Monday, July 27, 2009

200th Post Special: Mondo Bizarro

Well, I have made it through 199 random and sometimes-good posts on my site. Despite the setup changes, format changes and turn away from re-posting my old stuff that nobody saw in the first place, this place is still running. Will I make it another 199 posts? Only time- and my level of disposable income- will tell. In the meantime, enjoy the review that has been teased since March 13th. It is...
The movie begins with a semi-sarcastic narrator talking about how the world is full of curious perversity. All of this played over a really crappy clay model of the Earth is spun in front of a cheap black back-drop. They follow this with...I kid you not, the credits played alternately against women filmed changing by a hidden camera. Yeah, they go there in the first five minutes. Is this fake? I lean towards 'yes,' since the woman always turn breast-first towards the camera. At the same time, they creepily-cut out the women's eyes in the shots- thanks, movie. Real creepy or simply real fake- you decide. Since the rest of the movie is a series of vignettes (a real theme of mine lately), I will cover them as such.
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A man does on expo on how he can lay on a bed of nails without injury. How he got a bunch of 'experts' to show up is beyond me. The creepiest part is not the fact that a man in a diaper is getting a cinder block smashed on his stomach. No, it is the super-pencil thin mustache that appears to be a part of his gum. Too thin is too thin!
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A random vignette shows a man eating a glass bottle at a fancy diner. It is also clearly sugar glass (aka rock candy sheet). So what?
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A hidden camera reveals an American tourist not enjoying his Japanese massage. Again, I must ask- why are you filming this?
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A 'voodoo ritual' is filmed from reportedly a mile and a half a way with some super-camera. The result: a dark, out of focus mess. All we can take away from it is a snake maybe being killed and people dancing. So what?
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They do an 'expose' on Frederick's of Hollywood and how they handle all of the mail orders. Really? Why do we care about...oh, you wanted an excuse to show three plus minutes of women in lingerie, complete with constant zoom-in on their breasts. You, sir, are too subtle.
*
The movie climaxes with what is allegedly hidden-camera footage of 'a Sudanese slave trade.' First, they spend nearly five minutes showing how they got their location, how they hauled their shit up to their hiding spot and what their camera could do. How many documentaries have you seen that explain how they shot a scene in such detail? Anyhow, the scene builds up slowly, with a dozen cars driving into a hidden valley. Naked women are hauled out of boxes that were stacked on a truck. Does the movie blur these 'poor women's' faces? No, but they censor their nether regions out. At this point, the movie just sort of 'peters out' and cuts back to that crappy globe model again.
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Yeah, this movie is really, really dumb. It is a Mondo film in all of the worst senses of the word. The climax is a completely falsified scene, as evidenced by the models used for 'slaves.' Plus, nobody is really fooled by that canyon, no matter how it is shot. The movie is almost entirely a pretense to show you breasts, only with less plot or wit than Invasion of the Bee Girls. The disc also came bundled with Mondo Freudo, the previous work by the same team. If you ever wanted to see people make-out on the beach under a red light or to see the team interview a pair of lesbian prostitutes in England and cut away without showing anything, check that film out. Otherwise, stick with one of the good Mondo films. If you can find one, let me know.
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Quick note: while writing this review, I was watching the pilot to The Lone Gunmen. In it, Langly wears a 'Mondo Bizarro' shirt for The Ramones album. I'm not sure how that synced up so well.
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Let's change gears and discuss a film that features Ice-T, a meteor headed towards the Earth and lots of dark shoot-outs. Stay tuned...

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