HORRIFYING EXPERIMENTS OF THE SS LAST DAYS
(the beast in heat, la beastia in calore)1975 "Ivan Kathansky" (Luigi Batzella) Italy
starring: Brad Harris, Kim Gatti, Macha Magall, Xiro Papas, Sal Borris
Reading about this one in catologs or on the internet one might get the impression that this is a Cannibal Holocaust-style shocker, a film which would bring the most jaded viewer to tears and scar them for life...well, sorry to burst your bubble, but it's not true. It is a really sleazy cheese fest, which is goddamn funny, and really nasty, but not as "horrifying" as the title suggests.
The hight of world war 2, the nazi's are occupying a small Italian village. A sadistic female doctor has developed a crazed ape man (big goon Italian "Sal Borris") with a taste for unwilling women. The beast kinda looks like a cross between Herve` Velacheze and Danny Divito. The doctor has been injecting him with hormones, then she throws a naked female into his cage and watches as he violently rapes them. I don't know if the rape scenes were intentionally funny, but i was laughing my ass off.
What people fail to mention, is that 90% of the film is silly war footage. Brave freedom fighters rebelling against the nazis etc. Actually, having seen my share of Bruno Mattei efforts, i enjoyed these scenes as well. There are some hilariously trashy moments outside of the lab too, like a baby getting machine gunned, and an SS oficer shooting a girl in the twat after raping her so he doesn't poison his race!
Eventually, we do get back to the good stuff for an outrageous torture set piece, featuring men suspended head first in boiling water, gerbils eating a woman's stomach, and the beast raping a girl, then ripping off her vagina and eating it!
You should have guessed by now that the evil doctor would eventually be raped by her own creation, and of course she is.
Technically, the film itself is pretty inept, shoddy camera work, shadows of the crew visable a few times, and you gotta hear that awful dubbing. In one scene, a man is having trouble with his radio, and he says "must have blown a valve again." What the hell kind of radio has a valve in it? No wonder he was having trouble with it. Also of note is the large amount of naked men with their penises flopping around, and of course they're guys who should never be naked, luckily, there's plenty of boobies and bush to even things out:)
Probabaly the only serious aspect of the film is Guiliano Sorgini's (LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE) wild experimental score, which gives the goofy events somewhat of a sinister feel
Flaws aside, i haven't had this much fun watching a cheesy movie in awhile, and now i have to start collecting all the "nazi-sploitation" films.
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