Movies
Tom Holland Remaking His Own ‘The Beast Within’
In 1982 Fright Night and Child’s Play director Tom Holland got his start when his screenplay for The Beast Within was put into production.
Directed by Philippe Mora, the film followed a teenager that is experiencing growing pains of a most shocking kind in this all-too-real story of a human-into monster transformation.
Fangoria caught up with Holland, who reveals that he’s currently developing a remake because some of what he wrote couldn’t be filmed for the 1982 release.
That’s why “I am now preparing a remake,” he tells the site. “Cicadas were a large part of the script I wrote; their 17-year transformation foreshadowed what was happening to Michael [the afflicted young hero played by Paul Clemens]. You couldn’t work with insects then, couldn’t capture what I wrote, but CGI now does make that possible.”
He points out, however, that he would not want Michael’s climactic shapeshift into a monster to be done digitally. “Michael’s transformation should still be old-school, done in-camera. The lure of a remake is to finally be able to do what I originally wrote.”
In the original, 18-year-old Michael MacCleary (the progeny of an unholy union between his mother and a swamp beast) is on the verge of becoming a man. And as the inherited evil in his blood gnaws at his soul, Michael must return to the swamp to uncover the terrifying identity of his father: before his nasty natural tendencies force him to feed on the locals!
Holland’s 10 O’Clock People has been in development for years now. His Twisted Tales hit video this year, and his last feature was the 1996 Thinner.
In a recent interview, filmmaker Christopher Nolan explained that he’s always been interested in directing a bona fide horror movie, with the award-winning director going so far as to praise genre creators for their continued risk-taking on the big screen.
If you’ve seen Nolan’s recently released The Odyssey, you’re likely aware that a scary movie helmed by the legendary director could be a very good idea.
After all, Nolan insisted on making use of old-fashioned movie magic and in-camera practical effects when shooting his adaptation of Homer’s epic. This retro approach made Odysseus’ encounters with mythological beings such as the giant cyclops that much more terrifying. By now, fans are undoubtedly aware that the massive creature was partially brought to life by an enormous puppet enhanced with near-invisible CGI, but there were also plenty of forced perspective shots where actor Bill Irwin actually chomped on disturbingly realistic replicas of Ithican soldiers.
As you can see in the below behind-the-scenes test footage shared by the Los Angeles-based Hamer FX, Irwin was given an assortment of latex dolls filled with fake blood and breakable skeletons that he could tear apart on camera. The darkness of Polyphemus’ cave covers up most of the gore in the finished film, but the moment remains a terrifying highlight in a movie that has a lot to say about the horrors of war.
Nolan actually requested these tiny edible soldiers for the flick because his vision for the iconic cyclops encounter was partially inspired by Francisco Goya’s disturbing mural of Saturn Devouring His Son. This mysterious piece is actually one of the artist’s infamous “Black Paintings,” which were found painted directly onto the walls of his old house near Madrid before a French baron ordered that the collection be transferred to canvas and assigned names for public viewing.
Details like these are what make me think that Nolan could pull off a genuinely scary horror picture if he came across the right idea. That being said, between the Fear Gas sequences in Batman Begins and Circe using body horror magic to transform men into pigs in The Odyssey, one might argue that he’s been preparing for such a task throughout his entire career.
The Odyssey is currently playing in theaters everywhere, though it’s definitely worth seeking out an IMAX screening if you can find one near you.
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