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The Beast in Heat (1977)

Dir: Luigi Batzella (as Ivan Katansky)

The rarest of all the infamous UK 'Video Nasties', "The Beast in Heat" is also one of the few that actually lives up to it's reputation. At least in parts.

The opening title sequence warns us that we are about to enter the 'Realm of Trash' as an effective, if weird, concoction of sinister sound-scapes and noises plays over nothing but a red swastika on a black screen with only the title and the Director credits actually appearing.

From that we are instantly thrown into the main meat of the story, set in occupied Europe during WWII, as we meet Dr Krast (Macha Magall), a sadistic, Female Nazi who has been conducting experiments to create a 'Master Race'. Experiments which actually result in a wild 'Brute Man' (played by the huge Sal Boris, who because of his looks was cast as deformed brutes in most of his films, including Tinto Brass's excellent take on Nazi decadence "Salon Kitty", and also in "SS Girls" along with Magall) who is kept in the World's most unstable and wobbly cage.

It turns out the good Doctor is using female prisoners to test out 'The Beast's' virility. And sure enough her experiments have created a rampant psycho-sexual desire within her creation. An unfortunate woman is stripped (with open full frontal nudity) and tossed into his cage where she is brutally raped.
"What a you screaming for you little fool? After all, my creature is only showing you a little tenderness" states Krast to the screaming woman as a long assault sequence, full of guttural moans, ear piercing screams and numerous sex positions as the victim is flipped this way and that, takes place.
And only the fact that it's obvious 'The Beast' is not rightly placed on her to be actually penetrating saves this assault from being utterly nauseating.
When one of the guards is asked by Krast if he is excited at the spectacle he gets a couple of well paced slaps across the face for saying yes, as she screams at him "Spineless fool, a soldier of the Third Reich is not supposed to get excited at any spectacle"
It all ends on a final scream as the scratched and bloodied woman dies. Not that it makes any difference to 'The Beast' who carries on regardless.

It's one of the most exploitative openings this reviewer has passed his jaded eyes over, but it is only a starter for the main course of truly nasty exploitation to come.

We are then introduced to various Partisans who are fighting back against the occupying Germans.
The main hero of the piece is 'Drago' (Kim Gatti) who we meet blowing up a bridge (with obvious library gun sound effects and an explosion that is simply a rapid edit of still photos!). But we also learn that the Partisans are split up into various factions who seem to spend the entire film arguing with each other, not trusting each other and even betraying each other, in a series of exceedingly dull subplots.

Boring us some more, the film then introduces top billed Brad Harris (veteran of many a Euro crime/horror and fantasy movie) as the Priest Don Lorenzo, who supports the Partisans but hates all the killing. Though he gives us a great example of how bad the dialogue is in the film as he gives one of the Partisans his blessing, "The Lord will protect you…he's the best"!

The German Commander of the region is reprimanded by the General in charge of the experiment camp because of the destroyed bridge and so proceeds to brutally round up the area's old men, women and children to get information out of them concerning the Partisans, The Germans even toss a baby up in the air and shoot it just to show how nasty they are!

But when no one spills the beans Dr Krast steps in and offers her own brand of sadism to get the civilians to talk. Meanwhile the Partisans are making plans to fight back……..

This is a scummy slice of history. No way would a film like this ever get made with any kind of general world-wide release today. It goes from outstandingly nasty to outstandingly dull and was obviously made with as little money as possible.

Lets get the faults out of the way first. The first big fault with the film (and it's worse here than most Euro Trash) is the truly appalling dubbing and dialogue. Lot's of outrageously cheesy German accents fly around and the quality of the dubbing just makes it worse.
A classic example is the phone call by the General to the regional Commander which ends with a shouted "You are completely useless" despite the actor obviously not shouting and his lips not moving before 'useless' is heard!
The Partisans are just as badly dubbed and spout dialogue like "we seem to be at the mercy of Priests and prostitutes"!
Eventually it really starts to wear the viewer down.

On top of that the Partisan scenes are very taxing on the viewers patience. They're a useless bunch who spend almost all their scenes bitching at each other wasting valuable exploitation time.
And when they all start to be bumped off (I tell you this to give you, dear reader, some kind of hope of rescue from them) you are actually pleased as it means you won't have to spend so much time with the idiots.
The authentic location shooting helps these scenes out though, with some nice shots of crumbling old village housing and rocky mountain slopes.

The tiny budget is most notable in the 'war film' aspects of the movie. When any kind of large military set up is needed, or a battle needs more than single figure participants, the film slips into appallingly obvious stock footage from other war movies. This footage is awfully washed out and damaged resulting in such a low picture quality that none of it, in anyway at all, matches the rest of the film.
And things get even worse when a very silly model plane is used during a bombing scene. What this would have looked like on a cinema screen is a very scary thought indeed. Most of this footage is in fact taken from an earlier, straight action war movie.

But the main reason why this film exists though (and for 1977 it's very strong indeed) is the Nazi atrocity footage. And it's here that the film delivers what it promises.

True the sex is badly staged, with the aforementioned rapes being just too damn chaotic to imply any actual penetration and one scene has a woman climb on top of the regional Commander and start to thrust and moan wildly despite it being very obvious that the guys penis is still tucked firmly into his trousers, but the nudity is eye opening in it's sheer quantity.

All the Women are stripped at one time or another in the film and the camera takes great delight in zooming into as many hairy crotches as possible.
But, in a rare case of equal opportunities exploitation, the film spends plenty of time ogling flopping cocks as well as male prisoners are humiliated and tortured.
One unexpected sequence has three completely naked men chained up by the wrists and whipped by Krast before she strips off in front of one and proceeds to fondled him and rub her breasts over his bloodied chest. Resulting in an obvious observation by the man, "you're a bitch in heat"!
This delightfully equal rights sequence ends with an off screen castration just to lighten thing up.

And this kind of scene is a perfect example of just how far this film goes out of its way to be exploitative.
Not just in the sudden stripping of the women, to supply as much pubic hair as possible, but in scenes like the one where, for no other reason than its nasty, a women is executed by being shot between the legs by having a pistol stuck into her bush (in close up).

The big exploitation set-piece though is hellish tour around Krast's torture chamber.
The film really goes all out to offend during this outrageously bad taste sequence.
While 'The Beast' rapes another screaming victim in his cage, various other men and women are being tortured. Never once shying away the camera dwells on these assorted atrocities. We have a close up of electrodes clipped to the vagina of a screaming woman as the volts are applied, a naked man is hung upside down and dunked into a trough of water in between bouts of flogging (the camera once again making sure it shows his genitals the entire time), a woman has her nails pulled out with pliers, and various naked and bleeding men and women hung up against walls.

One hysterically bad scene though, in the middle of all this truly exploitative nastiness, is a naked (of course) woman tied to a table with what are supposed to be rats crawling on her blood coated belly. But this is one torture that elicits only mirth, as it's obvious the rats are really…cuddly Guinea Pigs!
This whole, genuinely disgusting, episode ends with the infamous scene where 'The Beast' rips a chunk from his victims' pubic hair (in close up) and proceeds to eat it!
And just as your mind is truly wondering what in hell it's doing subjecting itself to such things we have an extreme close-up of the woman's bloodied crotch shoved in our faces as he rips another chunk of hair out leaving us with the female guards licking their lips as 'The Beast' chows down on his furry delicacy with blood dripping down his chin!

This whole section of the movie is probably the most explicit sequence of totally gratuitous exploitation in any of the 'Nasties' and aside from the extreme Hong Kong CAT III and Japanese movies of the late 80's/90's it's as strong a sequence (that is in anyway well made and clinically shot) as you will find outside of hardcore torture porn. Perhaps only portions of the 'snuff' in "Emanuelle in America" are as unpleasant. Sure it's trashy, but it overcomes this simply due to how much it is openly willing to show.

It's hard to judge performances because of the dubbing, but I can say that Marcha Magall is suitably evil as Dr Krast (and looks decidedly sexy in her black 'SS' uniform) and relishes her characters over the top nastiness as Krast delivers lines like "later I'll get to know you better my spirited little fawn" to a defiant (and yeah, you guessed it, naked) female prisoner.
As for Sal Boris he never utters a word (only lots of grunts and sexual growls) and in his few scenes does nothing but rape. Nothing else at all.

The finale is full on chaos and the ending, which is obviously meant to be poignant, actually ends on more of an unintentional, black comic laugh than anything else.

To sum up then. If the sheer level of exploitation seen in the torture/rape scenes had been kept up the film would be a truly intense, if rather stomach churning, experience. Full of extreme sexual degradation, the odd splash of gore, amazingly frequent and explicit nudity, and nasty violence "The Beast in Heat" is a sleaze hounds treat.
But as it is though the badly staged battles, stock war footage, truly painful dubbing and the irritating Partisan sequences really water down the films overall impact. And as often as the film delivers prime examples of unapologetic exploitation, it also delivers just as much irritation and boredom.

Amazingly it has got an uncut DVD release in America as "SS Hell Camp" and it's definitely worth tracking down if you're an exploitation freak. And hey, all the best people are.