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.

The water supply for a large city zoo becomes contaminated with PCP, and the animals go crazy and get loose.

Director Prosperi began his career as an assistant director with Mario Bava and with whom he also wrote several screenplays. In 1966, he made his directorial debut, credited as Frank Shannon, with the thriller film, "Tecnica di un omicidio" and over the years he built a solid reputation as a director of crime-action films. He also occasionally directed comedies (with Lando Buzzanca or Alighiero Noschese) and, in the final stage of his career, at the beginning of the 1980s, several low-budget sword and sorcery films.

This is not among his best-known works, or at least it was not one of them until Severin picked it up. Quite possibly, it will become better known since they have put so much into their release. At the end of the day, it is a very average film, even by cheesy Italian horror standards, but it could find a cult following for those who are into the early 1980s horror scene 9which is a large group).

Various dangerous animals in a zoo are whipped up into a psychotic rage after their drinking water gets contaminated with PCP. Serious problems ensue when said animals escape and embark on a homicidal rampage.

Writer/director Franco Prosperi keeps the delightfully outrageous story zipping along at a snappy pace, stages the astounding animal attack set pieces with rip-snorting gusto, builds plenty of tension, delivers oodles of deliciously over-the-top gore, and astutely captures a delirious sense of escalating frenzy. Among the gloriously insane moments to be relished herein are a horny couple being attacked and eaten by rats (gratuitous babe boobs alert!),a cheetah chasing a speeding car down a street, an elephant crushing a woman's head, a tiger running rampant on a subway train, and a polar bear terrorizing a school full of obnoxious screaming kids. Guglielmo Mancori's glossy cinematography provides a neat polished look. Daniele Patucchi's funky-throbbing score hits the right-on groovy spot. Amazing lunacy.