The Beast In The Cellar
1970

One of the scariest bits of 70s telly (according to my good lady) was the scene at the very end of coffin-dodger comedy Dad's Army, when the team are trooping through the English countryside on manouevres, with smoke grenades exploding around them, which fades out to the sound of air raid sirens. And she laughed at me for being scared during Dead Of Night. Well, if that scared her, The Beast In The Cellar could have her shitting bricks, seeing as it begins with a similar scene, as tanks drive through the English countryside shrouded by red and yellow smoke.
Things go downhill from that point onwards, though - whether you like Dad's Army or not.
Although before the credits end, we are treated to a nasty death when a soldier gets ripped to pieces by an unseen foe, American Werewolf In London - style. However, possibly the scariest bit comes when you see who's got top billing - Beryl Reid and Flora Robson. Move over Lee and Cushing, I say. Talk about a dream pairing. We'll not see it's like again. Because they're both dead. Much like the cast of Dad's Army.
Enter that British horror movie staple, the thick police. "A leopard? In Lancashire?"
"Human animal, or animal animal?" (eh?)
Goodness only knows what's happened to the body, but the first soldier to see it has to rush away and blow chunks. It's either the body, or the overlong discussion over the body by the Superintendent and the Doctor - I'm not too sure.
On hearing the news that a soldier has been killed, old Joyce Balentine (Robson), who shares a house nearby with her dotty sister Ellie (Reid), does what any person would do - she puts on an army greatcoat and rushes into the cellar. Meanwhile Ellie's making her way home, accompanied by her own theme music (much like Charles Hawtrey's in the Carry Ons). Dig that tea cosey hat.
After much dreary talk about celery (I'm not kidding), watering cactuses (?) and the weather (%$£^%!!), they are visited by Military Policeman Alan, who's a friend of theirs. Alan, who is made of 100 per cent cardboard, then repeats everything that's happened in the film so far for the benefit of the two old dears. AAAAGH!
He ends with: "And yer not to worry, either of yer..." (Of course not, there's just a wild animal/crazed madman on the loose, that's all), and the conversation gets back to celery (I am honestly not joking).
Joyce then tells Ellie: "I may not always be here to stand between you and things as they really were... as they really ARE..."
And Beryl tells a painting of her father: "You were the best looking man I ever saw. But I suppose Joyce was right. That was... before..."
So what are we supposed to deduce from all of this? Some kind of strange incestuous necrophilia? Or something about celery? I think I've lost the will to live...
Luckily, interest is piqued by the next scene, when a squaddie drags a local slapper into a nearby barn and they get down to some serious fully-clothed nookie. Just as he's pulling down her knickers and she's unbuttoning his fly, he gets brutally murdered and she gets showered with blood.
Thank goodness for Ellie, who's found some celery in the garden. There's just time for another chat about the weather before another squaddie gets knocked off his bike and ripped to pieces.
Finally, after 33 minutes, Joyce tells Ellie to take some drugged food down into the cellar, and Ellie screams: "Joyce! Joyce! He's gone! He's gone!"
Something has been walled up in the cellar. Could it be a beast, perchance? After being told by Alan that there's been another murder, Beryl says: "It's him! He's found a way to get out!" Why has this not occurred to them before? They find a hole under the shed and a squaddie's body with it's eyeball hanging out of the socket. Ew.
Ellie is given the job of burying the body, and there's an attempt at some kind of tension as she does the deed whilst Nurse Sutherland tries to find her way into the cottage. Will Ellie succeed? Will she be discovered? Does anyone care?
With Joyce now doped up to the eyeballs (she's not used to her drugs, having been giving them to whatever's in the cellar for years), Beryl decides to call in the army and police, and tells their story...
Her tale of Daddy going off to war in 1914 is accompanied by clips of 1960s schoolkids having a snowball fight(?) and paintings and photos of the war (large budget, this one), and then a flashback to the young Ellie and Joyce meeting him at the railway station. Of course, Daddy's not right, him suffering from gas poisoning and shell shock.
"The house was awful after that... daddy was strange..."
Yet he still managed to father another child - Stephen, who the girls decided to wall up in the cellar to stop him going to war in 1939. "At first he used to shout and scream... gradually he stopped making any noise at all..." says the obviously insane Ellie.
"We couldn't let him out... he was too far gone... he wasn't normal. We thought it was best for him... that's what we thought..."
Right at the very end of the film we get to see "The Beast", who, it has to be said, looks like the Monty Python "It's" man. No explanation as to why he's got superhuman strength, or anything.
Unlike a lot of the films on this site, The Beast In The Cellar hasn't improved with a second viewing. It's still shite. But it does make you pine for the days when you could pick up the phone and say: "Hello, Doris?". However, that would also mean you'd be living in the days when Beryl Reid and Flora Robson were the sole star names in a so-called "horror" film. The deaths almost save it, being, as they are, extremely nasty for their time, but there just aren't enough of 'em.

The Beast in the Cellar (1971)
Director: James Kelley Writer(s): James Kelley
Cast: Beryl Reid - Ellie Ballantyne, Flora Robson - Joyce Ballantyne, John Hamill - Cpl. Alan Marlow, Tessa Wyatt - Joanna Sutherland, T.P. McKenna - Supt. Paddick, John Kelland - Sergeant Young, David Dodimead - Dr. Spencer, Vernon Dobtcheff - Sir Bernard Newsmith, Dafydd Havard - Stephen Ballantyne, Gail Lidstone - Young Ellie, Elizabeth Choice - Young Joyce, Merlyn Ward - Young Stephen, Anthony Heaton - Anderson, Chris Chittell - Baker, Peter Craze - Roy