born to be wild.

Whilst tidying Cassidy's room last weekend I came across a dusty old Betamax copy (ah Prism Vision where are you now?) of this behind his bed.

At first I put it down to the fact that he has a lion obsession.

Well it's either that or he's already punting my stuff down Cash Converters to get money for booze and burds.

I'm must admit to being slightly angry tho', not because he nicked it but because he actually kept hold of it.

Yes, it is that shite so I'll try to be quick.

Wild Beasts (AKA Belve Feroci. 1983).
Dir: Franco Prosperi.
Cast: Lorraine De Selle, John Aldrich, Ugo Bologna, some wild geese and an angry polar bear.

It's another sunny day at The Zoo of Frankfurt (16 Alfred-Brehm-Platz, opening times: 9AM-5PM during winter, 9AM-7PM in summer, price: Adult: 11 DM, child 5+ 5 DM), the zoo-keepers are busy feeding the animals and cleaning up the huge mounds of shite, the gift shop is re-stocking it's shelves and the polar bears are looking longingly at the dolphins.

Just a normal day then really.

Well, not quite (it'd be a pretty abysmal - well even more abysmal, movie otherwise) because during the night some mad mentalist bastard has put Phencyclidine (PCP, angel dust, supergrass, killer weed, sherm, shi-moo or rocket fuel for those street wise readers) in the zoo's water supply.

Within minutes of the gates opening and various parties of pensioners and school kids entering the zoo the animals have started to go a wee bit strange.

The elephants turn first as they attempt to stand on the keepers head, swiftly followed by the rats(?) who escape into the car park looking for convertibles to steal whilst the polar bears just stand around with their normal pained expressions.

No change there then.

"I wanted a Scottish flag hen!"

If that wasn't enough of a downer for a Monday morning it then appears that the sweat and drool from the junked up animals is infecting the local population's pets too.

Yup, the cats are eating babies, guide dogs are tearing the throats from their owners and border collies are madly licking meat paste from the naked bodies of middle-aged spinsters.

Or is that a different film?

A middle-aged spinster
(minus border collie) yesterday.

Only one man can save the city, enter (and by the look of his porn 'tache he wouldn't complain) world renowned zoo veterinarian Dr. Rupert Berner (Aldrich in his only film role outside gay tramp porn and snuff movies) who, aided by his scientist girlfriend Laura Schwarz (genre whore De Selle who's been in everything from House on the Edge of the Park and Cannibal Ferox via your dad's bed) and local hard nosed (yet scarily flaccid) cop, Inspector Natalie Braun (Nightmare City's Mr. Desmond himself, Ugo Bologna) must try to discover a way to stop the anarchic animals before they destroy the world.

But not before we've seen the frankly impressive sight of a cheetah racing an open-topped VW beetle in an attempt to eat the overweight driver.

Will our heroes find a cure that doesn't involve locking all the animals in tin sheds with bowls of chicken soup before the PCP tainted water finds it's way into the local school causing the kids to go mad too in an attempt to give us a shock ending?

Or will they think fuck it and just torch the poor beasts?

"I wouldn't want one of them swimming up my arse!"

Ah Franco E. Prosperi you bad, bad man.

After quite literally spewing forth (alongside fellow hack Gualtiero Jacopetti) the whole 'Mondo' genre and giving us the racistastic Addio zio Tom, Prospero obviously reckoned that it was time to head back into animal murder mode and decided that a film about man's inhumanity to other creatures via the world of the zoo would be a good enough excuse to kill some rodents (and cows and cats) live on screen.

That polar bear is attempting to fuck a man....must be a bipolar bear then.

Obviously influenced/enamored by the 1949 Georges Franju documentary/drama recounting the lives of Paris slaughterhouse workers Le sang des bêtes (a film that David Lynch admitted inspired Inland Empire), Prosperi realised that the chances of him making a halfway decent movie starring Lorraine De Selle that used a zoo as a metaphor for Nazi extermination camps was pushing it somewhat, so in his wisdom he decided to junk the majority of the Franju's stark imagery and symbolism and just stick to the animal killings.

Which makes it kind of difficult to take the film's almost child-like (and naively childish) ecological message at all seriously.

De Selle happy in the fact that at least
her pussy wont get beaten
black and blue on screen.

The most shocking thing about the film tho' isn't the copious amounts of scenes of rats being burnt off windscreens and tigers let loose in cow pens but the fact that Prosperi's director of photography Franco Delli Colli seems to have decided to shoot the entire thing thru' a film of mud.

No taste, no talent, no mercy.

Tho' it is nice to see Lorraine De Selle getting enough cash to pay for he detox treatment.