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1970 - UK Directed By: James Kelley. Starring: Beryl Reid, Flora Robson, John Hamill, Tessa Wyatt, T.P. McKenna, John Kelland, David Dodimead, Dafydd Havard, Vernon Dobtcheff, Peter Craze, Gail Lidstone and Elizabeth Choice.
Aka
Are You Dying, Young Man?
Young Man, I Think You're Dying
Current Availability
Available on UK R2 DVD but only as part of Anchor Bay UK's "Tigon Collection" - a limited edition 6-Disc coffin-shaped boxset also featuring five other Tigon movies - Witchfinder General, The Blood On Satan's Claw, Virgin Witch, The Body Stealers and The Haunted House Of Horror's. This superb box-set is essential purchase for any fan of the British horror film.
Recommended?
An interesting and worthwhile British horror film. While the fairly static, dialog driven format may not be to all tastes I would give The Beast In The Cellar a tentative recommendation to viewers looking for a horror film that emphasises meaty, satisfying characterisation and a logical narrative over shock factor. Great lead pertformances too.
Review
A decidedly offbeat entry to the veritable deluge of early seventies British horror pictures courtesy of those fine folks at Tigon Films. While Hammer, who had spearheaded the domestic and international success of the British horror movement, were rapidly descending into a mediocre stew of dopey blood and breast orientated titillation, the Tigon stable – fronted by Tony Tenser – whilst known to follow the generic route themselves on occasion were also pushing back the boundaries for the homegrown genre picture in gritty and memorable fashion with films such as the tragic Michael Reeves’ classic Witchfinder General (1968) and Piers Haggard’s cult favourite The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971).
As with the two aforementioned films James Kelley’s The Beast In The Cellar mixes a traditionalist British horror formula with motifs and perspectives not usually associated with British genre product. Therefore, whilst the onscreen results are not especially successful in their own right The Beast In The Cellar nonetheless marks yet another intriguing and commendable attempt by Tigon to do something a little different within the confines of an oversaturated marketplace.
The Beast In The Cellar takes place in a peaceful, pastoral and isolated region of the Lancashire countryside. The everyday serenity of the area is suddenly marred however, when a number of soldiers located at a nearby army base become the victims of a series of vicious and frenzied murders. The inexplicable talon marks found covering the bodies of the victims make it impossible for the authorities to ascertain who or indeed what is committing these murders.
In a small cottage not far away live the elderly Ballantyne sisters – the dithering Ellie (Reid) and her altogether sterner and more cynical sibling Joyce (Robson). This living arrangement would seem innocent enough but these two seemingly innocuous old spinsters are harboring a very dark secret.
Over thirty years ago, at Joyce’s behest, the two sisters forcibly incarcerated their younger brother Stephen in the cellar of the cottage in order to prevent him from heading off to fight in World War II. Stephen has remained locked up in the darkened cellar ever since and has over the intervening three decades degenerated into an unhinged, bestial madman. One day the sisters’ nightmares become a reality when they realise that Stephen has discovered a way out of his subterranean prison and is out roaming the countryside. Could he be responsible for the killings which are disrupting the rural tranquility of the region?
The Beast In The Cellar is most noteworthy for its fixed, detailed emphasis on characterisation over more overt horrors. The accentuation of Kelley’s screenplay and direction is focused almost without exception upon its central protagonists, the memorable siblings Joyce and Ellie. For a British genre effort to hinge its effect almost entirely upon the detailed characterisation, development and interaction between its two leads is defiantly unusual and therefore The Beast In The Cellar while highly imperfect, still warrants at least a measure of note for this reason alone.
The films curious yet engrossing centerpiece relationship between Joyce and Ellie is an unorthodox one, forged upon a strange mixture of bickering and point scoring stemming from a deep-seated, longstanding sense of resentment and torturous, suppressed familial guilt. Yet, at the same time the relationship between the Ballantyne sisters is one of complete and total mutual dependence upon one another.
Both of the aging women possess distinctly drawn, engaging and radically opposed personalities. Ellie on the one hand is something of a hapless idealist with a tendency to recollect events throughout hers and Joyce’s life through rose-tinted spectacles, idealizing her memories – particularly those of childhood – as happy ones when in actuality they were anything but. She is also characterized by a maddening indecisiveness, which renders her incapable of making even minor decisions for herself. By contrast Joyce is something of a stern, cynical realist who at times seems almost to be deriving a grim satisfaction from bluntly shattering her sisters idyllic if admittedly distorted recollections. With two such radically opposed personalities emotionally trapped together within the confines of a small cottage confrontation is inevitable. Even simple, banal incidents such as Ellie forgetting to buy celery result in full scale onslaughts of low-key bickering and petty point scoring. The emphasis on lengthy dual monologues does give The Beast In The Cellar a rather static feel, but fortunately both Beryl Reid – better known for comedic roles – and Flora Robson both give superb, expressive, top-drawer performances and build up a fine onscreen rapport, playing off one another beautifully and making the most of some excellently written, pithy extended dialogue.
Unfortunately though, as tremendous as the principal characterisation may be, judged purely as a horror film The Beast In The Cellar for the most part fails to cut the mustard. The horror elements of the films make-up are for the most part restricted to occasional frenzied attacks on unfortunate soldiers by the unseen killer. These scenes are actually fairly strong and brutal for the standards of the time (and were trimmed by the BBFC for the films original 1970 theatrical release), but are done without much in the way of style and panache. The viewer gets the impression that these scenes have been plonked into the script as an afterthought simply to offer a reminder that we are watching a horror film. In contrast however, the films conclusion in which the terrified Ellie and Joyce huddle together, cowering in the dark as the bestial Stephen slowly ascends the stairs is genuinely creepy and nerve-shredding, Kelley’s subtle approach having generated a slowly escalating apprehension for the monsters eventual appearance. Unfortunately this is marred to a degree by the fact that when he is finally seen in plain view, Stephen actually looks quite comedic.
In the films favour it should be noted that whereas the scenarios in most genre films are generally pretty contrived, The Beast In The Cellar is a commendable exception. Whatever the films failings may be Kelley at least deserves credit for going to great lengths to rationalize his far fetched “monstrous brother in the cellar” scenario through both characterisation and narrative development. Whereas most filmmakers would simply expect the viewer to swallow such a scenario at face value Kelley actually delivers a cohesive reason for Joyce and Ellie’s decision to incarcerate Stephen in the cellar via some tidy character revelations concerning the Ballantyne sisters traumatic childhood experiences with their father. In another neat touch Stephen focuses his attacks exclusively upon soldiers from the nearby army base, his primitive, heavily regressed mind it seems still recollects that the military formed part of the reason for his years of imprisonment. Again this lends The Beast In The Cellar a sense of narrative logic alien to most British horror films of its period. By contrast however, The Beast In The Cellar does lean in other respects towards more formulaic and predictable British horror motifs in particular the presence of some typically thick rural police officers.
Given that it intentionally deemphasizes the visceral shock elements that cinemagoers were coming to expect from horror films by the dawn of the seventies it is not surprising to learn that The Beast In The Cellar swiftly became a forgotten genre entry, relegated to second tier status on a Tigon double-bill with The Blood On Satan’s Claw. This is something of a shame as while never especially effective as a pure horror film, The Beast In The Cellar is an honorable and intermittently engrossing “failure”. Despite its static format and numerous flaws this oddly haunting parable of two old spinsters harboring a dark secret in the cellar somehow manages to stay with you for some time after its end credits have rolled. Benefiting from a quaint, understated sense of Britishness, advanced characterisation and excellent lead performances The Beast In The Cellar stands as an intriguing little film that whilst never quite fulfilling its potential, at least makes for a defiantly atypical addition to the increasingly generic cycle of early seventies British horrors.
Also Try… The Blood On Satan’s Claw / Arsenic And Old Lace / Frightmare / The Reptile / The Blood Beast Terror / The Ghoul (1975, Freddie Francis) / The House By The Cemetery.
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