(Credit: Cineris)
Cinema has always been a medium that has thrived on pushing boundaries, breaking barriers, and fighting taboos, which in turn has opened the door for horror to become increasingly dangerous. Gore-drenched offshoots abound, but Mondo’s film may be the most provocative of all.
History is littered with stomach-churning features that stretch your gag reflex to its limits, whether it’s body horror, torture porn, grindhouse, exploitation, or more on-screen horror that has sprouted over the years. Mondo sought to strike an even deeper nerve by perpetuating himself as authentic and unfiltered, preferring a pseudo-documentary format to further that aim.
Many of them traded exclusively on sensationalism, splicing together very realistic footage of corpses, dismemberment, animal slaughter, etc., although the storylines and characters always had a slant towards fiction. There was a habit of adding more makeup to the already drawn image. A nightmarish aesthetic.
As you can no doubt guess from the title, the origins of this movement can be traced back to the 1962 efforts of Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavalla, and Franco Prosperi. mondo cane. There was no story to tell, but rather a series of illustrations showcasing various cultural practices meant to shock the viewer above all else. It was sold as 100% authentic by him, but as is often the case, it was interspersed with staged sequences.
As cinema increasingly embraced eccentric practices, influenced by the “exquisite corpse” technique, which existed somewhere between exploitation and documentary, assembling disjointed words and images into a loosely connected whole, , there was definitely a demographic that was eager to see more elements removed from the film. similar fabric.
That’s exactly what they got too, especially when mondo cane The song competed for the Palme d’Or and became a finalist in the Academy Awards’ “Best Original Song” category, making it an awards season staple. Given the content, the upcoming Mondo film was unlikely to have any impact on the Oscars, but the film was still a headline-grabbing flop.
Practitioners of this style have taken things to increasingly new heights, working to compile long-form stories made up entirely of authentic footage, with an always attention-grabbing premise. Mondo Inferno, world tabooand women of the world It relied on sexuality, ritualism, cannibalism, slavery, and questionable dietary habits to sell itself as shocking, but it also had the potential to paint subjects going about their daily tasks as offensive to Western crowds. There has always been an unpleasant layer of racism and misogyny.
But how have mondo films progressed?
As the 1960s moved into the 1970s, Mondo grew far beyond its Italian roots to become a global company, and filmmakers delved deep into the psyche to craft the next tale of on-screen madness. Shady celebrity scandals, drug abuse, animal abuse, medical surgeries, and deformities emerged as the next staple, all while continuing to push the envelope.
Mondo cinema, in any case, needed a new coat of paint to prevent apathy among those who enjoyed it, which led to an increase in fiction as well as an increase in gruesomeness. Although executions in the movies themselves became more overtly theatrical, real-life footage of murders, suicides, corpses, dissections, attacks on animals, and executions remained a staple.
1978 face of death is one of the most notable offenders, being banned in multiple countries and added to the UK’s list of ‘offensive videos’. Signaling the evolution of Mondo as a whole, actor Michael Carr played the role of Francis B. Gross, and mixed real people’s death scenes with sequences shot specifically to boost the film’s reputation. provided the connective tissue and underlined the genre’s popularity. Despite being illegal worldwide, it made $35 million on a $450,000 budget.
As the years passed, attitudes changed, and while mainstream horror continued to succeed by blending vivid gore with stories worth investing in, Mondo began to fight a losing battle against irrelevance. While the format hasn’t completely disappeared, modern society has made movies that celebrate the inclusion of actual scenes of brutality, harm, injury, and death into a very small niche group that doesn’t want to acknowledge those proclivities. We don’t accept anyone other than the audience at all. aloud.
Not to mention its racist and misogynistic tendencies. Indigenous peoples were portrayed as savage, unintelligent savages, and entire cultures were dehumanized in the process. There’s no doubt that Mondo still has its fans, but there’s no doubt that Mondo has no place on the table of 21st century horror, even if it’s just a weird, wacky ride from the bottom of the barrel to the top. do not have. It piled up in its heyday as the most depraved subgenre.