These aren't so much bad as sleazy, greasy grindhouse movies, but they deserve mention here. One of the benefits of living in LA is having access to strange little pockets of film curation everywhere, and at least three venues that provide top-shelf horror and exploitation screenings on a regular basis: the Tarantino-curated New Beverly Cinema, the art/trash mecca The Cinefamily, and the recently-opened Spielberg Theatre inside the historic Grauman's Egyptian. The latter of the three has a naturesploitation series running all summer called
Camp Void [warning: VIOLENCE]
NSFW content. Click to show.Camp Void had its inaugural screening last night, an animal attack double feature that kicked off with a 70th birthday celebration for an ex-Manson Girl who comes to every horror and exploitation movie the Egyptian shows, and then some vintage Jaws rip-off trailers before the main event:
Day of the Animals is your standard "humans vs. crazy animals" story bumped up a few notches by a Lola Schifrin score, above-average cinematography, some surprisingly graphic onscreen violence for its PG rating, and a bare-chested Leslie Nielsen inhaling scenery with force of a Midwestern supertornado as a leering ad exec driven insane by UV rays:
Wild Beasts (1984), on the other hand, is the last feature film by Franco Prosperi, the man who helped give the world the
Mondo Cane movies and the astoundingly tasteless antebellum mockumentary
Goodbye Uncle Tom. Wild Beasts is somewhat toned down in gore and outrageousness from his more well-known work, but there's plenty of garbage here for the trash-hungry. An entire zoo is driven insane by industrial runoff and escapes to terrorize the city of Frankfurt, including elephants rampaging through an airport runway and a cheetah running down a convertible. There's also a cringe-inducing scene where about 30 live rats get immolated with a flamethrower (knowing Prosperi he probably would've killed an elephant or tiger onscreen if he could've afforded it).
