The Cardinal
A 1975 French erotic horror film that became a cult classic for its explicit teratophilia content.
The Beast (French: La Bête) is a 1975 French erotic horror film written, edited, and directed by Walerian Borowczyk. The film was noted for its explicit sexual content, including teratophilia (attraction to monsters), upon its initial release. It has become a cult film. A loose adaptation of the novella Lokis by Prosper Mérimée was originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own. However, Borowczyk later rendered Lokis as a story (La véritable histoire de la bête du Gévaudan) in Immoral Tales (1974), which was envisaged to be a film of six stories. After Immoral Tales was remastered as a film of four stories, the footage became the dream sequence of The Beast.
Lore & Background
The film's plot follows Lucy Broadhurst, who inherits her father's estate on the condition that she marry Mathurin, Marquis Pierre de l'Esperance's son, within six months. The marriage is to be performed by Cardinal Joseph de Balo, brother of the crippled Duc Rammaendelo de Balo, who shares their crumbling farmhouse with Pierre's daughter Clarisse and their servant Ifany. Mathurin is dim-witted, deformed, and unbaptized. Pierre performs the baptism himself to hide Mathurin's true nature.
Lucy and her aunt Virginia are driven toward the farm but find a fallen tree blocking their way. Rammaendelo shows Lucy a book about Romilda's fight with a beast 200 years ago, containing drawings of bestiality that sexually excite Lucy. Pierre blackmails Rammaendelo into persuading his brother to perform the marriage by threatening to reveal that Rammaendelo poisoned his wife. During dinner, Mathurin's uncouth manners become apparent.
Lucy dreams she is Romilda, chased by a black hairy beast with a large visible erection. The beast sexually assaults her and masturbates. Lucy wakes, checks on Mathurin (who is asleep fully clothed), returns to masturbate, and dreams again of the beast copulating with her. She wakes convinced Mathurin visited her, but finds him still sleeping.
In her final dream, the beast dies of exhaustion after Lucy rubs his ejaculate all over herself. Lucy wakes to find Mathurin dead on the floor. Virginia discovers a plaster cast on his arm conceals a claw for a hand, and his body is covered in thick black hair with a tail, revealing he is a descendant of Romilda and the beast. Everyone flees in terror as the Cardinal arrives. Lucy dreams she is naked in the forest burying the beast.
Reader's Guide
The film premiered on 6 January 1975 at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival and was released theatrically in Germany on 6 February 1981. The film did well in Europe, but the run of the film in France and the U.S. ran into controversy due to its erotic nature. Many felt the film went over the top with its sex scenes, and some people said that the movie had a connection to bestiality, leading to its withdrawal from film for several years. In the UK the BBFC refused to classify a heavily cut version for general cinema release, and the same cut print narrowly avoided prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act by the Director of Public Prosecutions when it was shown with Greater London Council approval at the independently run Prince Charles Cinema in London in September 1978.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 68% of 22 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. Nowadays, it is considered a classic for the monster erotica culture, and one of the most memorable monster porn movies as well as one of the most polemic ones. Many teratophiles said that this movie opened doors for the genre of monster erotica, and inspired movies like: Possession (1981) and The Untamed (2016), both movies that contain explicit sexual encounters with monsters, aliens, and mythological beings.
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