While movie theaters around the globe were filled with '70s epics depicting nature gone rampant in films as diverse as The Food of the Gods and Day of the Animals, it wasn't until the following decade that Italians got the final word on the subject with the most elaborate and daffiest entry in the series: Wild Beasts, the final film from Franco Prosperi (best known as one-half of the team responsible for kicking off the disreputable mondo genre).
In a busy Frankfurt zoo, veterinarian Rupert Berner (Aldrich) is noticing some unusually aggressive behavior among some of the animals, including a newborn lion. When the zoo's security system goes down that night, some elephants lead the charge through the walls and unleash a stampeding horde of crazed beasts upon the city. Rupert's co-worker, Laura (De Selle, an Italian exploitation vetern from Cannibal Ferox and House on the Edge of the Park) has a nasty run-in with a ferocious big kitty and offers her aid, while a concerned cop and buddy of Rupert's (Nightmare City's Bologna) tries to hold back the tide of clawed pandemonium sweeping across the city. A c
heetah's high speed chase with a VW Bug results in a fiery crash, hordes of rats swarm into a necking couple in their car, a polar bear slowly plods up the steps of a dance academy to terrorize the students, and other animal mayhem erupts as the film reveals the reason for the animal's behavior (involving PCP and their corrupted water supply), then careens straight into a delirious twist ending.
Given the subject matter, most viewers might expect another avalanche of animal violence in the vein of filmmakers like Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lenzi, and, uh, Prosperi himself. While this film contains a few moments of gratuitous furry sadism (mostly involving the rats ganging up on an unfortunate feline and a subsequent immolation on a car windshield), it's mostly concerned with delivering ridiculous, pulpy thrills involving big zoo animals tearing up everything in their path in a major European city. The opening text about man's madness infecting simpler life forms like animals and kids seems to set up some more queasy attempts at justification like many of Prosperi's past films, but this is basically a trash cinema offering at heart with an eye trained far more carefully on the horror box office than any sort of public education.
The mid-'80s VHS release of Wild Beasts from Lightning Video was no great shakes and looked far too murky for comfort throughout, but at least it blindsided a few viewers expecting a more traditional "when animals attack" offering. For some reason it sat out a huge chunk of the DVD era and only made its official debut in 2011, first as a no-frills Swedish disc and then courtesy of the good folks at Camera Obscura as a special edition following hot on their astonishing release of Prosperi and Jacopetti's Mondo Candido. The transfer is quite excellent and on par with their strongest previous outings; it's much cleaner and fresher than the old tape master by a long shot, and the 1.66:1 framing looks comfortable throughout. This appears to be sourced from an English language version as well, given the occasional burned-in English 
title cards superimposed for a few location signs. The English audio track is typical for the time, dubbed throughout and only occasionally synching up with an occasional actor speaking that language on the set. It's one of the rare non-Argento Italian horror films shot in genuine Dolby Stereo, and that's carried over here with some surprisingly ambitious separation effects in some of the attack scenes on the two-channel track. The Italian and German tracks are provided as well, with optional German and Engilsh subtitles provided. The English subs are not dubtitles and adhere closely to the Italian version, which is a bit more serious and professionally recorded than the English one. However, it's also a lot less fun.
Prosperi himself contributes the biggest extra here, a new video interview clocking in at nearly half an hour in which he talks about the film's compromised production situation when it had to switch locations after a few days shooting in what is now Zimbabwe. He spends much time discussing his animal stars, including stories about their trainers and owners, the fatigue levels of the more memorable players, and the way you can film a cheetah chasing a car. (Hint: it involves tying a chicken to the bumper.) Late Italian film critic Antonio Buschini discusses the film in separate video piece (which also includes a sad testimonial from one of the DVD's special features guys), including a useful differentiation between the two Italian directors named Franco Prosperi (both of whom had some pretty crazy genre credits). The Italian trailer is also included, and the nifty newspaper-style menus make use of the strange, jazzy theme music by Daniele Patucchi (who also recorded a ludicrous vocal version of it called "Remember Tomorrow" you can only hear on the rare vinyl soundtrack). The packaging also includes a fairly exhaustive overview of killer animal cinema in both English and German by Marcus Stiglegger. It's a bit pricey but totally worth it
