MovieChat Forums > Beasts (1976) Discussion > Good series, but somehow lacking...

Good series, but somehow lacking...

posted 17 years ago by smailliwmik
14 replies | jump to latest

I have certainly enjoyed discovering this piece of tv's "golden age" but there just seemed to be something missing for me...

Maybe it's because I'm a member of the ultra-fast, need-everything-explained to me generation...

The best story for me by far was "Baby", the rest seemed to be somewhat anti-climatic after this... there was certainly some fine acting displayed and a number 0f jolts, i never got the one about The porn guy and the dead dolphins... I really thought the girl at the end was going to change into a dolphin! in fact I wish she had!

and I also did feel a great sense of sympathy for poor Pauline Quirke, who I actually thought beautiful in a spotty adolescent kinda way.

[–] combatreview 17 years ago

It is quite a leisurely series - these days, as you say, this kind of genre TV is very immediate and formulaic, whereas stuff like the dolphin episode has almost nothing explicitly supernatural or uncanny. I think these work best taken as sort of... mood pieces. It's about character and mood, at least for me. Kneale's writing is always drama first and horror story second, I find.

On the Dolphin one - do you remember the previous owner of the dolphinarium saying that Buddyboy had caused all of the other dolphins to commit suicide, beaching themselves? There was this implication that there was something dark and strange about a dolphin doing this.

Then, consider what happens at the very end - the poor girl has just found that the guy who's been sort-of-looking-after-her throughout the episode is only interested in exploiting her, putting her on show, and so she goes into the bathroom and drowns herself.

Well, the implication I think is that she was under Buddyboy's influence, too. It's obvious that she was exceptionally close to and empathetic with the animal, and his name is the last word we hear her speak - so it seems that once she was another trapped creature, exploited and put on show by her 'master', Buddyboy made her do the human equivalent of beaching herself - holding herself underwater. That final moment is particular spooky and nasty when you think about what it would involve, drowning yourself in a shallow bath. You'd have to really WANT to.

[–] smailliwmik 17 years ago

I must confess right now, when I wrote my initial comment I hadn't actually watched the last story on the dvd set - "During barty's party".

Well I have now!! and what can I say... It was brilliant! Truly scary, almost terrifying, and yes we didn't actually see a thing, and It was so much better that way. The sound and the acting of the two main leads playing the old couple was stunning, a really great story.

I still think I prefer "Baby" as an overall story, but DBP run's it a close second.

[–] frank-270 15 years ago

The implication I got from the end of Buddyboy is that 'he' (or her spectre of him, remember that Martin Shaw says she made the dolphin noises in the empty theatre so it could all be in her head) viewed her sexual abandon and turning from caring about the dolphins to caring about Shaw's character as a betrayal. Same result - she stops thinking about the abandoned dolphinarium and gets "into making love" to another exploiter, so BB kills her, effectively, as she's left the "path of purity and freedom".

[–] yetinessie-o-donnell 17 years ago

I never saw this originally and have just purchased it. I have only watched the first one on the dvd thus far, Baby. I have to confess I don't know if I missed something, it seems to end really abruptly. Why did it end at this point?

[–] koga_ninja_Jubei 17 years ago

I think it concludes pretty well....as though the creature returning for the thing in the jar was entirely within her imagination, but the shock was enough to cause her to miscarry all the same. Creepy story, the best I think.

"Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth"

[–] yetinessie-o-donnell 17 years ago

I watched it again (just now) and preferred it 2nd time around. It does say in the accompanying booklet that the thing at the end was a witch (presumably the one that had placed the 'curse') with her familiar!! If that was the case maybe they should have been a bit more explicit do you think, as it's otherwise not unreasonable to have come to the conclusion you did about whether it was her imagination or not. I agree the story was creepy though.

The buddyboy one was ok, not great to be honest, I could see the analogies they were making but I found the young female leads character a bit unrealistic and her acting unconvincing. Haven't seen any others yet.

Does any else think the front cover of the dvd may be offputting because that big monster thing looks really rubbish, sub night of the demon?

[–] koga_ninja_Jubei 17 years ago

Oh yes thinking about it was like a horrible crone together with some sort of creature....I liked the idea of unearthing something unnatural in an old house and it summoning something strange....but I think the end is best left ambiguous, with the chair not rocking and no external sign of anything strange having occurred, except the curse claiming another victim. Creepy.

Buddyboy put my girlfriend right off watching any more 70's TV DVDs, she couldn't get past the hamminess of the acting and Martin Shaw's gurning during the love scene was hilarious.

I think on the whole the series hasn't aged well and the episodes are way too long and thin - made today, they would be 20 minute shorts and something like old Twilight Zones (or Tales of the Unexpected) have much better pace. Maybe OT but I really enjoyed Day of the Triffids though, that's very good.

"Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth"

[–] combatreview 17 years ago

I'd disagree strongly, though it will probably make me sound like an old reactionary. Oh well, here I go.

I think this show is fuller than a lot of equivalent series today and succeeds, and is far better than most of its kind, precisely because it isn't reduced to a 20 minute short in the manner suggested. This show comes from a time when TV was still a writer's medium in the theatrical sense, before cinematic standards began to overwhelm the medium. There was a time not so long ago when British TV produced some superb dramatists, but it's very rare these days for anybody to take the kind of care with genre writing that Nigel Kneale did. His work is challenging, perhaps, in that he expects the audience to sit through dialogue, characterisation, mood, atmosphere, often with very little pay-off.

However, even a mediocre piece by Kneale is well-written in a way that you rarely find on television today, when dialogue is reduced to the very simple functions of being either funny, cool, or explanatory. I understand that the production values of the 1970s may have dated - but that happens to almost everything. Approaching something like this it's necessary to forgive the eccentricities of its time - because the real core of it is the acting and the writing. Judging a series on special effects and production values is usually futile - and really, a series can be good without them, but it can never be good if all it has is great production values.

Tastes have moved on, clearly - but this does not diminish the quality of Beasts. If horror stories are told differently today that does not implicitly mean for the better

[–] is_dis_d_way2amarrillo 16 years ago

i bought the DVD after watching it as a kid way back when it was first broadcast in '76 & boy! did i find it DATED...
i thought only SPECIAL OFFER stood out as the best.
the martin shaw ones woefully weak, the one about the giant rats is not bad & BABY is the worst.

"what do you think of him?"
"i think he's a *beep* peasant!"

see you at the movies baby...

[–] combatreview 16 years ago

The dialogue hasn't dated, though perhaps society's ability to engage with it has...

[–] is_dis_d_way2amarrillo 16 years ago

a very valid point & the new DR. WHO is a prime example: all big budget gloss but lacking in character & plot.

"what do you think of him?"
"i think he's a *beep* peasant!"

see you at the movies baby...

[–] rayraysworld 14 years ago

had some hazy memories of this series so i purchased the dvd. hmmmm....not very good is it? i have taken into account that things have noved on considerably in the tv world but it's pretty awful all the same. i could write better stories and scripts in half an hour. the acting and the timing was atrocious. a good look back at 70's tv with a distinct feeling of nostalgia thanks to plenty of products and fashions and sexism, etc on display.
but.....be honest....it's not any good

[–] fortean2 14 years ago

I think it's pretty dreadful, even the 'acclaimed' episodes like Baby and At Barty's Party which I have vague memories of enjoying when it was first shown.

Not impressed.

[–] 14 years ago

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