Beautiful Beast brings to us a slice of SOV horror, erotica and action all rolled into one courtesy of director Toshiharu Ikeda (who many Asian horror fanatics will recognize as the man behind the Evil Dead Trap series). There's a lot to like within Beautiful Beast and for fans of truly offbeat Asian cult cinema this film could be a real treat. Central Park Media has brought Beautiful Beast to DVD as part of their Asia Pulp Cinema line and we're here to let you know how it turned out.

Ran aka Black Orchid is a beautiful but deadly Chinese assassin who is out to avenge her younger sisters untimely murder. Ran cuts through Yakuza like she's slicing up a herd of unruly watermelon with not even a hint of remorse on her pretty young face. It isn't until her fateful meeting with an ex Yakuza member Yoichi (Takeshi Yamato) that we're allowed to actually see a abit of Ran's human side, if only for a moment. Ran will do whatever it takes to infiltrate the Yakuza and reach Ho, the man she believes killed her younger sister. Along the way Ran will endure many forms of degradation and humiliation even to the point of being employed (undercover of course) at a "gentlemen's club" owned by Ho. Ran will not only possibly sacrifice her life along the way, but also the lives of others that are drawn into her web of revenge as well.

If you walk into Beautiful Beast looking for anything other than pulp (that's the name of the series don't you know) or fluff, you may wind up being sorely disappointed. Although the film tries to take itself a bit seriously and the performances are spectacular all around the film never really attains a status higher than that of a "time filler". Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing mind you (actually, it's not a bad thing at all) because every once in a while we need a flick that will allow us to just enjoy the moment and turn off the old brain juices. There's plenty to dig in Beautiful Beast, however, most of the action is nonsensical and the film never really reaches the true level of seriousness that it desperately seems to want to. With quite a few unbelievable action scenes, some deliciously gooey gore and erotically charged sex scenes, there's nothing but fun times all around. If you just sit back, enjoy the ride and take it for what it's worth you may find Beautiful Beast to be a highly entertaining entry in the world of truly offbeat Asian cult cinema.

Along the lines of mindless mayhem, it's also worth mentioning that Beautiful Beast does feature some scenes of a particularly strong nature. There are some extreme scenes of rape, erotic encounters of the sexy kind, torture and sleazy degradation that can hang with the best of 'em. If you're looking for a filthy example, take the scene in which Ran is instructed to drink a beverage with an extinguished cigarette floating in it and follow that up by urinating on the floor of a very busy gentlemen's club (which she gleefully obliges to).

Beautiful Beast is presented in a full frame transfer and the result is quite a mixed bag. Since the film was SOV a widescreen image would most likely be a matte taken off the top and bottom of the frame, so we're really not losing any information with a full frame presentation. Granted, the widescreen framing would give the film a more cinematic look, but either way, there shouldn't be any picture loss with the full frame image. The quality of Beautiful Beast ranges from scene to scene and I have to question if this is a problem that was inherit within the original source material. Some scenes exhibit nice deep blacks with decent color representation, while other darker scenes exhibit an annoying amount of video noise and colors that endlessly bleed into one another. As scenes shift you never know what you're in store for, and I'm not quite sure who's to blame for this. It's not awful mind you, but I think that in this day and age we've come to expect a bit more. We are dealing with video here so it's a tough call as to whether or not this is the best that Beautiful Beast could (or should) look.

Audio is presented in a decent stereo mix in either a dubbed English track of Japanese with nice readable yellow subs. Of course I opted for the subtitles, and found the audio track to sound just fine with clear dialogue and no distortion or background noise.

Extras are pretty thin, including a meet the cast segment that's filled with spoilers about some of the characters so don't watch it first. There's also a trivia quiz (meh) and some DVD ROM content including still galleries et al. Finally we're given a few trailers for some other films in the Asia Pulp Cinema line from Central Park Media.

Ultimately Beautiful Beast turns out to be a wonderfully bizarre slice of Asian cult cinema that could really be worth your time if this sort of thing is your bag. Audio is fine, but video quality is a bit lacking (video is video after all). With an MSRP just under 30 bucks (yeah, it is a bit high) you should do a bit of searching online and see if you can find it a bit cheaper (upon initial inspection I found it online for 18 bucks shipped, not too shabby). Is it worth your while to seek it out if you're a fan of the bizarre world of Asian cult cinema? Yeah, it probably is.

For more info on this and other Asia Pulp Cinema titles click here.