Parents, Mondo Cane deserves its United States 'R' rating for animal cruelty and killing (and some fierce payback), encounters with human deformity, death, human remains, and nudity and fisticuffs. It's easy to see why the film caused such a fuss when it was first released to a more innocent U.S. almost 40 years ago. I'm just a few years older than Mondo Cane, and as a child, I remember my parents describing it as a degenerate cross between Playboy and the local cockfights.
But we're all more worldly now. And for adults familiar with National Geographic-style documentaries, Mondo Cane is an amusing, charming, and rather quaint potpourri of a travelogue, spiced with some touches of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and with only a few difficult moments. In fact, except for bull decapitations, there's little here that I haven't seen elsewhere in some form. Mondo Cane is about odd cultures, odd customs, and human foibles. I was especially awed by a sequence of the most amazing drunkenness I've ever seen. But in an era of environmental awareness, what shocked me the most was the film's visually tame sequence on how wildlife has adapted (and failed to adapt) to the radioactive legacy of Bikini Atoll.
Mondo Cane was worth the price of a rental and the 90 minutes I spent watching it. It was light entertainment with a few moments of learning and a few moments of nausea. But seeing what all the fuss was about was really more interesting than the film itself, and that makes Mondo Cane unworthy of a second viewing or a place in my video library.
But we're all more worldly now. And for adults familiar with National Geographic-style documentaries, Mondo Cane is an amusing, charming, and rather quaint potpourri of a travelogue, spiced with some touches of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and with only a few difficult moments. In fact, except for bull decapitations, there's little here that I haven't seen elsewhere in some form. Mondo Cane is about odd cultures, odd customs, and human foibles. I was especially awed by a sequence of the most amazing drunkenness I've ever seen. But in an era of environmental awareness, what shocked me the most was the film's visually tame sequence on how wildlife has adapted (and failed to adapt) to the radioactive legacy of Bikini Atoll.
Mondo Cane was worth the price of a rental and the 90 minutes I spent watching it. It was light entertainment with a few moments of learning and a few moments of nausea. But seeing what all the fuss was about was really more interesting than the film itself, and that makes Mondo Cane unworthy of a second viewing or a place in my video library.