Known in its native Czech language as Panna a netvor (The Virgin and the Monster), this was directed by Juraj Herz, who also made The Cremator, Morgiana, The Ninth Heart and Ferat Vampire.

Julie (Zdena Studenková) is the youngest of three daughters born to a widower (Václav Voska). Riding by horseback and looking for a flower for her, he falls asleep and awakens in front of the horrific castle of Netvor (Vlastimil Harapes), a half-man, half-falcon creature that condemns him to death for picking one of his flowers unless one of his daughter’s sacrifices herself to live forever with him. He should be worried. After all, his horse has already died, forcing him to walk and he’s also found the body of a dead woman. So when he asks his daughters to save him, the already married and wealthy Gábinka (Jana Brejchová) and Málinka (Zuzana Kocúriková) refuse, but Julie saves her father just as her beauty will soon rescue the beast.

Yes, just like a Disney film, this is based on La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Unlike that animated tale, this has no dancing table service. Instead, it’s a gothic and frightening movie, a film that Herz didn’t want to make as he saw the Jean Cocteau film as unapproachable in its perfection. Yet he does the same here, turning nearly every frame into a painting and having an otherworldly beast that is at once terrifying and sexual, with human eyes calling out from behind a bird’s face.

Beauty and the Beast is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including commentary with film historian Michael Brooke, archival interviews with director Juraj Herz and actors Vlastimil Harapes And Zdena Studenková and a short film, František Hrubín.

You can order this set from Severin.