MAU-MAU (1955)

  In true classic exploitation style this was marketed at the time like it was some nudie-cutie featuring romping nekked natives. In reality what you get is mostly just really dull newsreel footage and a blandly narrated documentary about a Kenyan tribe rising up against British colonial rule. It is mildly interesting in that it's basically the blueprint for what became mondo movies in the next decade. 

SAVAGE MAN ... SAVAGE BEAST (1975)

 This mondo movie focuses on man's relationship with the animal kingdom. Most specifically hunting and eating them. It also juxtaposes footage of animals doing the same things. They also throw in some footage of filthy vegetarian hippies rolling around at garbage-strewn festivals to make some sorta point about something or another.This one was early enough in the mondo cycle that it at least does attempt to raise some questions and not be just another FACES OF DEATH-style shock-a-thon/snuff film which is what these things would ultimately devolve into. Some beautiful nature shots mixed with some harsh realities and some most-likely staged stuff(a guy getting eaten by lions?). Oh and we get to see some tribe have sex with holes in the ground to fertilize the earth and make more animals to hunt. One of the better made examples of this scummy genre that's obviously not really meant for animal lovers or overly-sensitive types(which I'm guessing in 2020 describes about 90% of the population).  

The DVD I have of this is just a copy of the Australian VHS which is slightly cut so I'm assuming the uncut version might be a bit rougher.

Re-released as SAVAGE TEMPTATION

THE KILLING OF AMERICA (1981)

 I first saw this shockumentary back in the VHS rental days along with all the other FACES OF DEATH, TRACES OF DEATH etc., etc.-type videos and those all kinda blend together in my foggy memory. Just yesterday I got the opportunity to see the Japanese cut of this, which is also sometimes known under the snazzy exploitation title of VIOLENCE USA, and hear the director(Sheldon Renan) give his thoughts on making the film and what it all means to him. While this one does get lumped in with all the other shock videos that came out in the 80s I think it delves a bit deeper and hearkens back more philosophically to the mondo-movies that came out in the 60s and 70s with the main glaring exception that in this case all of the footage is actually real and mostly culled from news sources or security cameras. There is, at least in this Japanese version, a strong anti-gun bias and it all ends in a big hippie love-fest with John Lennon that kinda made me want to shoot my brains out but besides this it's a pretty compelling look at what living in a large multi-racial, easily media-manipulated western country is like when anger(or as in many cases here just insanity and/or stupidity) leads to violent outbursts. I do need to re-watch the USA cut to see all the differences besides some strange feel-good stuff with a dog playing with a Frisbee, footage of the grand canyon and a less grim-sounding Japanese narrator.



                                                                   Mexican poster!:

The perfect punk song that shows up in the film!:

MONDO CANE (1962)

 Historically important because this is the one that kicked off the whole "mondo" genre of shocking documentary-style films. This of course eventually led to stuff like the FACES OF DEATH series and VHS comps like DEATH SCENES and that type of snuff-esque material. While these latter efforts focused entirely on death and gore for the sake of shock alone this one is a way more artistic piece of work that at it's core is about the differences between so-called civilized society of the modern-day(modern-day 1962 anyway) and the primitive world of more native peoples(mostly in New Guinea). It transitions between these two places and leaves it up to the viewer to decide who the real "savages" are.
 I was grateful to get a chance to view an actual film print of this last night on the big screen and after viewing it many times on old crappy VHS or cheap-o DVD versions this is really an amazing upgrade that gave me a new appreciation of the power of this film in all it's bug-eating, pig-bashing glory.
 There are 3 directors credited on this. Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi being the two that everyone remembers and Paolo Cavara being the third fellow who after this came out with information that many of the sequences here were not as authentic as they are presented. He even made a satirical condemnation of the whole mondo genre with THE WILD EYE in 1967 which I really need to check out soon.

MONDO BIZARRO (1966)

                                     "To the maggot in the cadaver, the cadaver is infinity"

 I know of director Lee Frost mainly from his early nazi-sploitation flick LOVE CAMP 7 and also THE BLACK GESTAPO, THE THING WITH TWO HEADS and a couple of other weird-o exploitation "classics". I didn't know until recently that he also directed a handful of pseudo-documentaries/mondo-movies in the 60's. This one deals with some strange rituals all over the world including a voodoo gathering, some Germans getting off watching Nazi plays, a Japanese massage parlor that uses eggs instead of lotions, a trip to Fredrick's of Hollywood to look at ass-less underwear, "peace-creep" hippie protesters and other various peeping-Tom/hidden-camera spectacles. Right from the opening shots there's tons of multi-ethnic boobs on display and each set gets it's own theme music which is nice. There's also a creepy sense of probably illegal voyeurism that runs throughout. It gets a little slow towards the end when it gets bogged down following some Arabian slave-traders and that's where I started to nod off but overall an interesting obscure curiosity that I feel lucky to have gotten a chance to see in a theater the way pervs of yesteryear woulda viewed it.
 One interesting footnote to this is the way Frost seems to use older footage from some of his other movies and inserts it here in a good job of editing. He even manages to come up with excuses for why some of the scenes are in black & white and others are in color.

This preview is pretty much the whole movie cut down to 7 minutes:

A couple of the Lee Frost mondo-flicks all mashed into one delightful preview!:

MONDO BIZARRO AND MONDO FREUDO (R. Lee Frost) from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

MONDO MAGIC (1975)

You get a bunch of scenes of animals being killed in this Italian-made mondo flick.  It takes us from Africa to South America where we see everything from grubs and spiders to giraffes and elephants get snuffed out and eaten by native folks.  There's also a bunch of fake scenes that are supposed to show "magic" in action.  Stuff like faith-healing and witch doctor type stuff.  Also a little bathing in cow piss and shit as an added attraction.  More of a depressing view of mankind than anything all that entertaining plus there are a bunch of better made mondo films out there.  The directors, the Castiglioni brothers, would go on to make SHOCKING AFRICA which is even nastier than this.  The DVD version I saw of this one on the cheap-ass Woodhaven label is edited down with some sex stuff removed.  Why they would remove this I have no idea but it seems all their discs are cut down in one way or another.  Assholes.

SLAVE TRADE IN THE WORLD TODAY (1964)

Probably the most boring example of a mondo movie that I've ever seen.  You get to see some Africans whipped with sticks getting them ready to be good slaves and that's about the most shocking thing on display.  It's mostly like watching the news except that the DVD that I saw this on was so washed out and lacking in any colors that it also looked like shit as well as being dull as dirt.  It doesn't help that when they use the word 'today' they are referring to 1964 which makes this about as relevant to slavery today as an episode of GREEN ACRES is to farming today.  Watch MONDO CANE or MONDO PAZZO  instead.

Here's a trailer for MONDO PAZZO a.k.a. MONDO CANE 2:

AFRICA ADDIO (1966)

This was a 1960's shockumentary from directors Jacopetti and Prosperi made after their big hit MONDO CANE. Fairly tame by comparison to more recent gross-out stuff like FACES OF DEATH, these early works have a much more artsy style and are actually filmed pretty beautifully for a genre that would morph into the gutter of depravity it became in the 1980's. We see real human executions and tons of animal slayings on display. Surprisingly the animal killings are the ones that linger in my mind most of all and seem the most senseless. Stay away if that kind of thing bothers you but for a view into the inhumanity of the human species towards nature and each other these documents do serve a purpose. There are a few different versions of this floating around. The AFRICA: BLOOD AND GUTS cut is much shorter and contains only the most violent shots, which comes off as pretty pointless and the original Italian language print is longer with some more animal violence and supposedly a more racist commentary.

ECCO (1963)

An entertaining early Italian Mondo movie. Obviously since this was made in '63 it's not as crazy as the later stuff where we see all kinds of death and disgustingness. The big gross-out here is probably the Laplander woman castrating a reindeer with her teeth, which really isn't all that graphically shown anyway. I love the style of these old crazy films. The blurring of reality with scenes just designed to shock. The jumping from beautiful landscapes to harsh ugliness. Its a good mix. Plus if you get bored with one segment it's over quickly enough. A.K.A.- THIS SHOCKING WORLD & IL MONDO DI NOTTE 3(This was apparently part of a series of movies in Italy. The other 2 look pretty dull in comparison.)

A little history of mondo movies: