Now that the honorary month of February is behind us, it’s time to pick where we left off with the roulette wheel. If you watched our THSLive! podcast this week, you know I am doing something a little different for this BSR. Instead of blindly picking a movie, I intentionally picked my movie this week after the vocal fallout of Amazon Video’s decision to cut films with gratuitous nudity and violence from their Amazon Prime lineup. Obviously gratuitous nudity and violence go hand in hand with horror movies. So, that basically means our beloved genre has been singled out it seems. So, I said FUCK THAT!
Even though we already know the film, we’re still going to…
Spin That Shit!
Wild Beasts – Belve feroci (1984)
If you have read any of my previous works at The Horror Syndicate website, you may have noticed I usually tend to stray away from popular films. I do this, because there are so many movies in our genre that have gone under the radar for so long. Rabid fans and collectors know about some of these movies, but to the average viewer these movies are usually unheard of. We at the Syndicate are here to educate young boils and ghouls about these types of obscure films.
Wild Beasts takes us to Frankfort Germany, during a normal day at the local zoo. Everything seems to be going as scheduled, in the busy lives of the zoo workers caring for the animals. Soon the animals become agitated and very aggressive. Then the animals become crazed and murderous. Lashing out at their caretakers and eventually breaking free from the confines of their habitats. What has caused the animals to turn to Wild Beasts? Ultimately can they be stopped?
This film comes from, in my opinion, the goriest age of Italian horror. The early 1980’s was a very popular time for these types of movies. Wild Beasts was directed by Franco Prosperi. This was his only addition to the horror genre as a director and it was a mighty one. I’m sure it was quite an undertaking working with so many animals on camera.
Now on to the meat and bones of the film. The gore. Oh, the delicious gore. This film has it in spades. One of the most memorable scenes in recent memory, involves a couple necking in a parked car. When they are terrorized by blood thirsty…. RATS. Yes, hundreds of RATS and these little guys are ruthless. If that doesn’t get your skin crawling, I don’t know what will. Another great scene involves a tiger and lion teaming up to look for a midnight snack!
We later find out that somehow PCP (angel dust) was introduced into the water supply and that is what is causing the animals to freak out and become crazed and ravenous. Very intriguing idea, for sure. This film really has it all. A blind man mauled to death by his service dog. Lions, tigers and elephants, OH MY! Elephants?!? You bet your sweet ass! This flick has murderous face-stomping elephants and it’s fucking glorious!
“Wild Beasts is a fucking godsend” – Bryan Enright, The Horror Syndicate
As with most Italian horror movies, they are at times offensive, absurd, corny, sexy and bloody. This film is no different. If you want to turn your brain off for an hour and a half, check this film out! You’ll be glad you did! As of the time of this writing, Wild Beasts is still available for free to Amazon Prime customers on their streaming service. But for how long? Who knows? So jump on it!
Do we have a WINNER or a LOSER?
We have another winner!
IMDB: 5.4/10 (Way too low)
ZombiSurvivor: 7.8/10
Even though this trailer is in Italian, you still get the idea of the movie. The version on Amazon is dubbed in English.
Lastly, Wild Beasts was given a blu ray release last month from the fine folks over at Severin Films.
You can purchase it at Amazon.com by clicking on the Amazon banner at the top of the screen or click the Blu Ray image below.
Thanks for reading! I truly hope you all enjoy Bloody Streaming Roulette!
STAY SCARED!
-ZS
