Wild Beasts - Belve feroci

Franco Prosperi's "The Wild Beasts" is a fairly routine Italian horror flick about nature gone nuts.The real animals were used in this movie and in many cases killed just for the sake of this Italian shocker.The animal attack scenes are very gory,but the photography by Franco Delli Colli is too murky.The use of animals in "The Wild Beasts" is quite stunning,unfortunately the acting is truly horrible.Still it's nice to see Lorraine De Selle of "Cannibal Ferox" and "House on the Edge of the Park" fame in the main role as a professor.There is also a really tense sequence where a cheetah chases a VW bug down the road and a scene where some rats are burned off a windshield in slow motion.So if you are a fan of Italian horror cinema give this one a look.7 out of 10.

Somehow PCP gets into the water supply that ends up driving the animals to attack people in this mid 80s eurotrash creature feature. Although the movie is never as fun as its concept promises. It still manages to be so utterly absurd especially when it concerns killer ballet dancer kids it's just fun and wild. What's really impressive is the real animals they used and I wonder how it all came together. The training must have been insane and I'm sure the film had some fatalities.

3.25/5

If you love Italian horror then you already know and have seen some of the best of the genre such as Suspiria, Deep Red, Demons, Cannibal Holocaust...

Well it turn out this one is a truly unknown hidden gem of Italian horror from the 1980's, starring Lorraine Desalle (Cannibal Ferox). No, it's not scary or that gory, but an entertaining and unintentionally hilarious animal attack movie, a perfect Italian B movie cheese. And it features real animals too instead of practical effects which is impressive.

So many cool scenes such as a jaguar chasing a jeep in the middle of a city, but the best scene is when tigers attacking passengers in a subway train. The scene is surprisingly suspenseful, this movie is cool check it out.

My review was written in June 1986 after watching the movie on Lightning video cassette.

"Wild Beasts" is an Italian horror feature that underscores the current dilemma between fantasy and realism in the shriek genre. Filmmaker Franco Prosperi applies his experience in the "Mondo Cane" school of shock tactics to a science fiction theme with technically good results but an audience turnoff and counter-productive to the film's socially conscious theme. Pic was made in West Germany in 1982 tith alternate title "Savage Beasts" and has been released domestically to the home video trade.

Premise is that PCP (angel dust) has seeped into the water supply of a German city as a result of industrial waste, with the immediate result that animals in the local zoo freak out, break out (aided by a power outage) and go on the rampage. Along with a horde of sewer rats the revenge of abused Mother Nature in the form of zoo beasts quickly turns into a disaster film mode. Zoo scientist Rupert Berner (John Aldrich), police inspector Nat (Ugo Bologna) and reporter Laura (Lorainne de Selle) lead the fight to save humanity.

Prosperi's talented special effects and animal experts crew provide the utmost realism to even absurd stagings, such as a polar bear attacking the dance class that Laura's daughter Suzy (Louisa Lloyd) attends. Some footage, such as flamethrowers applied to the horde of rats, looks real rather than faked. Mixed with the usual overdone makeup effects of gorily mangled human victims, the thrills are gruesome rather than entertaining. Just as in so many Italian-made cannibal films, the message alerting us to stop raping the environment gets lost in the urge to maximize the titiallation value of the horror scenes..

Franco Prosperi must really get off on killing animals, between this and all the shockumentaries he's done. This one's got some great sequences (shot in Frankfurt-am-Main) but never lives up to its great premise. Filmed entirely at night, the direction is clumsy and only rarely suspenseful. It's never boring or predictable but not terribly exciting or original, either. Though if you've waited all your life to see a naked woman get eaten by rats, here's your chance.