Review: The Beast Within (1982)
A honeymooning couple in the 1960s (Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch) are stuck beside the road in a small town in Mississippi after their car gets stuck in swampy undergrowth. Whilst Cox goes in search of help, a prone Besch is raped in the nearby forest in the dark. Seventeen years later Besch and Cox are raising their son (Paul Clemens), who is in truth the product of that awful incident seventeen years ago. He has been stricken by very painful, unexplained illness. So the couple decide to head back to small town Mississippi for answers about Besch’s assailant, to see if the illness is genetic. Unfortunately, the townsfolk are a secretive lot, some even quite surly. Meanwhile, Clemens escapes from the hospital and heads for Mississippi too, whilst his body seems to be undergoing some very painful transformation. Katherine Moffat is a local girl Clemens meets and falls for, with John Dennis Johnston playing her lout of a father. L.Q. Jones and Meshach Taylor play the local sheriff and his de...