Brainless, senseless and most of all pointless Italian exploitation fodder that somewhat enjoys an infamous reputation because director Franco Prosperi supposedly sacrificed the lives of innocent & defenseless animals in order to make his film appear more realistic. I, for one, can't judge if this is wholly true, but you never know with these crazy Italian horror directors, right? Ruggero Deodato's crew also killed real animals during the production of "Cannibal Holocaust", but at least that film grew out to become a genre milestone, whereas "Wild Beasts" is obscure, hard to find and honestly not worth tracking down. The most fun you'll have whilst enduring this film is guessing which city the events take place in. The intro sequence only reveals it concerns a North European city, but if you have some language and/or geography knowledge, you can quickly figure out in what city the animals of the local zoo go on a gory murder spree. For reasons I still haven't figured out, the water supply at the zoo becomes poisoned and all the animals big or small, friendly or dangerous turn into aggressive and uncontrollable killers. It doesn't take to long before they escape the zoo limits and transform the whole of Hamburg (oops
) into their hunting territory. "Wild Beasts" is quite a bad film, with no tension or coherence. It basically is just animals killing people and vice versa, but there's no building up tension or atmosphere at all. There are some hilariously awkward scenes to enjoy, but I'm not entirely sure they were meant to be comical, like when the cheetah attacks a woman driving a beetle with the same colors as the animal itself. There's a lot of gore and sheer nastiness on screen, but whenever something really important happens, the photography is dark and unclear. Overall, a lame film and not really worth seeing. "Cannibal Ferox" and "House on the Edge of the Park" starlet Lorraine de Selle adds absolutely no value to the production, neither.
Review of The Wild Beasts
