ratio 15.9 Widescreen.
Borowczyk's short film "La Maree" ("The Tide")

Synopsis

Walerian Borowcyzk's controversial 1975 film casts the tale of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in a bizarre, erotic light. This release features the full uncut version.

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9 Reviews

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3.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Bizarre Cult Film, 3 Aug 2007

By	Kasey Driscoll - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Walerian Borowczyk's explicit and insane la B�te (The Beast) is a directly adult reflection of the sexual undertones in many fairy tales. There are segments in la B�te that are unflinching enough to be deemed pornographic but they are done in such a silly and shocking way we cannot assume that Borowcyzk's goals are to titillate. I mean come on, the film opens with a close-up of a female horse's private parts and a male horse jumps right into the mix soon thereafter. There is also a tremendous amount of (human) nudity in la B�te and while gratuitous, it does seem to be appropriate within the film, even though it isn't necessarily erotic. I don't think it is possible to categorize this movie and that in and of itself is a strength for me. From beginning to end, I had no idea what to expect.

The film takes place in the Esperance house that is awaiting a wedding between the family's son and Lucy. The family is full of chaos and everyone seems to have something to hide. Lucy becomes fascinated with the family's notorious ancestor Romilda, who apparently had a sexual encounter that Lucy reads about with a very well endowed beast in the woods nearby. Lucy imagines the experience Romilda went through graphically, and she almost seems to fantasize about the ordeal. We see the sequence almost in its entirety. It consists of Romilda (Sirpa Lane) running around gradually losing her clothes with some harpsichord music playing and eventually she succumbs to the beast's advances and gets it on with his giant prosthetic phallus. It is graphic enough that it would be nearly impossible to say it isn't shocking, but it is funny enough that the audience will laugh uncomfortably until it concludes. You certainly won't forget this sequence and there are several more memorable parts before and after.

Just because someone may care I won't reveal how la B�te ends. Walerian Borowcyzk actually does seem to have a way with making movies. His other films are for the most part straight-forward erotica but he has the ability to make beautiful shots and here he even puts together an interesting, albeit strictly comedic, commentary on human and animal sexual impulse. I don't want to mislead anyone here; the priorities of this movie are by no means it's potentially significant insights. I don't know what Borowcyzk's intentions are but la B�te is certainly one of a kind.

The Cult Epics three disc release is worth owning if you enjoy rare and unique films. Especially ones that push the limit like this one. We have the dubbed version and the director's cut in here, as well as a great stills gallery and a hilarious trailer that shows almost the entire sequence with the beast and Sirpa Lane, but with a black bar over the graphic footage...as if we don't know what could be happening. On the third disc we have over one hundred minutes of silent behind the scenes footage and several other interesting features. The book that comes with this edition is probably the best aspect of the Cult Epics release. It has stills of some of the more noteworthy content and explains the film in far better detail than I have. This is recommended for collectors and definitely for those of us not easily offended.

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23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Penetrating study of animalism, 23 Sep 2003

By	Petrides Antonis (Nicosia, Cyprus) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

The Beast is a landmark study of animalism in all its guises, forms and extremities, from the sexuality of beasts to the bestiality of humans, literal or not... The sensibility of the film is decidedly '70s, yet the sheer strength of its psychological insight and the eerie quality of its cinematography has remained unscathed by time. In terms of explicitness, the film's ability to shock has been, of course, severely compromised by the explosion of pornography that marked the '80s (the sex-scenes as they stand would be utterly ridiculous in a less reflective film), but The Beast never aimed at shock for shock's sake. Categorising the Beast under "erotic" cinema - with the derogatory insinuations of the term - is unjust. The Beast is a great European masterpiece. Borowczyk is leagues ahead of Franco or Brass even at their most illuminated...

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29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well, you can't say it's not original..., 3 Sep 2005

By	Jonathan James Romley (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

La B�te is one of those 70's European "art-films" that you hear people discussing on culture programmes and on the Internet, without ever really believing that it actually got made. I first came across it during a Film Four extreme season... the film being preceded by the obligatory Mark Kermode introduction, in which he talked about the shocking and confrontational imagery and the supposed artistic merits, before waxing lyrical on the history of the film's director, Walerian Borowczyk. Having already seen a number of the confrontational relics to the original "new European extreme" I wasn't expecting anything truly shocking... however, when a film opens on an image of a horse's moist, erect privates, you have to read just yours senses slightly.

The film, as an artistic statement thirty-years on, is no masterpiece. In fact, it's quite poor to be honest. But Kermode's assessment, that this is a film like no other, is absolutely true. As he had done with his previous film, the soft-core erotica of the Immoral Tales, Borowczyk seems to be intent on pushing the audience's buttons (no real problem with that). As you would expect from a film that tows the line between the art-house and the grind-house, the film presents shocking scenes of intimacy and, indeed, faux-bestiality, wrapped up in a sleek pretentious veneer that seems to be aiming for the style of Burtolucci's early masterpiece, The Conformist.

As well as the images of animal-intimacy, the film also throws in issues of pregnancy, rape, the class divide (master and servants, and all that) and inter-racial lust. It's all empty provocation of course, with Borowczyk unable (or unwilling) to tie any of this into some kind of message or theme, instead falling back on over-the-top sex-scenes and cringe-worthy prosthetics. In comparison to other controversial and confrontational statements of the same era- particularly films like In the Realm of the Senses and Pasolini's Salo - it's a bit of a one-note (or one-joke) film... sure, it's original, but it's empty too, and often quite dull. It's also not as beautiful (in the photographic sense) as some viewers have noted, with the overall look and design of the film paling in comparison to films like The Canterbury Tales, Barry Lyndon, 1900, Godard's Weekend, the abovementioned In the Realm of the Senses and even moments of Borowczyk's own Immoral Tales (...and that's not counting the hundreds of even more beautiful films made before or since).

Thus, La B�te seems a little out of place... too pretentious to be taken seriously as a piece of exploitation, and too slight and unintelligent to appeal to the chin-stroking intellectuals. It's never clear whom the film is supposed to be aimed at... with La B�te only really offering any interest to the viewer in a curious "car-crash" sense. Still, a lot of people seem to like it, perhaps because of the negative stigma often attached to viewers who don't seem to grasp these supposedly deep works of Euro-genius (or perhaps they just like the film)? At any rate, I don't want to be the person to crap all over a much-loved film, but for me, La B�te was just a tired and tiresome throwback to the days of the sleazy 70's... which is, in light of similarly minded films of the same era, really quite poor.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Visually and sensually fascinating
It's extraordinary how rewarding Borowczyk's films are when you watch them again and again. They actually get better and more interesting. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Basiledes

3.0 out of 5 stars Nuts!
A thread about this film on imdb is titled "This film is effing Nuts" and that sums it up really!

I read that the "Beast" sequence was filmed first and was originally... Read more

Published 16 months ago by haunted

3.0 out of 5 stars like Wagner, unforgettable moments and dreadful quarter-hours
This film takes the lid off Beauty and the Beast. That's not a bad idea. But it has a contrived plot: what is a vapid American blonde doing in a creepy French chateau? Read more

Published 21 months ago by Michael Scuffil

2.0 out of 5 stars pretentious artporn
Clearly famous for it's shock value rather than its cinematic value. It's poorly shot and tedious. If you like bears with giant penises making it with nymphos in corsets, this is... Read more

Published on 24 Jun 2005 by jimmyojames

5.0 out of 5 stars The Beast is best
What can I say about this film? A classic and you either feel extremely horny or you laugh out loud - or both - at the ending but one thing's for sure Walerian B does things... Read more

Published on 20 Sep 2002 by highwaytrousers

4.0 out of 5 stars Oooh Matron!!! Carry on Horseman!
Banned for 26 years, The Beast is an hilarious example of how times have changed. Unlike others in the current spate of released 'previously banned' material thanks to the... Read more

Published on 13 Aug 2002 by DM Webster

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