The Nature of the Beast [1995] Eric Roberts

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The Nature of the Beast (1995)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113939/

The Nature of the Beast (European title: Bad Company) is a 1995 horror mystery film written and directed by Victor Salva. It stars Eric Roberts and Lance Henriksen.

Eric Roberts ... Adrian (Dusty)
Lance Henriksen ... Jack Powell
Brion James ... Sheriff Gordon
Frank Novak ... Manfred
William A. Temple ... Elderly gentleman
Earl Theroux ... Mr. Winneman
Lila Garrett ... Mrs. Winneman
Eloy Casados ... Sheriff #1
Eliza Roberts ... Patsy

Victor Salva is one of the more promising genre directors to emerge in the 1990s. Salva premiered with the haunting, highly underrated slasher film Clownhouse (1989) and then went onto the gifted teen film Powder (1995) and the non-genre thriller Rites of Passage (1999), before having the modest hit of Jeepers Creepers (2001) and its even better sequel Jeepers Creepers II (2003), followed by the non-genre philosophical film Peaceful Warrior (2006). The Nature of the Beast is one of SalvaΓΓé¼Γäós best films, although it criminally received next-to-no release when it came out and only surfaced on video. It is, when finally tracked down, a surprisingly good film.

Salva is a self-confessed horror film fan and all of his films lurk with an alarmingly brilliant undertow of repression and psychological game playing. The Nature of the Beast is a road movie psycho-thriller. It is one where Salva clearly references familiarity with other films in the genre. ThereΓΓé¼Γäós the person driving across the desert with the (possibly) stolen briefcase of money taken from Psycho (1960); the milquetoast salesman driving through the desert whose life is turned upside down from out of the blue as in Duel (1971) (a film that Salva references even more so in Jeepers Creepers); and the tense, uneasy series of psychological games between the driver and the hitchhiker from The Hitcher (1986), which The Nature of the Beast owes much to.

Salva does an excellent job of creating a perpetually off-centre state of uncertainty about the games being played. The film hovers in a state of ambiguity ΓΓé¼ΓÇ£ did Lance Henriksen steal the $1.25 million from the Vegas casino and is this what he is keeping hidden is in his steel briefcase? Is Eric Roberts the Hatchet Man? Roberts, who always has a cocky, dangerously macho presence on screen irrespective of the role, is well cast. His best performances on film are those that play into this kind of macho swagger ΓΓé¼ΓÇ£ the other great one he gave was as Dorothy StrattenΓΓé¼Γäós boyfriend in Star 80 (1983). Here Roberts does an uncomfortably good job of taunting the mild-mannered Henriksen and the fun in the film comes in watching the two manoeuvring around one another and even colluding. Salva generates an incredible degree of tension in a number of scenes ΓΓé¼ΓÇ£ where Roberts produces a gila monster and throws it at Henriksen while he is driving along the highway; where Roberts befriends the teen couple and Henriksen hovers around, clearly wanting to stop something bad from happening; and an incredibly tense scene where the freshly-buried grave starts stirring just as the sheriff comes to pay a visit. The scene near the end where Eric Roberts remonstrates Henriksen on the meaningless of life and Henriksen tries to kill him with an overdose is startling, none the more so for the potency of the soliloquies that Victor Salva writes during these scenes. The ambiguity is eventually resolved in a twist ending that plays against the expectations that Salva has built up with an effective surprise.

The Nature of the Beast is the first film Salva directed after serving 15 months in the California penal system. He makes some allusions to that experience in his screenplay. Adrian says he's an ex-con, and claims to have spent enough time in prison and church "to know true boredom." He also explains to Jack the meaning of the phrase "dead man walking." At one stage enraged by jacks apathy towards his problems Adrian grabs Jacks and tells him "I've slept in places you wouldnt shit in, Ive done time with men who would......".

Unlike the outlaw duos in Bonnie and Clyde and True Romance, the fugitives in The Nature of the Beast are both men. Certain elements in the film hint at the possibility of a romantic relationship between the two. When Jack passes Adrian on the road, a singer can be heard on the radio crooning, "Who's that I see sneaking up on me? Sweet misery, my old loverboy." The motel where Jack and Adrian spend the night is called the Pink Motel. After their first meeting with the hippie couple, Dahlia asks Gerald, "Honey, you think they're lovers?" Adrian repeatedly taunts Jack with sexual innuendo, at one point saying, "I'll show you mine, you show me yours." After engaging in a threesome with Gerald and Dahlia much to Jacks disgust, Adrian returns to their motel room and teases a morose Jack " I thought about you Jack.......could you feel it?".