Sadly Over-hyped

Purely Joyful Movie!

One of my all time favorites.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

God has weird sense of humor - he made human race.Very interesting "shockumentary" from 1962.Even if it is partially faked, it's still has message that will make you think what's weirder and more savage - tribes that didn't change their ways for centuries or western civilization...This film can make you laugh and cry, shock you and make you rethink some things you were always taking for granted...Highly recommended (not to watch during, right before or right after meals) :)And again I need additional lines to be able to submit :)

The granddaddy of the sick but surprisingly popular "shockumentary" format favoured by real-death movies like the infamous FACES OF DEATH series, MONDO CANE is a sometimes naïve, sometimes shocking journey through dozens of bizarre world practices, rituals and lifestyles. Although the sex angle has badly dated since the '60s - bikini-clad dancing Honolulu girls are no longer controversial or topical - the film is still surprisingly efficient at disturbing, surprising, and sometimes disgusting the viewer. The overall impact of the film ranges from the humorous to the downright pathetic, stirring feelings of pathos, morbidity, and sometimes overwhelming grief into the mix. It's surprisingly moving in parts, considering the subject matter, helped no doubt by the Oscar-winning music which actually makes it harder-hitting than it ought to be. Jacopetti keeps his narration interesting and informative, without being too condescending to the people portrayed.One particular sequence highlights the effects that a nuclear blast has had on a Pacific atoll. Eggs are sterile and sea turtles have lost their sense of direction, crawling aimlessly back on to the sand instead of the sea where they bake to death. One heart-wrenching sequence shows a delirious turtle, on the brink of death, feebly flapping its limbs as it mistakenly believes its back in the water. I'm not ashamed to say this bit had me in tears.Thankfully, not all of this film is downbeat and some of it is quite educational. Subjects range from female tribes hunting down their menfolk to a native race who have erected a monument to the aeroplane, in the mistaken belief that planes are heaven-sent. Then there are the bizarre scenes of a pig being breastfed, pet cemeteries in the US, chicks being coloured and baked in an oven, geese being force-fed, cattle massages, a restaurant where ants and beetles are served as the delicacies, birds living under the ground, and drunken Germans losing all sense of self-respect.The film is definitely not for the squeamish, showing makeup being applied to corpses and Chinese folk waiting on the verge of death (the camera thrust in their faces) whilst their families celebrate. The nastiest moment for me is a religious practice in an Italian village, where men slice open their legs with glass and let the blood dribble down the streets - this is really gruesome. Animal-lovers should look elsewhere, as bulls are beheaded and pigs cruelly slaughtered. Cute lovable puppies are caged up and eaten in eastern restaurants. Although the tone is occasionally exploitative, this is head and shoulders above the increasingly disgusting shockumentaries that followed and at moments it becomes really moving. Worth at least one watch for lovers of the curious.

This was a documentary film featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but I was surprised to find out it was rated the lowest rating by the critics, one out of five stars, so I had to see why that was. Basically the title is translated as "world of dogs", or alternatively "a dog's life", it is not for a reason, and narrated by Stefano Sibaldi this is a documentary without any specific subject, it was made to shock, so it is obviously called a "shockumentary". Throughout the film are many random images where the filmmakers have travelled around the world and found the surreal, bizarre, upsetting, disgusting, perverted, inhuman and unthinkable things people and cultures do. This includes dogs in a dog pound, a tribe on an island man-hunting, a naval ship with sailors spotting women in boats, a tribes woman breast feeding a baby pig, a poverty stricken tribe that have eaten humans in cannibalism, pigs being beaten and cooked and a dog cemetery with mourners wandering it. There is also an Asian community eating various breeds of dog as meat, newborn chicks painted with coloured dye and dried in an oven to be put inside easter eggs, geese force fed food with a funnel shoved down their throats, and calves being tenderised by massaging and drinking six bottles of beer a day for fattening. You also see women caged and fattened for months to be offered as wives for a dictator, fat women rolling and exercising in a gymnasium and on fat burning machines, various canned insects and animals eaten as restaurant dishes including: grasshopper, honey bees, lava worms, ants, musk rat, rattlesnake, beetles and butterfly eggs; and snakes chosen by a customer to be skinned and eaten. After this there are men making their legs bleed by hitting them with cutting glass and looking like Jesus with barbed wire wrapped around their heads, a womens lifeguard troupe marching on a beach and demonstrating rescuing staged drowning people, birds that live underground, fish living on land and in trees, and thousands of eggs on the ground that will never hatch. Following this we see a sea turtle laying its eggs and heading for sea but dying in heat going the wrong direction, an underwater cemetery full of human skulls and skeletons, sun dried fins on a beach being collected by people with missing limbs, and sharks being fed sea urchins as revenge for killing people which makes them suffocate for days and die. Afterwards is a cemetery museum filled with skull decorations, these skulls and bones being cleaned and repaired by children, a German beer house with drunken stupidity, the drunks walking home, dozing, being violent and dancing on the streets; money being burnt by people as part of a funeral to be "taken" by the deceased, and a boarding house for dying people. Finally is a large cemetery full of wrecked cars, an orchestra playing, a Hawaii travel organisation with women and tourists doing the hula, soldiers dressing as women and dancing, men cutting off live bull heads, hundreds of people running from a bull, men training for bullfighting being charged, and a crashed cargo plane on a hill where tribes people wait for some arrival (of another plane or something). I agree entirely with the critics giving the lowest of low rating for this film, but I have to admit, I did find most of it fascinating to watch, not necessarily in the good way, but I couldn't take my eyes off, but it was a disgusting documentary. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for the song "More". Pretty poor!

This movie was occasionally shown on television late at night in the mid 60s. My friends and I would stay up late at night on weekends and once in a while catch this and similar movies. It was very intriguing...my first exposure to the strangeness outside my small world.I recall a few specific scenes, including one from France that involved the ritualistic slicing of young men's faces by a barber with a straight-edged razor, as a mark of membership in some club. Most scenes, however, were from the farthest reaches of the planet, which made them seem altogether foreign and mysterious. Another scene I just recalled involved an African man being chased into the sea by some angry countrymen, and his eventual drowning. (Today, that would seem quite tame.) The film was mainly the chronicling of truly bizarre customs encountered in nooks and crannies around the world.The primary impetus of the production may have been to sensationalize, but it was also quite fascinating. I haven't seen it in decades, but I would like to.