The Asylum Des Loons (or Maison Des Loons for other material) is an unseen but mentioned location in Beauty and the Beast. It is where people who have their sanity deteriorated are forced to stay in and is owned by Monsieur D'Arque, who becomes part of Gaston's scheme to coerce Belle into marrying him by threatening to send her father Maurice to the asylum if she chooses otherwise.
Development[]
A draft of a previous script of the film would have Gaston and his companion LeFou visit the asylum to ask D'Arque for his assistance in blackmailing Belle. This script features D'Arque assuming that a terrified LeFou is a new patient for him before he gets corrected. The script says that the asylum is a foreboding location filled with cries and moans. The filmmakers decided that showing the asylum would be too frightening and changed the scene to D'Arque visiting Gaston's tavern to make it less tense for audiences. The script also indicated it was located in Northern France, with the deleted song Human Again also implying that Gaston and LeFou traveled there for an extended time.
Appearance[]
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)[]
While the asylum doesn't make any physical appearance in the film, it is alluded to at least a few times. The manager of the asylum, Monsieur D'Arque is asked to come visit Gaston at his tavern during the middle-of-the-night by someone (most likely LeFou), saying that this meeting will be "worth his while". When he does visit Gaston, the latter immediately hands him a bag of gold so that he'll listen to Gaston's proposal of helping him incarcerate the local inventor Maurice to D'Arque's asylum unless his daughter Belle agrees to marry him since Maurice earlier barged into the tavern to seek help while also giving out a claim of how Belle is being held prisoner by a Beast in his castle. D'Arque, despite knowing that Maurice isn't a danger despite his odd behavior, agrees to the deed just because he loves how despicable it is.
Since Belle and Maurice are absent for individual reasons (Belle staying at the castle and Maurice heading off to find it himself), Gaston cannot immediately put his plan into action, so he has LeFou stay at the house until they come back. After some time, they do (after the Beast let's Belle leave the castle to go get Maurice after she sees him via a magic handheld mirror getting sick while walking through the Black Forest to find the castle and she brings him home) and D'Arque and some of his employees soon arrive at the home with a carriage, intent on taking Maurice, supported by an angry mob full of villagers. Gaston then makes Belle his offer; if she agrees to be his wife, he will make everyone leave Maurie alone. Not only does Belle refuse, but she actually shows everyone that Maurice was telling the truth by using the aforementioned magic mirror, forcing the villagers to stop their campaign against Maurice. It's likely D'Arque and his subordinates returned to the asylum after that since Maurice's sanity is proven.
Beauty and the Beast (2017 film)[]
Like the animated film, the asylum is never seen in the live-action remake, but a carriage for the asylum is once again seen, only in this context, instead of being outside of Belle's home and Maurice's claim of the Beast being the sole reason why everyone in the village wants to incarcerate him to the asylum, it is in the middle of town and said claim alongside Maurice saying that Gaston has left him for dead, due to a previous attempt by the latter to get his approval to marry Belle, end up what causing Maurice's near incarceration and this ends up what causes Belle to go back to the village rather than seeing Maurice getting ill like in the animated feature. The inside of the carriage is even seen when Gaston and the mob lock Belle and Maurice in said carriage while they go off to kill the Beast. They manage to escape and ride off to save the Beast.
Gallery[]
