Cheap Flesh for the Beast (Unrated Edtion) (DVD) (Terry West) Price

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Customer Reviews of Flesh for the Beast (Unrated Edtion)

Even the gore is bland and boring
This movie proves that gore alone does not satisfy, especially when the gore is as bland and unsatisfying as that found in this first release from the guys at Media Blasters and Shriek Show. The box this film comes in isn't bad, though; it actually makes the movie sound promising to a gore-hound such as me. The selection of extra features included on the DVD also led me to believe that the movie was one I could sink my teeth into, quenching a little of my perpetual thirst for horror in the process. Unfortunately, things go downhill quickly as soon as you open the box. Director Terry West seems proud of this movie, and that makes me feel a pang of guilt when I declare Flesh For the Beast one of the most boring, bland, uninteresting horror films I've ever seen.

All of the action in this low-budget disappointment takes place inside a haunted mansion. The back-story to the plot, as if it really even matters, revolves around the man who built the house originally (it was a house of ill repute, by the way) and his acquisition of a certain amulet resembling a frog who has just been flatted by a steam roller. Sergio Jones plays John Stoker, a man who bought the house five years ago and has been trying to rid it of its ghostly manifestations. Our would-be heroes (or nitwits, as the case would be) are the latest team to try and bring peace to the house; unfortunately, most of them end up trying to "get a piece" (if you know what I mean) and forget all about trying to restore peace. Yes, the house is haunted, and yes, our main characters each run across something not human; strangely enough, these so-called parapsychology "professionals" never even entertain the notion that the naked women they find in this "empty" house are anything more than real women desperate to make mad, passionate love to them. There is a lot of gore, none of which is impressive in the least, and basically you just sit there counting the minutes hoping every single character in the movie dies a horrible death. Lo and behold, there is a plot twist toward the end - I have to give the writers credit on that point; it's actually quite a trick to pull off a plot twist in a movie that has almost no plot to begin with.

I know this movie did not have a large budget, but the special effects are just not very good in the eyes of this horror lover; the blood works, but blood is easy; the disemboweled guts are acceptable; the whole cannibalism thing offers a little satisfaction; but the makeup and masks worn by the "ghosts" did not impress me at all; the best looked like they had been bought at the nearest retail outlet store. I actually suffered through the 30-minute-long featurette included on the DVD, as well, and the guys actually went into great detail on the whole special effects work; seeing how it was done made it even less impressive after the fact. I think the biggest weakness this film has, though, is the acting. If each actor had carried copies of the script around with him and read each line directly from the page, I think it would have been an improvement over the wooden, disaffected performances turned in by virtually everyone (except Ruby LaRocca, who actually does a pretty good job playing the silly character she portrays). Scares? Frights? Forget about it; there is nothing remotely frightening in or about this movie. On a final note, I have to say that even the DVD is exceptionally annoying. The first screen to come up after the legal notices featured four unlabelled medallions; the first one gave me a quick clip of a woman screaming at me, the second one ended up making me watch all the legal junk again, and the third eventually took me to the actual movie menu. I don't know what the fourth selection might do, and I have no desire to find out. My copy of DVD will almost surely remain inside the darkness of its case from now until eternity.

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Entertaining horror and smut hybrid
Well, what a pleasant surprise this one was. After reading all the negative reviews of this film I wasn't expecting much. Well, I felt Flesh for the Beast was much better than other reviewers gave it credit for. This movie is a cheap mixture of horror and erotica that undoubtebly would appall many but I liked it. Then again I'm a person who has been known to scour my video store's bins in search of seduction cinema titles to see what Misty Mundae and friends are up to next so maybe that's just me.

6 young individuals (5 males, 1 female) are invited to the mansion of John Stoker. The mansion was first built many years ago by Albert Fisher, who used to peddle drugs and prostitutes on the carney circuit. Fisher built the mansion to serve as a brothel, for all intents and purposes. Rumors of dark pagean rituals forced him to close doors. A rumoured occultist, Fisher soon dissapeared, never to be found again. But the house and its rumoured paranormal activity remain. Stoker informs them that his mansion is haunted and enlists their services to exorcise and clean it of all paranormal activity.

As noted softcore smut director director Terry West explains in the extras his goal with this movie was to recreate the spirit of euro-sleeze horror of the 70's. Although filmed in America, all of the action takes place inside a mansion which enables West to achieve his goal. The mansion looks great and is absolutely creepy; a labyrinth of tunnels, foyers, red curtains and gothic furniture. The film is liberally sprayed with huge doses of gore and nudity. The recurring premise is that whenever one of the male members of the crew searches a room for paranormal activity, there lies awaiting a beautiful women who never hesitates to take off her clothes and engage in intercourse (and following that, decapitation). As a matter of fact the nudity and sex scenes are the best realized of the whole film which is not a surprise given the director's past film credits.

I do understand why many people dislike this film. The look is very cheap, akin to a BBC t.v. production. The acting of course is horrendous, especially from the mansion's host who you think would have been hired to do a half decent job given the big role he has in the film. But worst of all are sheer moments of stupidity such as peeing in a toilet bowl without lifting the seat up first, and people engaging in intercourse without pulling down their pants! The sheer cheapness of this film bothered me for the first twenty minutes but once the filmmakers started piling on the nudity and the gore I found it effectively entertaining. Although many aspects of the film are bad, it doesn't fail to entertain or grab viewer attention. So lap it all up fans of trash cinema, this ain't high art but it's definitely great sleaze!

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ugh. no really. ugh.
Flesh for the Beast begins as a Rose Red rip-off about a big house that has served, during its long and illustrious career, both as (a). a whore house and (b). a lunatic asylum. as one might suspect, given this limited information, "The Fischer House" is fiercely haunted--in that squidgy way that is bound to make your dry cleaner cringe. a team of paranormal investigators are brought in by the building's new owner, ostensibly in hopes of bringing "peace" to the establishment and making it livable once more. but this team's fate is sealed at the opening scene, wherein we learn that the team leader is a big, cautious, sane, intelligent...black man* with an overdependence on technology, a "bad feeling about this," and a fear of guns.

so i said to myself, "Self, now there's a guy who's going to end up crucified to the ceiling in an arbitrary and nonsensical fashion that will never be accounted for."** i was rather disappointed in Lead Black Guy (whose name now eludes me), really, because he's set up to be the hero--and even if he wasn't going to be the "hero" per se, i was at least hoping to see him do something more interesting than oh, say, die like a choad somewhere off camera.

at any rate, you've got all the other stereotypical "horror" characters present too: Creepy Homeowner with a Cane and a Facial Scar, Uptight Blonde Psychic Who Will Probably Morph Into Someone Hot and Horny The Moment She Lets Her Hair Down and Quits Fainting, Skinny Little Weenie Guy with a Camera and a Suicidal Penchant for Kleptomania, and let us not forget Dork in a Knit Cap Who Wishes Something Interesting Would Happen. but i would argue that what this movie really needed in order to shake up the plot was a good homo. that's right--this flick needed a stouthearted gay man, because as this movie dramatically underscores, straight men are MORONS who cannot be trusted to think their way out of a wet sandwich wrapper when presented with a naked woman.

allow me to explain. as it turns out, this spooky old building is still home to a few of the original working girls-now-turned-succubi. these flesh-hungry ex-whores spend their respective afterlives first seducing and second chomping their way through the digestive tracts of any and all male visitors to the Fischer House. what this means is that this movie is chock full of badly choreographed, comical sex scenes followed by disembowelment--and let me add that the disembowelment and subsequent gruesome death takes FAR longer than the nookie. not one of the doomed boys depicted could hang on for more than 8 seconds, making me suspect that the casting call for this movie was held at a rodeo. cripes, guys. i could keep a one-armed handstand longer than that--and i've got a bum elbow.

in short, Flesh for the Beast was two hours of brief and sloppy boinking followed by a soft-tissue buffet--thanks to the inability of any given male to think beyond a neatly-waxed landing strip.