A mondo film (from the Italian word for 'world') is an exploitation documentary film, sometimes resembling a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, and situations. Common traits of mondo films include emphasis on taboo subjects such as death and sex, portrayals of foreign cultures that have received accusations of racism[1] and staged sequences presented as genuine documentary footage. Over time, the films placed more and more emphasis on footage of the dead and dying, both real and fake. The term "shockumentary" has also been used to describe the genre.[2]
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Although there had been earlier films such as European Nights (1959) and World by Night (1960) that could arguably be pointed to as examples of the genre,[3] the origins of the mondo documentary are generally traced to the Italian film Mondo Cane (A Dog's World, a mild Italian profanity) that was made in 1962 by Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi and proved a commercial success.[4][5][6]
Documentary films imitating the approach of Mondo Cane in the sixties often included the term "mondo" in their titles, even if they were in English; some examples include Mondo Bizarro, Mondo Daytona, Mondo Mod, Mondo Infame and Mondo Hollywood.[7] Even films from outside the genre followed suit: Mondo Trasho, Mondo Weirdo: A Trip to Paranoia Paradise, Mondo Keyhole[8] and Mondo Brutale (actually a German release of Wes Craven's film The Last House on the Left[9]) all bill themselves as "mondo", although none are true mondo documentaries. Towards the seventies this naming convention began to fall out of favour and fewer mondo films identified themselves as such in their titles.[7]
Over the years the film makers wanted to top each other in shock value in order to draw in audiences. Cruelty to animals, accidents, tribal initiation rites and surgeries are a common feature of a typical mondo. Much of the action is also staged, even though the film makers may claim their goal to document only "the reality". Subjects covered by mondo films include sex (Mondo Sex and Mondo Sexualis USA); celebrities (Mondo Elvis and Mondo Lugosi); youth culture (Mondo Teeno) and homosexual subculture (Mondo Rocco).
The Russ Meyer film Mondo Topless was one of the few "documentaries" restricted to the old midnight movie circuit of the pre-VCR era, as it explored strip clubs in 1960s San Francisco, at a time when strip clubs were a novelty in the United States restricted to centers of port-city decadence such as San Francisco.
Other examples of movies in this genre include Mondo New York by Harvey Keith, Mondo di Notte by Gianni Proia and Mondo Balordo by Roberto Bianchi Montero.
The eighties saw a resurgence of mondo movies, though now they focused almost solely on onscreen death, rather than cultures of the world. The Faces of Death series is probably the best known example of this type of mondo, or 'death' movie. The producers at this time still used some faked footage, passed off as real, but the majority of the footage was legitimate. This includes scenes of real autopsies, suicides, accidents, and other curiosities.
The very rare 1985 film "Mondo Senza Veli" (World without Veils, aka Mondo Fresh) was purported, by those who had actually seen it, to feature at its end the very brutal execution of a young Arab rapist by public rectal impalement (see two web page links under References). This "episode" was, however, believed to have been a "staged" execution, by at least some viewers (as reported by "Someone Weird" in the first web page link).
The mondo film in the 21st century has transformed into a very 'in your face', gory spectacle, as seen in the Faces of Gore and Traces of Death series. There is considerably less fake footage and many of these use news footage of accidents from the far east.
A number of films have parodied the genre over the years. Examples include Ricardo Fratelli's Mondo Ford; Mr. Mike's Mondo Video by Saturday Night Live's Michael O'Donoghue and Is There Sex After Death? by Jeanne and Alan Abel. Mondo Beyondo spoofed the films' approach to titling but was actually a parody of satellite television.[10]
It could be argued that the Italian Cannibal Movie is an off-shoot of the mondo film.[8]
The original mondo film series was the Mondo Cane series made by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco Prosperi. When this type of film proved successful, many imitators followed.
In the late 80s, Stelvio Massi, a.k.a. Max Steele, made two spin offs of the original Mondo Cane series with two more films, which are also known as Mondo Cane 3 and Mondo Cane 4 on various video releases.
In 1969, the brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni began to make a series of their own Mondo films that lasted into the early 80s. They made five films in all, tying Jacopetti and Prosperi as the most prolific Mondo film producers. Each film examines brutal and bizarre behavior on the African continent. Their films are also known for being some of the most graphic Mondo films ever made.
Antonio Climati, cinematographer to Prosperi and Jacopetti in many Mondo films, teamed up with Mario Morra in 1974 to produce their own string of Mondo films, aptly named the "Savage Trilogy". Franco Prosperi also went on to produce these films. Climati and Morra were notorious for staging several scenes of their documentaries.
In 1978, Faces of Death popularized a new Mondo style called Death Films, which consisted completely of humans or animals dying in graphic ways.
Uwe Schier bought the rights to the Mondo Cane and Faces of Death titles and released his own entries in both series, consisting largely of footage lifted from other mondo films: Faces of Death 5 draws heavily on Death Scenes; Faces of Death 6 consists almost entirely of Days of Fury; and Mondo Cane IV (not to be confused with Mondo Cane 2000, l'Incredibile, Schier's Mondo Cane IV is in fact the fifth film in the series) lifts from films including Death Scenes and Death Faces IV[11]. In 1993, Hurricane Pictures edited a mix of scenes featured in Addio ultimo uomo and Shocking Africa, labeling it fifth chapter of the saga (teil V in German language).
Several imitators followed the Faces of Death series, and many used (or were composed entirely of) footage from other mondo films.
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