Wild Beasts (1984) Review

Wild Beasts (1984) Review

 

Wild Beasts is an obscure Italian production that invents a fairly unique reason for why a whole bunch of animals that usually want nothing to do with humans are turned into ferocious killers: the drug PCP gets into the water supply, turning all the animals at a zoo mental, plus other creatures in the city, as well. The zoo animals get out, and what follows is one bad night to be a human. 

I think Wild Beasts wins in the category of greatest variety of killer animals in one film. Let’s run down the list. For big cats, we have lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, and a cheetah. We’ve got a couple of the old standbys, like rats and a vicious domestic dog, but then there are less commonly seen species, like a herd of African elephants! How about domestic animals? Sure, pigs and cows. What about hyenas? Check. Any bears? Uh, yeah, a polar bear. Monkeys? Yep, them too, briefly. And these are all real animals, keep in mind, though not many of them share scenes together.  

The animals begin attacking early on and never let up. Here are some of the standout ones: a swarm of rats eat a couple in their car, an elephant steps on a woman’s head, and a cheetah chases down a woman driving a VW beetle—then the main character drives by and sees it and says “She’s not crazy! She’s being chased by a cheetah!” Oh yeah…the characters, dialogue, and acting are really terrible, but the titular wild beasts are the reason to see this thing, anyway. The attacks range from brutal to bizarre, with one of the most unintentionally hilarious being the polar bear, which abruptly transitions to a very fake puppet and stiff shadow against the wall. Apparently, the actor was almost decapitated when the parts with the real bear were filmed. Shocker there!

Unfortunately, the entire thing takes place at night, and many of the scenes are too dark to really see what’s going on clearly. It doesn’t even really feel like a proper movie a lot of the time, it’s just one scene after another of animals attacking humans. Take that as you will, but my enjoyment of Wild Beasts was largely minimal because of the way many of the “big” moments were achieved.

There was some extreme animal brutality on-set, and much of it is evident in the final product. In the opening moments, a real horse’s severed head is put on a chopping block and diced up, then the flesh is fed to the big cats in their enclosures. It sets an (initially) ultra-realistic tone, but the realism is taken too far. I don’t know if a real house cat was harmed by the rats or not, but I hope it was just a special effect. Other moments are undeniably real, and cruel. The rats had naturally white fur, so they were painted black. As if that’s not bad enough, they were actually set ablaze in the extermination scene. Later on, there’s a part where lions attack some cows in their pens, and the lions ended up actually killing the cows. Going into this movie, I had no idea there would be this level of abhorrent animal treatment, and if I had, I don’t think I would have selected it. 

Wild Beasts is indeed odd, and ranges from unnerving to hilarious, but the irresponsible handling of animals makes it a dark stain on the killer animal genre. Despite the mainly predominant realism, it lacks the bewildering entertainment value of the similarly-too-realistic Roar, and aside from the shocking scenes of violence, it’s very much run-of-the-mill.