La Bête (film)

The Beast (French: La Bête) is a 1975 French erotic horror film written, edited, and directed by Walerian Borowczyk. Although sometimes compared with Beauty and the Beast, there are no parallels in the plot except that it features the relationship between a beast (monster) and a woman. The film was noted for its explicit sexual content, including teratophilia (attraction to monsters), upon its initial release. It has become a cult film.

A loose adaptation of the novella Lokis by Prosper Mérimée was originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own. However, Borowczyk later rendered Lokis as a story (La véritable histoire de la bête du Gévaudan) in Immoral Tales (1974), which was envisaged to be a film of six stories. After Immoral Tales was remastered as a film of four stories, the footage became the dream sequence of The Beast.