The Worst Film Ever

A Masterpiece!

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The sequel to the original suffers in some way from being a repeat of the first film – the initial shock and inspiration is gone, and there's a slight feeling of "more of the same". But the "more" we are served up is so rich and viscerally powerful that it would be churlish not to be grateful that we have been given more, by the two directors who do this kind of thing better than any others.The film is another total immersion in the idea that our Enlightenment ideals of classification and separation – of "civilised" and "primitive" or of "human" and "animal" are not based in as strong a soil as we might think. Jacopetti and Prosperi see foolishness and cruelty everywhere, it isn't the prerogative of one way of life but part and parcel of the human condition, a condition which is a part of not apart from nature. We whiz from one continent to the next, seeing society women raising money for milliners in New York then fakirs suffering agonies to free themselves from pain in India, and its all just the parade going by. Mondo Cane 2 feels like a compilation of "the best ways people have found to fill in the void of existence" and by best they mean not morally best but most unique, eye-popping and curious. My own favourite sequence is the last, in which a pianist and accompanies a man who slaps a row of other men round the chops as a composition in a posh concert hall -here the filmmakers are quite literally giving a slap in the face to culture.The most influential sequence in the film, and the one which really does raise the ante on the first Mondo Cane, is the self-conflagrating suicide of the Vietnamese monk. Now, we know pretty much now that the footage is faked (we can see the cut whereby they replace the real human being with a dummy) but that is hardly the point; the innovation was that people wanted to see something which looked like the reality of death on their cinema screens – a notion which has had profound influence on future documentaries, horror films and reality TV. Speaking of the latter, the late sequence which shows hopeless auditioners striving to become movie stars looks forwards to the TV talent contests which by the mid 2000s had become the biggest form of mainstream entertainment on TV in the western world. For better or worse, Jacopetti and Prosperi invented the media world we live in now, but unlike most of the people who came after them, they also possessed the most extraordinary talent for editing and cinematographic composition.As far as compendiums of death, derangement, cruelty, faked reality, cynicism and ecological carnage go, Mondo Cane 2 is second to only its predecessor. If it feels familiar, it's because these guys are merely doing again what they did first; they went on to new things with Africa Addio and Goodbye Uncle Tom, and left a blueprint which countless others have followed, but no one has really done nearly so well.

The scenes of extreme REAL violence, nudity, animal cruelty and naked African teenage girls being sold into slavery ought to be enough to turn most people off to this sort of film. Yes, this film has what appears to be a lot of 'filler', but....You have to realize that this was different time, and there was no Internet, there were no video games, No 'reality TV'.This was a titillating look at our crazy world though the eyes of early 1960's camera lenses.The two 'official' Mondo Cane films together are, as simply put in hippie language-- 'a trip'.A sick twisted weird crazy mixed up naked look at our world.Not for the faint of heart nor for the viewer who is easily bored by documentary films.Recommended!

For those who enjoyed the original ‘Mondo Cane', this is a less violent, more entertaining collection of sequences from around the world. Less focused on animals, we are treated to a birds' eye view of the crazy customs practiced on and by people. For those who haven't ever seen a ‘Mondo' film, please start with ‘Mondo Cane' and then come back and read this. ‘Mondo Cane 2' has some very shocking images; the most intense I felt was when we watched a Buddhist monk light himself on fire. Overall, however, the focus is on customs that to a foreign eye seem silly or ridiculous, not so much on these violent acts or situations. Filmmakers Jacopetti and Prosperi are masters at reporting truth much the same way a muckraker reports ‘truth', and simply by editing sequences together construct a convincing story that we humans are obsessed with pain and death. A great watch if you get the chance, and if you're really interested in these films there was a great box set released recently containing almost all of Jacopetti's work. It will probably be hard to find to rent, but keep an eye out if you're interested in documentaries as this is one of the best. Rating: 33/40

Second in the popular shockumentary series is less violent and disturbing than its predecessor, but still has its moments, and packs a punch for squeamish viewers. More bizarre human practices include bug-eating, African slave trade, war, and a dying tribe of primitives in Africa. This last sequence is fairly sad, but most of the other footage is just exploitation for the sake of making another bizarre chronicle of oddities around the world. These films are somewhat educational, but their highly exploitative nature takes away from the credibility. Still, if you liked the first one...