BEAST IN THE CELLAR (1971)
Starring Beryl Reid and Flora Robson
This is one of those horror gems that has tragically been forgotten by the cult movie crowd, despite the fact that it inspired a number of '90s flicks, most notably Stuart Gordon's "Castle Freak." It's also genuinely scary, despite some incredibly bad continuity errors
When soldiers in a British community start turning up dead—ripped up by what at first is suspected to be an animal—two spinsters (Reid and Robson) become worried about some kind of creature they've kept in the cellar. When they discover the "beast" has escaped, they run into yet another corpse of a soldier in their yard.
The "twist" ending has been copied many a time in horror films hence.
Infinitely better than much of the direct-to-video crap being churned out these days, "The Beast in the Cellar" runs 88 minutes in the U.S., far under the 101 running time it had in the U.K. But it still carries much of its punch.
A must-see for hardcore horror buffs (although mainstream audiences won't appreciate it) "Beast" has become incredibly hard to find on video, although it was released once.