The Beast Within by Edward Levy (1981)

The three acts of Edward Levy’s 1981 novel, The Beast Within are well-defined and each serves a distinct flavor of horror to the reader. In the first section, Levy creates a sense of gothic rural isolationism in the deep south of the 1930s, much akin to Cormac McCarthy’s early Appalachian novels. The second section drifts into a working class nightmare of misfortune that struck me as more Stephen King’s New England of the 1970s than the 1940s rural south Levy means it to be. Finally, the third act brings us into the 1950s, where the heart of this story of lycanthropy spreads open in a glossy and prosperous America innocent of the sins of the body.

Our werewolf, who is created in the first act by a religious zealot who locks him in a basement for over a decade and feeds him human flesh, makes this novel a bit of a science fiction experiment, as well as a horror novel. What if how we treat each other altered our genes? What if we passed down acquired tastes and predilections to our children? Michael, the offspring of this werewolf raping a woman (though this remains unknown to the woman and her husband) struggles against the demons of his genetic makeup. As a teenager he sees flesh all around him, and he is aroused violently and sexually by it.

There's a certain equation here of sexual freedom with violence and loss of control. The novel can be understood as an indictment of civilization, but it could easily be flipped on its head and interpreted as a conservative horror story the same way Friday the 13th or other 1980s slasher films seem to be telling us that the wicked, and more importantly the wicked children, will be punished for their licentiousness.

Levy’s prose is clean and unadorned, with the welcome exception of some of his descriptions of his rural southern landscape, making The Beast Within an entertaining modern werewolf tale.