Beauty and the Beast

From Juraj Herz, director of The Cremator and Morgiana, come this singular adaption of the classic tale - an altogether darker interpretation than we're used to. Light years from Disney, Herz's Beauty and the Beast (also known more provocatively as The Virgin and the Monster) follows the familiar story - innocent girl presents herself as sacrifice to a cursed man-beast hiding in exile, and learns to live with, and eventually love her captor - but is transformed into something entirely more twisted and terrifying in Herz's macabre re-imagining.Aided by wonderful set and costume design, superb cinematography and evocative score, this is a fairy-tale-turned-horror story from Czechoslovak cinema's most wryly subversive artist. Herz's richly crafted retelling [...] is definitely no children's movie - but it is, with its arresting lyricism and striking style, an eminently worthy rival to the classic 1946 version by Jean Cocteau. Nick Pinkerton, Metrograph Perhaps the most beauteous film ever that's drawn from fairy-tale material... this is a very dark film that is also warm, sensuous and mysterious. Dennis GrunesAwards: 1978 Sitges Film Festival / Winner: Best Director 1978 Fantasporto Festival / Winner: Jury PrizeSpecial Features: Beauty and the Beast (Panna a netvor, 1978) presented complete and uncut from a new HD transfer from original materials by the Czech National Film Archive A newly-recorded Projection Booth audio commentary with Mike White, Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger František Hrubín (1964): a short film on the Czech writer and poet, and co-screenwriter of Beauty and the Beast 20-page booklet with new writing on the film by author Jonathan Owen New and improved English subtitle translation Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C)