18 Jun 2011

The Beast in Heat - Will's Review

Imagine some really incompetent Italian film makers set out to make a movie about a resistance group in occupied Italy.

Now imagine that some rouge element in the production crew were intent on making the Italian version of 'Allo 'Allo.

Finally, imagine that, upon completion, the producers realised that the film wasn't very good, and so went back and did some re-shoots to work in a sexploitation sub-plot about a man-made Neanderthal beast thing, that the Nazi's keep in a cage and use to rape as part of their bizarre interrogation techniques.

Oh, and then dub the whole thing really badly and give all the higher ranking Nazis terribly English accents.

If your imagination is good (and your expectations low), the film in your head is probably quite a lot like "The Beast In Heat".

Only Better.

The "Draw" in this movie is 'the beast' (short hairy dude), which, as I mentioned, the SS have created in a lab to... rape women, y'know, for interrogation and stuff...

Oddly though, this happens in the very first scene, leaving the movie with no-where really to go; I did learn something though; apparently being raped by a short hairy dude will cause your mouth to bleed, and bruises and lacerations to appear on your chest, even though he does nothing obvious to cause them, and may even lead to death!

Thankfully, the rapes in this movie are so badly done that it's difficult to be offended by them. Usually, I find 'light-hearted' rape to be more offensive, as it some how lessens the severity of an awfull, awfull crime, but come ON...

"The Beast" can apparently see the camera...

I will give the short hairy dude his dues though - no matter how much a girl struggles, he seems to be able to penetrate with ease - first time every time, without using his hands; Impressive!

From this opening, we cut to the actual war-movie part of the film, which centres around a group of Partisan Italians trying to make life difficult for the Nazis, by blowing up bridges and what-not. Only one of them is ethicist opposed to killing under any circumstances (I'm not making this up).

The Partazans are mostly men, but there is one women in their ranks; her job is to gather inelegance by sleeping with the comic relief Nazi. I say 'Comic relief Nazi', he's slightly deshevled, and has a silly voice (at least in the dubbed version) but generally, there is no (intentional) comedy in the film.#

Which makes this bit so much the stranger:

"Yes General Von Klinkerhoffen?"

The only other (i think) deliberate "gag" in the movie, also involves this guy and his mistress. A few seconds after the above call, she makes a deft escape without pants-nazi's underlings seeing her...



The lesser know "carry On" film,
"Carry on Molesting"

As lame as the Nazi's in this movie may be, the Partezans are even worse! Almost every man in the village is one of them, but rather than apparently getting about their daily lives, every single one of them is in hiding - worse the rest of the village all know who and where they are - even the children! and somehow the Nazi's all know that they all know, and so make occasional trips into the village to kidnap women and children to torture for information, and to have a go at baby-clay pigeon shooting...


A New Olympic sport is born!

Perhaps the most bizzare aspect of the whole village being in on the partizan's secrates however, is that although they are trusted with the identities and locations of the men in hiding, they are apparently NOT entrusted with the knowledge that one of their number is a spy - the woman who is acting as Pants-Nazi's mistress is hated throughout the village, for shagging a German! This does however lead to the lamest insult, and oddest 'comeback' I think I've even heard...


Truth be told though, the whole movie is a thinly veiled excuse to show different methods of torture - One woman he's her fingernails pulled off (which is hilariously dubbed with a calm "Stop it, you're hurting me"), one has her genitals electrocuted (which seemingly causes them to bleed - unless it as just unfortunate timing and she was getting her 'monthly gift' when the Nazis took her) one has an upturned bucket placed on her stomach, with a fire built on it, one is strapped to a large wheel, one has her considerable bush ripped of and eaten by The Beast (!) and one has her stomach painted bright red, and tame black guinea pigs are allowed to play on her (I am told that they are supposed to be rats, and they are supposed to be biting her, but there is no information to this effect on screen) - the oddest punishment however is dished out to one of the men; he is stripped naked and chained up and then (the horrors) head Nazi rubs her bare boobs all over him and (possibly -its only implied) goes down on him, poor thing!

Actually, its this 'attrocity' which leads to the firms other great face pulling, the guy chained next to the man receiving the oral cross-examination starts freaking out and screaming 'I want you I waaaaaant you" at the Nazi, and is rewarded thus: 

That the first time I've ever laughed out loud
while THAT happens in a movie.

Quick random thought - How prevalent was bleach hair in war-time Italy? as a few of the girls have carpets that don't match the drapes... Also; how common was it for SS scientists to wear stockings and suspenders AND NOTHING ELSE under their lab coats?


So, this is without question, the worst of the 4 Video Nasties we've watched so far (and worse than the couple I'd seen prior to starting this progect), bit how does it stand up from a yechnical point of view.

Many of the Nazi-uniforms are fancy-dress grade, The script has offices starting an awfull lot of sentences with "We germans...", The film was apparently scored before it was edited (In one instance, the backgroud music stops mid-note when the scene changes), War scenes make liberal use of badly matched stock-footage, there are some sub-thunderbirds model shots, and the dubbing is so bad that the movie feels like a comedy re-edit.

It's one saving grace was this guy, and his God infommercial:

SOLD!



Human Body Count: 28*
Animal Body Count: 0 
Boob Count: 10 pairs**
Most memorable death: Gurning castration.

*Most in the standard "War film" segments

**Approximate - It was difficult to keep track of which pairs we had, and had not seen before, as large chunks of the movie are wall-to wall boobs. Also I'm reasonably sure that in the big nude / torture scene some of the girls are playing more than one roll!

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the "Reader Reviews" post for this movie.

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