Don’t eat a cheeseburger when you watch this infamous (and influential) Italian shock documentary of oddball rituals around the world. Most of it is more comedic than disgusting, but there’s enough footage of snakes skinned alive in a Hong Kong market (where lizard and muskrat meat can also be purchased), a Taipei restaurant that serves dog meat while forlorn canines sit nearby in cages, live bull decapitations in Singapore, and French foie gras preparation—a process that involves force-feeding resistant geese through a funnel shoved down their long, slender throats—to put you off of food for a bit. It’s not the first “shock documentary”. That sort of thing dates all the way back to the “sex hygiene” films of the 1930s and 40s and exploitation documentaries of the 1950s like Karamoja and Naked Africa, which featured African tribesman slaughtering real animals and torturing each other. Mondo Cane popularized the form though, attracting crowds beyond the regular grindhouse freaks and inspiring a wave of more mondo films over the next couple of decades.
One reason for this film’s popularity has to be its humor. Much of it is corny today, but from the jaunty orchestral lounge music that flits butterfly-like across the soundtrack to the mellifluous narrator, there’s a constant glaze of irony here. The three directors (Gualtiero Jacopetti is often cited as the main brain here) are also fond of funny contrasts, such as the moment when they linger lustily over a pretty French girl’s bikini-bound bosom and then cut to a haggard, wrinkly African woman breastfeeding a pig. This also brings out the inherent humor in bullfighting, as we watch bulls comically toss Portuguese matadors around like bloody rag dolls.
So, you’ve got stuff that makes you wince, sexual titillation, and moments when you laugh at other peoples’ pain. That’s three of the main ingredients of exploitation movie goodness right there. Still, it’s hard to recommend this as anything other than a museum piece curio.