"Belve Feroce"(1983) d/ Franco Prosperi

In 1983, legendary shockumentary director, Franco Prosperi, one half of the team that brought the world the biting social commentary of Mondo Cane (1963), the rape of an entire continent with Africa Addio (1966), and the scathing racial indictment of America's past with Addio zio Tom (1971), decided to tone it down a bit, if you couldn't tell by the screenshot of the horse head being cleaved in half, by answering the burning question on the collective global mind: What if a major metropolitan city (Frankfurt, in this case) was suddenly overrun by escaped zoo animals on angel dust? No, seriously. Lorraine de Selle, who got strung up by her tits in Cannibal Ferox and raped by Johnny Morghen in La casa sperduto nel parco aka/House on the Edge of the Park, is along for the wild and reckless pre-PETA ride with one-off actor John Aldrich, Ugo Bologna, and a myriad of animals, many of whom look to have suffered greatly in bringing this outrageous movie to life, as was so often the case in exploitation movies of the era, before filmmakers were held (somewhat) accountable for their reprehensible attitudes towards nature.


"Ohhhh, Franco!", says Mr. (D)Ed.
After a disclaimer states that no animal appearing in this film has suffered any type of violence and some establishing shots of Frankfurt, a severed horse head is split in half with a cleaver and fed to a ravenous tiger. Subtle guy, this Prosperi, isn't he? Laura (de Selle) wants to snap some photos of the jungle cat, but her handler, Rupert (Aldrich) shoots her up with tranquilizers, leaving the beast to convulse itself to sleep. A couple seeking a little paradise by the dashboard light is set upon by a horde of sewer rats, and a vastly outnumbered alley cat also falls victim to the writhing pile of rodents before the authorities show up and burn them with flame throwers in slow motion (!). Meanwhile,back at the zoo, the security guards' porno mag appreciation sesh is spoiled when the electronic lock down system for the animal cages, as illustrated by panels of colorful flashing lights, suddenly goes haywire, releasing the zoo's entire population upon an unsuspecting city. Lions, tigers, and leopards maul screaming men to bloody death.A blind man is attacked in his apartment by his own seeing-eye dog, while taxidermy trophies look on.
  

"Perché non pulsante la camicia?", wonders Laura (Lorraine de Selle).
Meanwhile, elephants bully a couple in a car, strangling the man with a homicidal trunk, and flattening the girl's face with one step. A cheetah races at high speeds down a boulevard after a young girl in a convertible Volkswagen. There's something you don't see every day. An adult Sumatran tiger rides the subway, terrorizing the passengers, which include Laura, who's racing to pick up little Suzy (Louisa Lloyd, who enters the story open-bloused, in a creepy Polanski-esque moment) from gymnastics class. Elephants on the runway cause a jet airliner to crash. A polar bear breaks into the school and mauls one of the teachers amid the terrified screams of prepubescent children in leotards. At a municipal slaughterhouse, a lion attacks some cows, while a hyena latches on to a squealing pig. Rupert has run some blood tests, and blames the animals' change in demeanor on the zoo's water supply, polluted with P.C.P., while city traffic is gridlocked by stampeding cattle. Rupert and Laura reach the school to find the polar bear coming down from his trip out front, and the kids inside, having also ingested tainted water, gone homicidal, themselves.


"Frankie says you got ice cubes in there...you been holdin' out on me??!!"
What a fucked up movie. I'm pretty sure those woprophiles of sensitive disposition will probably want to avoid this one altogether, though you really oughta to sit through it at least one time, just to bear witness to such an exploitative spectacle, a throwback to the guerrilla approach to cinema, that would and could never be made today, apart from a total CG fest suited for the SyFy Network, perhaps. Beyond the obvious draw,  most of the actors are so wooden in their delivery of the hokey dialog they're given to work with here, that if you split one of them open, you'd have to add "termites" to the already voluminous natural cast. On the scale, two exploitative big ones for Beasts. Recommended to fans of the genre, but like the dangerous wildlife within, approach with caution.


"You really think these jam-filled Tribbles will catch on then?"

"La settima donna"(1978)d/Franco Prosperi

We'll continue not being very nice to women tonight, with a Last House on the Left clone from Franco Prosperi, but not the Prosperi that's known as half of the Italian dynamic documentary duo responsible for mondo hits like Mondo Cane(1964), Africa addio(1966), and Addio Zio Tom(1976), to be sure.To flesh out this Mediterranean rape/revenge rip-off, known outside of Italy as 'Last House on the Beach', Prosperi dresses center stage with able Euro-genre vets Ray Lovelock, who also croons "Place for the Landing" on the Roberto Pregadio soundtrack and provides his own English dub, and Flavia, her heretical self, Florinda Bolkan, revisiting a nun's habit here for some admittedly pretty sleazy goings-on, though most of today's jaded genre crowd will probably find 'Beach' too deficient in the blood, sex, and nudity categories to enjoy it very much.With those desensitized rascals out of earshot, I can promulgate the director's choice, instead, to focus his lens on the horrified expressions of the victims' faces rather than the potential grue, unlike so many of his countrymen of the day in the trade, but with mixed effectiveness; one rape victim looks less violated than dumbfounded during her ordeal, and even the most brutal, humiliating act in the film plays out like a Looney Tune on Phencyclidine.Much of the distress of the deplorable deeds that transpire in this one is rendered flaccid by the anonymity of many of the young girls' characters, who deliver no real dialogue, have no discernible idiosyncracies, and huddle defenselessly waiting for the next atrocity to happen to them.Still, there's enough of what makes exploitation flicks from the boot so damned enjoyable present here to merit a look-see, with shots of lush outdoor scenery juxtaposed with obligatory seventies soundtrack of happenin' porno-esque disco music and expectedly humorous ADR dubbing on the English track(“Why, you dirty bitch! You think we’re just kidding?!”, "This one's a 100 percent virgin!" etc., etc.).The film, long unavailable in North America, has since been presented uncut on disc by those fine folks at Severin.

We'll return to "When Reiki Gets Serious" right after these words from our sponsors...
A gang of three faceless Italian goons show a propensity for senseless violence during a bank robbery, when one of the men ices a teller for the hell of it before their getaway Citroen forces them to detour their escape to a large villa on a desolate beach that's occupied by a young nun named Sister Cristina(Florinda Bolkan), who just happens to be chaperoning five religious schoolgirls as they rehearse A Midsummer Night's Dream for an upcoming Shakespeare festival, decked out in fanciful papier mâché animal head masks.Ignoring all standard guest protocol, Walter(Flavio Andreini) proceeds to bash the villa maid's dome in with a household iron(!) while Nino(Stefano Cedrati) attacks Eliza(Sherry Buchanan) and gets shanked in the thigh with a sharp comb, for his inappropriate carnality.Forced to occupy the cottage until Nino's leg heals appropriately, the boy band-esque outlaws turn to the occupants of the fairer sex(who don't let criminal pervert kidnappers stop them from breaking a bobbler out at any juncture, mind you) for their misogynistic amusement.First, they force the girls to sunbathe topless at gunpoint with groping and ogling thrown in, free of charge, then making them watch a girl shake her groove thang around while naked on television.After some spirited verbal humiliation, the robbers discover Cristina's religious background, forcing her to strip down("You'd never guess you have such nice curves under those rags!"), before dressing her in a traditional habit, which naturally serves as a catalyst for much emotional malaise and physical manhandling at knifepoint, to the seeming dismay of good samaritan-slash-criminal, Aldo(Ray Lovelock).Why, he's not nearly as awful a sociopathic rapist as his two accomplices, is he...

Tramp buys the farm in the deleted "I bet I could slash fifty throats" scene from Cool Hand Luke(1967).
Though Aldo isn't willing to punctuate what seems to be a mere job to him with rape-tastic extracurriculars, nor defend the helpess women to any major degree against his fellow captors, he does develop an unlikely repoire with Margaret(Luisa Maneri), explaining that he never entered the bank during the robbery, waiting in the getaway car all along, though, through flashbacks it's revealed that he's a big fat liar, instead, having actually fired on the teller's desks and killing the hostage himself during the standoff with security.Eventually, the thugs divulge the embarrassing secret to her girls that Cristina isn't as pure as she makes herself out to be, causing the girls to lose much of their trust in her, and when Nino and Walter double-team Lucia(Laura Trotter) while Aldo forces the young nun to bear witness, it's slo-mo, disco themed, gang rape gold, with numerous mugging facial close ups.After much sunbathing, lounging around, drinking wine, Nino reading Faulkner's Sanctuary(get it?), and many cartoonish backhanders later(this one's ripe with 'em), Walter responds to one of the girl's failed escape attempts by forcibly fingering her(!) then murdering her by repeatedly shoving a bulky walking stick into her gravy boat(!!).In the finale, Cristina is forced to choose between the cross of her religious beliefs, or the bloody vigilante justice necessary to protect the lives of her remaining students.Spoiler:She gives a begging Nino a lethal injection after his wound goes badly infected, shoots Walter, and after one of the girls buckshots up Aldo's labonza and he stubbornly clings to life, all the girls clobber him to death with sticks(!!!).

"Raised by MASTODONS?!!! Why I'll...", growled Bamm-Bamm Rubble.
This Prosperi, also known as Frank Shannon, has a considerably less impressive filmography than his more famous namesake-in-film, helming movies like Mondo cannibale(1980) aka/White Cannibal Queen, on which he shared the director's chair with none other then Jess Franco, sword n' sandal epic Ercole al centro della terra(1961), which he co-directed with Mario Bava himself, Tecnica di un omicidio(1966), and 1976's Pronto ad uccidere, another collaborative effort with Lovelock, who provides an excellent half hour interview on the Severin disc, shedding light on Italy's hipness with exotic, foreign-sounding names at the time, his experiences working with the director, and how perception over the film's gratuitous violence and overall mean-spiritedness has changed over the years.Bolkan made a name for herself in Italo-fare like 1970's Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto, Fulci's Una lucertola con la pelle di donna(1971) and Non si sevizia un paperino(1972), as well as La caduta degli dei(1969) for Luchino Visconti.Among the young victims here, are Sherry Buchanan, who appeared in things like Tentacoli(1977), and Zombi Holocaust(1980), and Laura Trotter, of Incubo sulla città contaminata(1980) fame.Two Wops on the scale for this mostly standard slice of sleazy Italian cash-in fare that you'll likely be disappointed by, if you're expecting something along the lines of L'ultimo treno della notte(1978) or La casa sperduta nel parco(1980).Hell, Tarantino himself must've really liked it, judging by the...ahem, 'homage' ending of Deathproof(2004).Subject yourselves to it, I tell you.

Rimuovere il mio bastone da passeggio fuori della tua fica, per favore.

"Africa Addio"(1966)d/Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi

Tonight we'll focus on two Italian filmmakers who are no strangers to controversy.Having shocked the entire world in creating what would come to be known as the "mondo" film in 1962 with Mondo Cane, they would outdo themselves a thousand-fold with the release of tonight's entry just four years later, a searing portrait of a changing continent that the film's detractors(which include Roger Ebert) have accused of being bathed in pro-white European colonial racism(Europeans filmed in soft focus as their properties are seized, black Africans shot with a fish-eye lens from unflattering angles) and chock full of staged sequences, to which Jacopetti responded with an adamant denial, claiming that the only footage the two men ever staged appeared in the earlier Mondo Cane 2, and that everything one sees within Addio is completely real.Jacopetti even found himself being tried for murder in Italian court over the film, amidst accusations that one of the on-screen executions in the movie was staged for the cameras.He was eventually acquitted.West German protesters at screenings of the film in Berlin are looked upon as the first anti-racist movement that Germany had ever experienced, and the film was banned outright as racist in Italy.The U.S. cut, Africa:Blood and Guts, released four years later in 1970, is even more sensaltionalist.
Inevitably, I'm forced to interject my own personal feelings on the controversial film here.Addio is an important work, both shocking and thought-provoking, in that it reveals not a biased slant towards white or black(it really doesn't), but the depraved depths we as a species can sink to, if left to our own devices.The unflinching lens of two documentary filmmakers shows us our own preordained nature which harbors both redeeming good and deplorable evil.It's who we all are, it's what we all do to differing extents.Whether or not you can handle a film like this that evokes great emotion in every single frame depends entirely on how big the horse blinders you've chosen to experience life through are.If this all seems a bit too unsettling for you, I suggest you screen the film anyway, as it may just be the wake up call you need.

A cruel bonfire burns out of control.
At the outset, we see the dark continent as it says farewell to its old colonial ways, and welcomes a new era with Great Britain providing much pomp and circumstance as the guard changes.Then there's a fox hunt, only the fox in this case is dead, lending its scent to the hounds, and handled by a running African native.Then we see the trial of some Africans who've snuck onto a British-owned farm and murdered everyone in their sleep, slashing the tendons in the legs of the livestock as some added cruelty.We then turn to the auctioning of white European property and belongings to Africans who remain.A lush estate once owned by whites gets impromptu landscaping via explosions and bulldozers and is now occupied by a hundred Africans who bust up the furniture for a bonfire and use the bathtub as a makeshift playpen for multiple infants.Then we watch hundreds of black Africans trying to tame a group of wild horses, that, according to narration, is "physically racist" and fearful of being handled by the blacks.Finally, we bear witness to the mass southerly migration of displaced Boer farmers, before dropping in on a big game hunt, edited for time by a helicopter driving a bull elephant directly to a hunter so that he can shoot it dead from point blank range, as compared to a massive throng of natives group-spearing a wide variety of animal species, not excluding a bull elephant and a hippopotamus that they repeatedly spear like a colossal pin cushion.Then we witness European volunteers rescuing and rehabilitating a wounded,sick elephant, with one poor bastard losing his arm past the elbow in the massive beast's turd cutter.All together now,bleeech.Next we focus on the poacher element that has been exploiting the chaotic political climate to rape the African plains of countless animal skins and tons worth of ivory tusks, before watching a baby zebra rescued from its mother's lifeless,poached corpse by airlift as the sun sets.

The only spears not sticking out of this poor hippo is probably Britney.
The Italians document a massacre of Arabs by African insurgents in Zanzibar by plane, complete with burned out villages, mass graves, and beaches scattered with Muslim cadavers.The camera then follows the quelling of an Angolan rebel uprising by mercenaries, complete with firefight and obligatory smoked out,flaming corpses; before we turn to the Bantu massacre of Watusi in Rwanda as evidenced by piles of amputated hands and post-murder Bantu perps mugging for the camera.Before we're too sickened by human v. human violence, the lens again focuses on animal violence, as several antelope, elephants, and hippos are sent to their maker by point blank, high caliber death, then hacked into sections for the cameras(a pregnant hippo corpse is robbed of its unborn fetus and a jeep drags a grue-stained severed elephant head across the terrain in low points of the segment,where the Italians remark that the most ferocious animal in Africa has to be man himself.).A vast wasteland of dried animal bones is tragically panned across.We then set our sights on the miracle of South Africa, as bikini-clad Euro girls run, swing, and do trampoline flips in slow motion juxtaposed against the backdrop of Cape Town(my favorite segment,I ain't gonna lie to ya), then some Africans in traditional Zulu garb break out some instruments and play some rock n' roll, before we see modernized tribeswomen adopting the clothing and mannerisms of European women, and the League of Decency handing out bvds to Zulus(!).I say, put that Alabama blacksnake away, M'butu.Pantsify yourself, old chap.Then we follow a libidinous male lion unable to get his swerve on due to carloads of voyeuristic tourists.The aftermath of a muslim massacre in Tanganyika is captured on film, and then unrest in Uhuru Square where the filmmakers are nearly executed before someone notices that "they aren't white, they're Italians".A massacre in Stanleyville by Simba rebels is also documented, and the subsequent counterattack by mercenaries, black and white bodies alike feeding the scavengers.Finally, we examine the gold and diamond industry before focusing on a small group of penguins on the crashing surf at sunset.Wow.

White South African girls enjoying their favorite pastime: slo-mo trampoline flips.
Let the squeamish be forewarned, there's enough wholesale animal murder and mutilation(set to a mostly upbeat score by maestro Riz Ortolani)captured here for a hundred Umberto Lenzi movies, and nearly as much human slaughter to match it.The U.S. print(Blood and Guts)removes most of the non-exploitative material, leaving just 90 expurgated minutes worth of human cruelty, as opposed to the nearly two and a half hour running time of the director's cut, as included in Blue Underground's excellent Mondo Cane Collection, released a few years back; a necessary addition to any worthwhile genre collection, indeed.An amazing movie, by any standards, and completely successful in generating a response from its audience with its cruel and powerful imagery that few could dismiss easily.You may never see another movie like it, but you owe it to yourself to give it a shot, at least once.A closed minded leftist idiot like Roger Ebert may have given you zero stars back in 1967, but Addio, you're four wops from first frame to last, to me, baby.Highest recommendation.

"Don't back up over that unusual looking rumble strip, boys, you'll blow the tires..."