Review:
"Fear of the Archaic Mother turns out to be essentially fear of her generative power," wrote Julia Kristeva in her seminal 1982 book Powers of Horror. Horror movies have featured monstrous mothers (and their demonic spawn) virtually since the genre's inception. Movies such as The Brood, Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Larry Cohen's It's Alive! turned notions of maternity on it's collective head, depicting mothers whose bodies spat out grotesque fetuses, those who cared for their demonic offspring no matter what the consequences - blind to the evil which they had given life.
The most recent reimagening of the monsterous mother theme comes in the form of writer/director Paul Solet's first feature, Grace. It tells the tail of a mother who's eight months pregnant. Her and her husband fall victim to a terrible car crash, instantly killing him and fatally wounding herself. Everyone , including the doctors and Madeline's mother in law, believe the baby is dead. But after delivering a presumably dead child, Madeline finds the the baby is still alive. Only problem, Grace is hungry... and the only thing that seems fit to nourish her is human blood.
Grace's premise is as cheesy as it sounds. It may disappoint some of the hardcore genre beings that it doesn't exactly fall under the horror category. It doesn't rely on over the top gore effects to achieve it's goals and further it's message, but an unrelenting pace that some may find too boring. The whole psychology of pregnancy, post-partem depression, and menopausal distress are excellent ingredients for a horror/thriller, but I felt like here it was only touched on, handled clumsily, and that the easy route out was taken at the end. The mother (Jordan Ladd) wasn't believable in the least, and the mother-in-law (Gabrielle Rose) just seemed to irk me till no end. It's not intended for genre fans, nor for your average critic - it pretty much falls in between. Some may find it pushes the envelope just a tad, and some may consider it downright disturbing. I myself did not, although I did find myself enjoying it, just waiting to find out what happens next but just to be unset by it's terrible premise.
Retro-Review:
The Beast Within isn't exactly among the greatest monster movies ever. It's a very strange movie, to say the least. It's obviously aiming to be some kind of creature feature, yet it plays out more or less like a slasher flick. But, in the end it's still just another corny early 80's B-movie, and while it does have it's moments, that's about all it should be know for - the cheesy monster movie that it is.
Tell me if you've ever heard this one before: The movie starts off with a young couple breaking down off the side of an abandoned highway in the middle of the night. For some stupid reason, the woman (played by Bibi Besch) wonders off into the wilderness and gets brutally raped by some sort of monster (we never really find out what the hell it is exactly). Forward 17 years, and the couple are in a doctor's office. Somethings wrong with their (17 year old) teenage son, but their not sure what (could it be?). He seems to be acting out a bit, going through some changes. The father (Ronny Cox) is coming to the conclusions that it's not his son after all. So the teen beast gets away with some half decent kills, but the movie doesn't seem to progress from there. What just seem as random victims turns out to be linked together in some way and have something to do with the young boy's transformations.
As it turns out, the Beast Within is actually some sort of giant cicada mutation the boy turns into. His skeletal frame bubbles into some sort of exoskeleton that's impervious to point blank shotgun blasts and makes him strong enough to burst through brick walls. This isn't the first 80's B-movie I'd recommend to someone, because to be honest it's not really worth watching besides a cool yet slightly drug out transformation sequence towards the end of the film (oh, and a hilarious decapitation through a wall).
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