J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic!!! La Bestia In Calore, is described on its latest DVD Release as being the most "Outrageous" of all the Nazisploitation or Nazi Exploitation or Nazi Sex Exploitation or Nazi Sexploitation flicks. And I guess there's credence to lend to this, seeing as how it's about a caged Neanderthal with an insatiable libido and more back hair than a Saint Bernard. That DVD release, as SS Hell Camp, would probably do just about anything to get a little controversy and thus, sales. Is La Bestia in Calore the most outrageous? Well, I wasn't exactly outraged watching it, mostly because it came off as a complete and total joke. A bad joke at that. Part of... The 2008 Winter of Weird! Fall in love with MORE Video Nasties! For the record, the most offensive and bad film to be crapped by the Nazisploitation Subgenre into Grindhouses everywhere was probably Gestapo's Last Orgy which was an experiment in pushing every possible button to piss people off and succeeding mostly in making a terrible film. That's not the only Nazisploitation flick out there, nor is it the only Nazisploitation flick featuring Nazis Getting Laid, nor is it even the only Nazisploitation flick about Nazis Getting Laid that made the Video Nasty List. On the extremely nasty side you've got Gestapo's Last Orgy; on the slightly less offensive, but still really bad and offensive side is SS Experiment Camp; on the "meaning well", but still being completely offensive and crappy is Love Camp 7 and on the extreme other side is La Bestia In Calore or as it was released, and banned, in England: The Beast In Heat! Here's a film that tries to be as offensive and disgusting as Gestapo's Last Orgy. In fact, it tries desperately to be the most disgusting and offensive Nazisploitation flick ever made. It also tries hard not to be derivative of the other films in this shit-bag subgenre. To these ends director Luigi Batzella (credited here as Ivan Kathansky, which didn't help) and writer Lorenzo Artale (credited with "Dialogue" to "Ivan Kathansky's" script) attempt to pull every offensive rabbit corpse out of every Nazi hat out there to piss off the audience and hopefully titillate them along the way. However, this isn't the standard "Rape Camp" set up by the Nazis, featuring Nazis Getting Laid and various horrendous experiments to go with this already degrading topic. Instead, this is a film based in Occupied Italy with actual war scenes, resistance, freedom fighting and patriotism... to go with the whole Nazis Getting Laid motif... which I hate. I wonder if another angle Batzella and Artale were shooting for was comic relief, because this horse apple comes off as a completely and utterly unintentionally funny, in spite of its subject matter! I'm not sure if it was the American Translation and dubbing of this movie that made it such a stupid crack-up, but if this one is even vaguely verbatim, I'm thinking that Lorenzo "Dialogue" Artale should think about replacing his name in the credits with "Alan Smithee". Batzella clearly didn't want his name on this puke stain. We'll get to some of this dialogue later. The Beast in Heat revolves primarily about our main villain, the beautiful (except for her Nazi Uniform) Dr. Ellen Kratsch (Macha Magall who looks much, much better once she removes said uniform). Her attempts to genetically engineer the "Master Race" are her biggest claim to fame in the ranks of Hitler's SS, although for all intents and purposes this has been a complete failure! I'm talking, of course, about "The Beast" of the title, played by Salvatore Baccaro (credited, somehow, as Sal Boris). If this is indicative of what the Nazis were shooting for, let me tell you, I'm not at all surprised that we won the war, folks. The movie poster (and VHS Cover Art) would have you believe that this thing is some kind of scary werewolf stalking the countryside. It's no such thing. What we have here is a fat, hairy, giggling and hyperventilating goof ball in a cage, to whom Kratsch (probably pronounced "Crotch") throws beautiful naked women for his pleasure. Once he gets them he rapes them in all kinds of varied positions while hyperventilating and giggling like a 13 year old nerd with a Playboy. Among the many, many, many things wrong with the scene is the fact that he seems to be "Raping" them with his oft-revealed limp penis. Maybe that's why most of the time it looks like he's merely rubbing on their hips. Oh, Batzella tries to make this look horrible in some way by putting in lots of fake blood and having the actresses scream like mad, but the gore effects are almost as scary as those seen in Zombie Lake! Man, oh, man... Drop some store-bought Halloween Blood on a friend and it would be more convincing. Although, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't call all the blood curdling screaming a real mark of "acting" either. I can't imagine any woman whose job it was to roll around naked with Salvatore Baccaro (who looks like a cross between Andre the Giant and Wolverine... with Wolverine's height) would be thinking of anything but screaming as shrilly as possible. Hell, if I were naked in the same room as this guy, I'd be screaming and clawing at the walls, and I'm pretty sure that I could kick his ass! But that's just one of the nasty tricks that Doctor Kratsch and her henchwomen (who look like Morticia and Wednesday Addams, even when they're naked) have up their sleeves... when they're wearing sleeves. Although the Italian Resistance (led by Gino Turini's Drago) has an agent in the bed of the local Nazi leader, Kratsch has her own methods of getting the captured Resistance fighters to talk. This includes, somehow, her tying the men up, naked, taking off her clothes and rubbing her lithe, firm body against their own hairy, rough nastiness. So, um... who is torturing whom, then? Seriously, if that's Torture, then I wouldn't EVER talk. The one guy who does burst out while this is going on gets his whacker cut off. I had to double check to see if this was filmed on Bizarro world! It reminded me of those Monty Python sketches in which the Spanish Inquisition would seat their prisoners in "THE COMFY CHAIR" and poke them with pillows! But the whole bloody part remained for the rest of the movie. And it sucked. Two noteworthy things here... Unlike most Nazisploitation flicks, this one isn't directly anti-Semitic. Don't get me wrong, just looking at a swastika implies such things, but this is more relating to occupied Italy than any actual concentration camps. Further, this misogynistic film in a subgenre of misogynistic films is actually slightly less misogynistic than its rivals. Which isn't to say that it's kind to women... it's just equally cruel to men (see above whacker-ectomy reference). Men are put through basically all of the same tortures as the women (except for having to share a cage with Boris). This brings us to the very reasons this terrible film was banned in the UK as a Video Nasty! The British Board of Film Classification and the Director of Public Prosecution based the prosecutions and investigations on the England's "Obscene Publications Act 1959 & 1964" which begins with the following passage: "The law makes it an offence to publish, whether for gain or not, any content whose effect will tend to 'deprave and corrupt' those likely to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it. This could include images of extreme sexual activity such as bestiality, necrophilia, rape or torture." While it's debatable that watching a film like this could corrupt a viewer (I wasn't particularly inspired, but then again, I'm in my Mid-Thirties), the rest of that paragraph holds pretty much true to the events of this film. Extrapolating a little, the Act that started all this Movie Banning (the Video Recordings Act 1984) refuses any film from exemption if it contains (and I quote): "(a) human sexual activity of acts of force or restraint associated with such activity; (b) mutilation or torture of, or other acts of gross violence towards, humans or animals; (c) human genital organs or human urinary or excretory functions; (d) techniques likely to be useful in the commission of offences"! It's as if the lines were written with The Beast in Heat in mind... except for the animal violence. Scenes of torture abound here, usually while the torture victims are naked, whether it makes any sense for them to be or not. There's the forced removal of one dude's manhood, yes (this is off screen, of course, because the budget was lower than the film makers' morals). Then there are the repeated simulated rapes by the flaccid Boris, who blurs the fine line between man and ape to the point that his acts could almost be classed as bestiality. There are men tied up and hung, strapped to racks and viciously beaten. One woman is implied to be executed with a bullet to the vulva!!! There are women strapped to tables with (in a scene reminiscent of Women Behind Bars) wires attached to their labia for some shock mistreatment! Boris even takes to ripping out pubic hair and eating it. All of this is accompanied by plenty of fake blood and absolutely no wounds whatsoever. In fact, the whole thing comes off as incredibly silly, not at all disturbing. It actually looked like the actors were having fun playing naked make-believe (unless, that is, you're in the cage with Boris). None of it even looks vaguely real. Case in point... there is a torture method shown in this romper room where a woman has an upside-down bucket strapped to her tummy with a fire burning on top and she's screaming and writhing around so dramatically, I'm positive that she was dying laughing after each time the dorky director yelled "CUT!" But the implication isn't that this burns, it's that the bucket has rats in it and they're trying to escape the heat by boring down through her body. But then the bucket is removed and what we see is her perfectly intact (and toned) naked belly with some lamely smeared red liquid on it (still with finger prints visible) and two, very fat, very short-tailed guinea pigs with their fur dyed black sitting there peacefully sniffing around. Uh-huh... Folks, Guinea Pigs don't look like fucking Rats. It looked like somebody had given their hot, naked girlfriend a couple of cute, expensive pets and they were tickling a little... and maybe she also received some ill-advised red massage lotion. Then there's the other hot naked woman getting her fingernails removed. This looks almost as real as something you'd find in a dime-admission haunted house in some jackass' barn in Serepta, Louisiana around Halloween. It looks like someone put on some Lee Press On Nails without the glue, then someone spilled some red-dyed Caro syrup on her hands, then gently removed them. Even if it did look even remotely real, it would be virtually impossible to take this scene seriously as, amid the screams, the woman actually says "You're hurting me!" "Oh, during an act of Torture? Well, how rude of me! I'll stop right now! Here's a free coupon to our exclusive spa as an apology for my fucking up your forced manicure. HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!" If only that were the worst line in the film. Actually some lines weren't even translated. There is one entire exchange that the American Dubbers didn't bother creating English Dialogue for. You see the parties engaging in a conversation, but you only hear the screams. This could have been a chilling indication that the pain was so great that the screams drowned out the conversation, but no, it wasn't that at all, man! The screams were from one of the two people who were supposedly talking. This is just one example from the most poorly dubbed movie I think I've ever seen (and that is saying a fuck load)! But the dialogue gets worse, man! Just when a scene with Drago and a the local priest starts to get serious in their conversations and I think well MAYBE they had some intention at quality here, the priest throws out one of the weirdest lines I've ever heard. "The Lord won't betray you! HE'S THE BEST!" says Brad Harris' Father Don Lorenzo, followed by a quick wink and a smile! What the fuck? When did this movie become Nazi Wayne's World, man? God is "The Best"? Is that what they taught you at the Seminary? "Oremus, Oremus, Donibus... God is the Best, bro!"? I half expected it to go on like that. Drago: "Yeah, God's better than Billy Idol, Dude! He's EXCELLENT!" Don Lorenzo: "Good call my friend! God totally Rocks!" Drago: "With that God Dude on our side, we're like totally sure to beat those BOGUS Nazis, man!" Don Lorenzo: "Yeah, dude, it's like 'Hi, I'm Hitler and I'm a big Sphincter!'" Drago: "To-ho-ho-hotally!" Don Lorenzo: "Party On, Drago!" Drago: "Party On, Don Lorenzo!" And then they could all play some air solos and make the guitar sounds with their mouths for a while and sing "Wayne's World War II, Wayne's World War II! Nazi Party Time! It's Excrement!" Poor Brad Harris, who was actually an American AND an international Body Building champion, seemed to be the Father of an entire Congregation of BAD LINES that followed him everywhere. When the Nazi Captain walks up to him WHILE HE'S DRESSED in his priestly vestments he says "You are the parish priest for this area, aren't you?" and Don Lorenzo actually answers "I see you are very well informed!" Yeah, he's a fucking Nazi Sherlock Holmes, isn't he? It's got absolutely nothing to do with what you're wearing! For Fuck's Sake! I'd have given real money if the Nazi Dick had walked up to Don Lorenzo while he's dressed in the black robes and asked if he was the Priest only to have Don Lorenzo get all serious and respond "Uh... Trick or Treat???" But no! No such luck. I wish he had been that quick witted, but the poor priest is so wooden that all his laughs are unintentional. At one point in a fit of frustration he actually cries out "What has the church to do with God?" I... I don't know where to BEGIN to answer that question! I mean, really, how can anybody take this melted douche bottle of a badly edited movie seriously? Even the scenes that could theoretically be taken vaguely seriously are horribly executed, like the badly spliced in and mismatched stock footage standing in for War Scenes! The badly added in scenes with the actors in this film gun fighting in said scenes are laughable! People are shot, stabbed and riddled with Machine Gun Bullets, but there is no blood and never a wound! So was this World War II or a local Air Soft Tournament? It's like "War is Hell, kinda!" Of course it does go perfectly with the poorly simulated sex, the really bad fake punches in the fist fights and the obvious use of dummies for the long falls. The calculation of the film makers to ensure that this film is as offensive as possible (therefore controversial, therefore profitable) only succeeded in making it a laughing stock! I'm actually thinking we should thank Lorenzo Artale and Luigi Batzella for this. I'm sure they've set the Neo-Nazi movement back by at least 20 years. Or they would have if anybody watched this thing. I tell you, though, that Macha Magall is really cute, when she's not wearing Nasty Nazi regalia. But don't worry; she wasn't only identified with La Bestia In Calore, AKA SS Hell Camp! No, she had already diversified her resume in the year 1977 with a film called L'Uomo La Donna e La Bestia and with another called Private House of the SS. Yeah, her career was all over the map. A rule of thumb about the Video Nasties: If you Mix Sex and Violence you've got a potential Video Nasty. If you take out the horrific stuff and you're left with something hot, it's eligible for investigation by the DPP! In the case of this movie, without the Nazis and the squat, naked Ewok, you might have been left with a fairly sexy late-70s low budget, European Soft Core Porn. Nazis ruin everything man, and their very presence turned this one from somewhat hot to seriously nasty! That said, La Bestia In Calore simply had to be a joke. Oh, it's still offensive, but it's more comical to see how they attempted to be offensive and fouled it all up hilariously. Yeah, it's safe to say that this one is no Schindler's List! It's not even Ilsa She Wolf of the SS! It's more... "Kratsch, She-DOG of the Video Nasty List"! Yeah, it's ironic calling someone as cute as Magall a Dog... but The Beast In Heat, not ironic at all. This movie is a total dog, turkey, bomb... it's a DogTurkeyBomb with the approximate special effects adroitness of Zombie Lake, worse dubbing than "Kung Fu Theater" and worse dialogue than Friday Night Lights! All that, plus the curse of having to look at about a mile and three quarters worth of flabby, hairy MAN ASS! Argh! Put your pants back on Chewbacca! Fuck! I'm done! I'm finished... I HATE Nazis!