CAIN’S FILM Production: UK, 1969 Director: Jamie Wadhawan Category: Documentary Biographical documentary on Scottish beat/junkie writer Alexander Trocchi, author of Cain’s Book, which deals with drug addiction. The film details how the book was banned for its sex and drug references, and features commentary from William S. Burroughs, who described Trocchi’s Continue Reading
Mondo
NUOVA GUINEA: L’ISOLA DEI CANNIBALI
NUOVA GUINEA: L’ISOLA DEI CANNIBALI (“New Guinea: Island Of The Cannibals”) Production: Italy/Japan, 1974 Director: Ide Akira Japanese title: Zankoku Hitokui Tairiku (“Continent Of Cannibals And Cruelty”) Category: Mondo/Cannibal Notorious mondo film about the brutal man-eating tribes of New Guinea, featuring a cavalcade of grotesque, often stomach-turning sequences: a woman who Continue Reading
DES MORTS
DES MORTS (“The Dead”) Production: France/Belgium, 1981 Director: Jean-Pol Ferbus, Dominique Garny & Thierry Zeno Category: Mondo/Death A documentary that examines the burial and disposal of dead bodies according to differing customs and circumstances. In sharp contrast to American practices, where the deceased are eviscerated, drained and then sewn up to Continue Reading
MONDO CANE
MONDO CANE (“Dog World”) Production: Italy, 1962 Director: Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi Category: Mondo The film that gave its name to a whole genre of cinema – the mondo movie. With Europa Di Notte in 1958, Italy’s cinema of the weird, exotic and shocking began to turn its Continue Reading
SADISMO
SADISMO Production: Italy, 1967 Director: Salvatore Billitteri US release title: Spots In the Sun Category: Mondo Mondo movie featuring concentration camp footage, Japanese devil masks, childbirth, female nudity and other delights, focusing on torture and human sacrifice. 1967 also saw the release of Gianni Proia’s penultimate mondo, Realtà Romanzesca. Posted Continue Reading
ANGELI BIANCHI… ANGEL NERI
ANGELI BIANCHI… ANGELI NERI Production: Italy, 1969 Director: Luigi Scattini Category: Mondo/Occultism Scattini’s original Italian mondo film was a compendium of scenes of witchcraft and black magic across the modern world, including the Church of Satan, voodoo rites, and naked exorcisms. In 1970 Lee Frost, leading director of both “roughies” and Continue Reading