The Argentine suspense thriller The Beast Must Die opens with the arrival of Felix Lane (Narciso Ibáñez Menta), who writes murder mystery novels under the nom de plume Frank Carter. He seems a man adrift – and it turns out that he is recovering from a recent family tragedy. Felix finds himself in a household terrorized by its patriarch, Jorge (Gregorio Battaglia).
Just as Jorge is spewing some particularly sadistic venom, he drops dead, poisoned.
All the other characters have motives – even multiple motives. For example, Linda (the voluptuous Laura Hidalgo) might want to kill the guy because he is habitually brutalizing his wife – her sister. And because he is constantly bullying and tormenting her nephew. And because he has raped HER. And because, in her presence, he has left an innocent child to die. And these are the motives of just ONE of the characters. If ever there were a deserving murder victim, it’s this guy Jorge.
So, the murder novelist Felix becomes a murder investigator. As he peels back the onion, the whodunit revolves around which motive propelled the act of murder. There is a big reveal and a shocking ending.
The Beast Must Die was directed by Román Viñoly Barreto, who made the much, much better The Black Vampire just a year later. Here, he seemed to be preoccupied with shots of crashing waves between all the melodrama.
When you watch The Beast Must Die, try to answer this: When was the poison introduced to the medicine?
I saw The Beast Must Die in a double feature with The Black Vampire at Noir City, introduced by the Argentine film historian Fernando Martin Pena; both films were restored by the Film Noir Foundation. Along with the Argentine noir masterpiece Los tallos amargos, The Beast Must Die is newly available on DVD from the Film Noir Foundation.