The genre was especially popular in the United States before the MPAA ratings system was established. Individual censorship boards regulated film content in those days, and filmmakers found themselves chopping up prints in varying degrees on a state-by-state basis. Since Mondo films were considered "educational," they were often passed uncut, giving adventurous audiences the nudity and violence they craved. And they were titillated by the most bizarre things. Real baby births! Animals fighting! Actual queers kissing (okay, that's a John Waters reference)! Frankly, that doesn't sound any different than today's reality television.

Relatively tame by the standards of the films that would follow, it nevertheless followed the constructs of the later, more shocking Mondos: human debasement, animal cruelty and sexual aberration. It also featured reconstructed scenes, passed off as authentic, that would become a cornerstone for movies like the Faces series. The narration in the English language version is clinical and pedantic, sometimes mocking its subjects as primitive savages or degenerates. But the authentic scenes of animal cruelty have not lost their power to shock.
Realizing they'd caught the good ol' gravy train, Prosperi and Jacopetti offered up a sequel the very next year (released in the U.S. in 1965), but it was more clumsily composed, focused more on "freaks" (gays and transvestites) and featured much more recreated footage. Nevertheless, it proved to be a moneymaker as well. That same year, they also made Women of the World, a self-explanatory title and an excuse to pump up the raincoat crowd with acres of female flesh and debauchery.
Opportunistic filmmakers frantically followed suit with grotesque imitations, so by 1966 the team made their bid for respectability with Africa Addio (aka Africa Blood and Guts), which was a violent, harrowing examination the end of colonial rule in Africa and the bloody battle for control of the continent that followed. Originally begun as another Mondo movie, it took a political turn when the revolution erupted.

It reappeared in drive-ins and grindhouses three years later as Africa, Blood and Guts, an idiotic re-edit that removed nearly an hour of footage, but I was able to get the original version, released by Blue Underground on DVD—and it's really difficult to watch.
The filmmakers let five years pass before releasing Farewell Uncle Tom (aka Goodbye Uncle Tom), a pseudo-documentary about American slavery cross-cut with footage of contemporary Black leaders fighting for civil rights. It's meant to be an angry retort to the critics who thought Africa Addio was racist, and it's an extremely bizarre effort. Imagine Paramount's disaster Mandingo taken to an even more extreme level and you're about half-way there.

In 1975 the filmmakers offered up another fictional work, Mondo Candido, based on Voltaire's "Candide." The only thing Mondo about it is its title. I haven't seen it, but Shock Cinema says "It's like Ken Russell's The Devils meets Laugh-In." Sounds weird to me, and I've seen a Dušan Makavejev movie! For better or worse, Mondo Candido marked the end of their collaboration.
Both Prosperi and Jacopetti are still with us, and they participated in an excellent documentary about their career, The Godfathers of Mondo, that came with my set of DVDs. They're proud of their career and are still openly defiant when the subject of their critics comes up.
Hey, if I helped to invent a genre, I'd be pretty damn defiant, too!
2 comments:
Great commentary on a rarely discussed topic. In fact, it was much better than sitting through some of these films (which I have done).
I thoroughly enjoyed CANE, was disturbed by ADDIO, and look forward to watching UNCLE TOM soon. But, thanks for bringing MONDO CANDIDO to light, I hadn't even heard of that one before! Sad that it's not on DVD.
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