07/27/06 Mondo Cane 2

Mondo Cane 2 (1963), directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi

watched solo; VHS (borrowed from John S.); suggested by Jason & John S.

Picking up where the first "Mondo Cane" film left off...which was somewhere in the nether-regions of sanity and decency...comes this pasted together "sequel" if you will. Maybe it was the fact that the creepy offerings in this one were less informational and more conversational...maybe it was that I watched both films back-to-back for continuity purposes...or maybe it was just that this second feature seemed to be a scraping of the bottom of the barrel for leftovers of the first film. Whatever the case, it began to turn me off from being interested, and wanting more to go to bed (it was late by this time). The ideas of shocking me with visual absurdity wore off (perhaps that's our shoot-em-up-video-game culture of today), and they became staged Sunday news-programming "oddball slices of life" stories. From the parts I can remember, there were segments of mortician schooling, sex clubs, old western hangings, alligator hunting, running across hot coals, toilet paper wearing strippers, fighting fish, and probably the most well-known/disturbing scene of one monk dousing himself in gasoline and lighting himself on fire in protest (see Rage Against The Machine's first album cover). Whether items were faked or real, it was enough cause to ban it & its predecessor in many areas...only solidifying its status as a cult phenomenon on video store shelves today. It's strange, it's out there, and I've seen enough for today.

2 out of 5 stars