UK’s Tigon Pictures wasn’t active for very long, though they did leave behind a catalog of horror films with some standout examples, such as Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw.  Mind you, I didn’t really like either of those films, but I can still appreciate them.  Both were rather unpleasant films which seemed to wallow in cruelty.  I thought their The Beast from the Cellar from 1971 would have been more my speed.  It looked downright dowdy. Alas, I can’t imagine anybody wanting to see this more than once.

I assumed correctly this is a more genteel film than the studio’s usual fare.  Beryl Reid and Flora Robson had already had extensive and distinguished careers on the screen.  Here, they play sisters in their old house deep in the British countryside.  Per the title, they have a horrible secret to keep, the unmentionable thing in the basement that has been sneaking out and killing people.

The men it kills are all military personnel who are doing some sort of training exercises in the area.  I was deeply confused by a cold open of soldiers in tiny tank-like vehicles on wheels instead of treads, going around a forest as orange and purple smoke unfurls.  The odd machines appear to only be large enough for a single occupant.  They looked a bit like a Dalek, if you first squished it and painted it in camouflage.

One of their number gets stuck and phones in to say he is stuck on the moors.  We see him doing that in daylight, so his peers must be real jerks for him to still be there at night.  I almost joked that, if we was on the moors, he should watch out for the hound of Baskervilles–except he is suddenly attacked by the beast.  Not the hound, mind you, but whatever is in that cellar.  An inspector on the crime scene afterwards will ask, in all seriousness, whether the attack appeared to be from an animal-animal or a human animal.  Does the world in which this film takes place have known werewolves, or other similar “were-“ creatures?

It isn’t much of a mystery what exactly is the thing the sisters think they have successfully walled-in under the house.  In the meantime, there is much talk about the inability to get celery from the grocer.  The sisters differ on their memories of dear old dad, who was a military man, himself. It isn’t exactly riveting stuff.

Reid and Hobson are good in these roles, but they simply aren’t given much to do.  They aren’t even given much in the way of dialogue.  Hobson can be a bit cruel and is prone to teasing her childlike sister.  Reid is scared of storms and a bit of a hypochondriac.  She is excited by the police investigation into the murders, and even that a pathologist was brought in by helicopter.  As she excitedly asks Hobson of the victim, “Was he brutally and viciously slain?”

She is also obsessed with how things used to be.  One of the few elements of the script which resonated for me was Hobson chastising Reid for having only happy memories of their father, though his “good days” became increasing fewer over the years.  Reid begs her to stop, saying, “leave me something.”  It is the only moment in the movie I found touching.

Being in the countryside at that time, there is a quaintness to the production, a nostalgia for an era which was already disappearing by that time.  A local private (John Hamill) keeps dropping in just to ensure the elderly women are OK.  A nurse played by Tessa Wyatt makes house calls.

But reality is intruding into the world of the sisters in much the same way violence suddenly disrupts the picture.  The killings are all shown from the perspective of the beast, in handheld close-ups which make it impossible to tell exactly what is happening.  In a way, I am grateful for that, as I am not a fan of gore.  Alas, we do get some moments later where a corpse is shown with an eye popped out of the socket and Reid casually pushes it back in.  As if the actress didn’t endure enough doing that, the climactic scene has her running all over the house and up stairs, and this had me genuinely concerned for her health.

Another way the modern world intrudes into The Beast in the Cellar is the soundtrack features a song by Edison Lighthouse, the studio concoction behind “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)”.  The new track is curiously titled “She Works in a Woman’s Way” and I highly doubt it disturbed the charts.  This movie is unlikely to disturb anybody, either, an odd mix of genres which never completely gels.  One would think what is essentially a kitchen sink drama centered around a murderous monster would be fascinating, but it is instead neither fish nor fowl—or human-animal, fish-fowl, or whatever.

Dir: James Kelley

Starring Beryl Reid, Flora Hobson

Watched on Severin blu-ray