This is a scary movie!!

I saw this movie when I was a senior in high school and to this day it is the only movie that has really scared me. I have seen many horror movies since that never came anywhere close to this one. I have never seen it again. I wonder if it would still hold up today.

They probably explain it in the novel, but since this was an 80's exploitation horror flick they didn't even bother to go into any detail about it.

Still, that tranformation sequence is one nasty scene!

* SPOILER ALERT *

Thanks for setting the back story straight. I thought I had missed something cause I couldn't understand why just eating your lover would cause you to transform into a Cicada, even if you were chained in a basement and forgotten. You'd think they would have blamed it on a curse, witchcraft, voodoo, radiation, Celebrex or something else. I watched it yesterday and that exposition scene with Don Gordon didn't really enlighten me any. I wonder if there is a deleted scene where Ronny Cox asks Don Gordon, "So why the hell would eating your lover turn you into a giant raping insect? That's it, I'm throwing you outside!" They probably should have just left it unexplained since their explanation doesn't really do the trick.

I have never watched the movie, but read the book years ago. I will have to see it to see the cicada thing. Doesn't sound like anything I remember from the book. From what I remember, just the fact of being locked in the basement for so long and being subjected to inhumane treatment led to an actual inhuman regression and transformation. I think in the book it was more like he was really hairy and becaused of the shallow basement was reduced to a animal like stature. I think the actual Beast Within is suppossed to be a physical representation of a humans core instinctual being that gets brought out in Billy due to the extreme conditions that he was exposed to. This final state he ends up in is also carried to his son, and like with Billy comes out over time, although genetically vs. being forced out phsically. Although there was a transformation in the book, from the descriptions I have read it seems that Hollywood took some liberties to sensationalize it. Seems it worked, as this is the most remembered part of the movie.

Now to find the movie to see if I got it right.

It scared the hell out of me when I watched it the first time back during my teen years. It was so disturbing to me at the time, I seem to recall, that I had to turn away from the screen a time or two. I only saw it that one time up until recently when I bought a copy of the DVD off eBay and got to relive this childhood memory. Despite suffering from subpar acting, over-the-top special effects and questionable storyline, I still have an affection for it's shock value! And even though SFX have come a long way since the early eighties, I still get a kick out of that transformation scene! In fact, I think I'm gonna go pop that disc in and reminisce once more...

I have been looking for other people who saw this movie also for so many years its just not funny anymore. My dad was the horror movie buff and thru him my sisters and myself became enamoured with these films. Apparently my dad always had dead on taste from the many comments on IMDB about the movies that stuck in my memory.

I am 33 years old now so for that movie to not go away means it was profound, at least for me. The one scene that stayed with me is the rape oh and the jail scene. When the monster ripped the head off the guy in the cell from thru the walls. Great scary stuff and original at the time.

The electrocution scene is really rather creepy and disturbing.