The Beast Must Die (1952 film)
1952 film by Román Viñoly Barreto

The Beast Must Die (Spanish: La bestia debe morir) is a 1952 Argentine thriller film of the classical era of Argentine cinema, directed by Román Viñoly Barreto and starring Laura Hidalgo Guillermo Battaglia and Narciso Ibáñez Menta. It based on the 1938 novel The Beast Must Die by Irish writer Cecil Day-Lewis, part of his series featuring the private detective Nigel Strangeways.
Plot
A writer of murder novels adopts a new identity to track down the hit-and-run driver who killed his son. Along the way he falls in love with a beautiful film star, and a series of disastrous complications take their course.
Cast
Narciso Ibáñez Menta as Felix Lane
Laura Hidalgo as Linda Lawson
Guillermo Battaglia as Jorge Rattery
Milagros de la Vega as Sra.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Beast Must Die (1952 film)” is 1952 film by Román Viñoly Barreto. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Beast, Must and film, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1952 film by Román Viñoly Barreto” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5965860. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952 and 1938.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Beast Must Die (1952 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Beast Must Die (1952 film) primary sources, The Beast Must Die (1952 film) archive and Beast research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Beast Must Die (1952 film)”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Beast Must Die (1952 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.