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43-511: Mondo Cane (a somewhat coarse Italian expletive, literally ' dog world ' ) is a 1962 Italian mondo documentary film and directed by the trio of Gualtiero Jacopetti , Paolo Cavara , and Franco E. Prosperi , with narration by Stefano Sibaldi . The film consists of a series of travelogue scenes that provide glimpses into cultural practices around the world with the intention to shock or surprise Western film audiences. These scenes are presented with little continuity, as they are intended as

86-573: A 1965 British film depicting conditions before and after a nuclear attack on England, would not see public broadcast for twenty years. Filmmakers wanted to top each other in shock value to attract audiences. Cruelty to animals, accidents, tribal-initiation rites and surgeries are features of a typical mondo. Much of the action is staged, although the filmmakers may claim their goal is to document "reality". Subjects of mondo films include sex ( Mondo Sex and Mondo Sexualis USA ); celebrities ( Mondo Elvis and Mondo Lugosi ); youth culture ( Mondo Teeno ) and

129-519: A boat drive by a ship with U.S. sailors, "wooing" them teasingly from the distance by sending them kisses, showing their tongues and flaunting their breasts. In a New Guinean Chimbu community, a woman whose child was killed breastfeeds a piglet whose mother died. Also in New Guinea, at a celebration that recurs every five years, in a matter of hours, dozens of pigs are slaughtered by beating on their heads with wooden poles, and eaten, after which

172-406: A fair-practices code on all gyms. New constraints on business fostered backfire of a Tanny strategy: maximize a location's membership, and offer expected revenue to borrow money to open a new location. In the 1960s, apparently by over-expansion, poor management, and insufficient capital , the franchise entered bankruptcy . Tanny's centers closed or sold, some retaining his name. Others joined

215-465: A full-time school teacher, Tanny opened his first fitness club. Located in his parents' Rochester garage, the gym uniquely had carpeting, bright colors, and background music. In 1939, he closed that gym, which had done poorly, moved west, and, for a teaching degree, attended the University of Southern California . Tanny's younger brother, Armand Tanny , had also moved west in 1939. That year,

258-535: A kaleidoscopic display of shocking content rather than presenting a structured argument. Despite its claims of genuine documentation, certain scenes are either staged or creatively manipulated to enhance this effect. The film was an international box-office success and inspired an entire genre of mondo films in the form of exploitation documentaries, many of which also include the word mondo (meaning "world") in their title. The musical score by Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero gained considerable popularity outside of

301-404: A line of musicians to play his Monotone Symphony . Adjacent are some scantlilly if at all clad young ladies immersing themselves in blue colour, which they later, under the instruction of the artist will, impress from their bodies to a canvass and create a work of art for sale for 4 million French Francs , then worth about 800,000 US-Dollars. (The artist had a heart attack after viewing the film at

344-520: A new invention, the automatic pin setter. Many had movie screens and ballet classes. Some were Swiss chalets with skating rinks , or had palm trees behind glass walls. Tanny's vision was, as now understood, "less perspiration than aspiration, and Tanny was anointed the era's dream maker". The hardcover magazine Wisdom , following issues that featured Einstein , Disney , and Jesus , placed Tanny on its December 1961 cover. Yet Tanny's excesses—gilding one gym in real gold, even down to plating

387-430: A resurgence of mondo movies focusing almost exclusively on (onscreen) death, instead of world cultures. The Faces of Death series is a notable example of this type of mondo (or "death") movie. The producers used fake footage (passed off as real), but some of the footage was legitimate (including scenes of autopsies, suicides and accidents). The rare 1985 film Mondo Senza Veli ("World Without Veils or Mondo Fresh")

430-498: Is a morning running of the bulls for working-class citizens and an afternoon bull-taunting inside a stadium for noble-born men in formal costumes. At Goroka, Papua New Guinea , there are indigenous tribes who attend Catholic church services. The film concludes with footage of a group of indigenous people who live as part of a cargo cult in the mountains near the airport of Port Moresby , Papua New Guinea . Having encountered and interacted with foreign airmen during World War II,

473-483: Is credited with starting a whole genre: the mondo film . Examples include Mondo Bizarro , Mondo Daytona , Mondo Freudo (1966), Mondo Mod , Mondo Infame , Mondo New York , and Mondo Hollywood ; later examples include the Faces of Death series. The film also inspired lampooning, including Mr. Mike's Mondo Video , written by Saturday Night Live ' s Michael O'Donoghue and starring members of

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516-695: Is in fact the fifth film in the series) lifts from other films (including Death Scenes and Death Faces IV ). In 1993, Hurricane Pictures edited a mix of scenes featured in Addio ultimo uomo and Shocking Africa , labeling it the "fifth chapter" of the saga ( Teil V in German). Several imitators followed the Faces of Death series; many used (or were composed entirely of) footage from other mondo films . Vic Tanny Victor " Vic " Tanny (born Victor A. Iannidinardo ; February 18, 1912 – June 11, 1985)

559-555: The Bootleg Death Tape series and Faces of Dying series from filmmaker Dustin Ferguson , which both involved various independent Directors from around the world. A number of films have parodied the genre. Examples include Ricardo Fratelli's Mondo Ford , Mr. Mike's Mondo Video by Saturday Night Live ' s Michael O'Donoghue , and Is There Sex After Death? by Jeanne and Alan Abel. Mondo Beyondo spoofed

602-508: The 1962 Cannes Film Festival and died less than a month later.) In Honolulu , tourists are showered with leis and witness a hula dance . In Nepal, Gurkha soldiers perform a rite of passage by dressing up in women's clothing on anniversary of the execution of 300 Gurkha POWs by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII . Gurkha soldiers behead buffalo bulls in a ritualistic contest of strength. In Portugal, there

645-703: The "Savage Trilogy". Prosperi also produced the films. Climati and Morra were known for staging scenes. The 1978 Faces of Death popularized a mondo style known as "death films", which depicted humans or animals dying in graphic ways. Uwe Schier bought the rights to the Mondo Cane and Faces of Death films and released his own entries in both series, consisting largely of footage lifted from other mondo films . Faces of Death 5 draws heavily on Death Scenes ; Faces of Death 6 consists almost entirely of Days of Fury and Mondo Cane IV (not to be confused with Mondo Cane 2000, l'Incredibile , Schier's Mondo Cane IV

688-656: The United States, Rossano Brazzi has his shirt torn off by a crowd of adoring female fans hunting for his autograph. At the beach in polyandrous Kiriwina , one of the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea , a large crowd of topless native women run after a handful of men, trying to capture them "not only for autographs". On the French Riviera , a small group of blonde bikini-clad young women on

731-653: The World (1963) and Africa Addio (1966). The genre arguably reached its peak with Faces of Death (1978), a film that inspired a myriad of imitators, such as Banned from Television , Death Scenes , and the Traces of Death and Faces of Gore series. Although earlier films such as Alessandro Blasetti's Europa di notte    [ it ] ( Europe By Night , 1959) and Luigi Vanzi's  [ it ] Il mondo di notte    [ it ] ( World By Night , 1961) may be considered examples of

774-587: The anti-Mondo drama Wild Eye (Occhio selvaggio). The film was nominated for two awards for the 1962 film season. It won the David di Donatello for Best Production (Migliore Produzione) by the Accademia del Cinema Italiano, which it shared with Una vita difficile . It was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 15th Cannes Film Festival , which it lost to O Pagador de Promessas . The theme song, " More ",

817-527: The barbells and dumbbells—brought parodies of Tanny and of his gyms to media. Vic Tanny Centers flourished from the 1950s through the early 1960s, attaining some 100 locations in the U.S. and Canada. Tanny also pioneered the annual membership , and offered a budget plan to draw working-class families. Yet he demanded, of salespersons, sales tactics so aggressive that the New York State Attorney General responded by imposing

860-585: The beach and collected by disabled fishermen, who sell them to the Chinese as aphrodisiacs . A 12-year-old Malaysian boy has been killed by sharks, and the fisherman exact revenge by shoving toxic sea urchins into the mouths of sharks, releasing them again to slowly die. Rome: In the Capuchin Crypt , bones were arranged as ornaments, and on Tiber Island , the Sacconi Rossi ("Red Sacks") guard

903-541: The bones of nameless victims of the past since around 1600, which on Fridays are cleaned by local families including children. On the Reeperbahn in Hamburg , people indulge life by drinking beer and suffer from the symptoms of hangovers in the morning. They sleep standing up, dance, drunkenly fight, and fool around. Tokyo has a massage parlor for men who are drunk. In Macao , the dead are covered in make-up for

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946-412: The contemporary cast of the program. In 2010, Mike Patton released a musical album of cover versions of 1950s and 1960s Italian music, also titled Mondo Cane . Mondo film The term mondo is Italian for ' world ' . The term shockumentary is also used to describe the genre. Mondo films began to soar in popularity in the 1960s with the releases of Mondo Cane (1962), Women of

989-493: The early 1980s. They made five films in all, tying Jacopetti and Prosperi as the most prolific mondo film producers. Each film examines brutal and bizarre behavior on the African continent. Their films are considered some of the most graphic mondo films ever made. Antonio Climati , cinematographer to Prosperi and Jacopetti in many mondo films , joined Mario Morra in 1974 to produce their own string of mondo films , known as

1032-429: The film itself. Its main theme, " More ", won a Grammy Award and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song , and was covered by such artists as Frank Sinatra , Andy Williams , Roy Orbison , and Vince Guaraldi . A statue by Luigi Gheno is dedicated to Rudolph Valentino in his hometown of Castellaneta, Italy . At the event the narrator points out similarities in some local men's faces to Valentino's. In

1075-400: The films' approach to titling, but was a parody of satellite television. The Italian cannibal film is arguably an offshoot of the mondo film. The original mondo film series was the Mondo Cane series by Gualtiero Jacopetti , Paolo Cavara , and Franco Prosperi. When this type of film proved successful, many imitators followed. The pair's Mondo candido (1975) is not a mondo film ;

1118-459: The following year. Much later, in the 1980s, two more emerged: Mondo Cane Oggi: L'Orrore Continua and Mondo Cane 2000: L'Incredible . The films continued into the nineties with two follow-ups from German filmmaker Uwe Schier; despite the fact that they were the fifth and sixth installments, they were titled Mondo Cane IV and Mondo Cane V . As well as encouraging sequels, Mondo Cane 's shock-exploitation-documentary- exquisite corpse style

1161-625: The funeral. People burn money for the departed to take with them. In Singapore , where 60% of citizens are of Chinese descent , there is a hotel for the dying members of Chinese families. Relatives await their demise by making merry at restaurants in the plaza nearby. Cars are crushed at a junkyard in Los Angeles and reduced to cubes for recycling. One such cube is sold as art in a Paris art gallery. The French artist Yves Klein , erroneously introduced as Czechoslovakian , comes forward from one of his monochromatic blue paintings to start of

1204-533: The gay subculture ( Mondo Rocco ). Russ Meyer 's film Mondo Topless was one of the few "documentaries" restricted to the old midnight movie circuit in the pre-VCR era; it explored strip clubs in 1960s San Francisco , at a time when strip clubs were a novelty in the United States, restricted to centers of port-city decadence (such as San Francisco). Other examples of this genre include Mondo New York by Harvey Keith, Mondo di Notte by Gianni Proia and Mondo Balordo by Roberto Bianchi Montero. The 1980s saw

1247-473: The genre followed suit: Mondo Trasho , Mondo Weirdo: A Trip to Paranoia Paradise , Mondo Keyhole and Mondo Brutale (a German release of Wes Craven 's The Last House on the Left ) title themselves mondo , although none are mondo documentaries . Later in the decade, this naming convention began to fall out of favour and fewer mondo films identified themselves as such in their titles. The War Game ,

1290-566: The genre, the origins of the mondo documentary are generally traced to the 1962 Italian film Mondo Cane ( A Dog's World —a mild Italian profanity ) by Paolo Cavara , Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi which was a commercial success. Documentary films imitating Mondo Cane in the 1960s often included the term mondo in their titles, even if they were in English; examples include Mondo Bizarro , Mondo Daytona , Mondo Mod , Mondo Infame and Mondo Hollywood . Films outside

1333-525: The hub of every famous Muscle Beach regular, including Reeves , Eiferman , and future gym heavyweight Joe Gold ". Of the Tanny brothers, it was Armand with the physique to compete among the bodybuilding elite. Vic Tanny aggressively expanded, geographically and demographically . Earlier gyms invited mostly three, mutually exclusive types—either bodybuilders, housewives, or celebrities—whereas Tanny's were widely inviting. Some had bowling alleys , with

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1376-638: The narrator, of each 100 that undergo it, approximately 70 do not survive the procedure. For foie gras , geese in Strasbourg are force-fed using funnels . In a farm 200 miles from Tokyo , Wagyu cattle are treated with care by being massaged and fed beer, so that their meat can eventually be served at luxury restaurants in Tokyo and New York . On New Guinean Tabar , the most beautiful women are locked up in small wooden cages and fed tapioca until they reach 120 kilos (264 pounds) to be offered as wives to

1419-480: The nuclear contamination on Bikini Atoll , swarms of dead butterflies drift at sea, birds hide in holes in the ground, a species of periophthalmus fish migrated to the trees, sea gulls brood over sterile eggs, and disoriented turtles move inland and die on the atoll's dry sand dunes. Birds nest in turtles' skeletons, which move in the wind as if they were still alive. In Malaysian underwater cemeteries, sharks get accustomed to human flesh. Their fins are dried on

1462-596: The partly cannibalistic community returns to its perpetual state of hunger. Dogs, however, are fed some of the pork and treated with affection and respect. At the Pet Haven Cemetery in Pasadena, California , dog owners mourn their departed pets. In Rome , hundreds of chicks are tinged in many colors and then dried at 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) to be included in Easter eggs ; according to

1505-437: The people have erected icons of worship that resemble an airport runway, airplane, and control tower using bamboo . In the beginning, as Cavara (who took the helm for European and Euro-Asiatic zone) and his supervisor Stanis Nievo' interviews revealed, Mondo Cane was a unique project conceived with La donna nel Mondo , and worked on at the same time (1960–62). Mondo Cane was an international box-office success and inspired

1548-458: The production of numerous, similar exploitation documentaries, many of which also include the word "Mondo" in their title. These films collectively came to be recognized as a distinct genre known as mondo films . In addition, the film's success led Jacopetti and Prosperi to produce several additional documentaries, including Mondo Cane 2 , Africa addio and Addio zio Tom , while Cavara directed La donna nel mondo , Malamondo , as well as

1591-431: The statue and its followers in the procession carry live snakes. In Nocera Terinese , on Good Friday , each “vattienti" beats their legs with glass shards and spill their blood on the streets where the procession will take place. A parade of the " Life Savers Girls Association", all from 16 to 20 years old, march toward Sydney 's Manly Beach , where they put on a surf carnival , including CPR on young men. Due to

1634-428: The title was imposed on them by the studio, who wished to cash in on their earlier successes. The film is a retelling of Voltaire 's novel, Candide . In the late 1980s, Stelvio Massi (a.k.a. Max Steele) made two spinoffs of the original Mondo Cane series, known as Mondo Cane 3 and Mondo Cane 4 on video. In 1969, brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni began to make a series of their own mondo films until

1677-589: The two emptied their joint bank account of its $ 500, borrowed another $ 200, and opened their first gym, West Coast Tanny, near Santa Monica Beach . Two more locations—one in Long Beach , and one on Wilshire Boulevard —opened in 1941. The war dwindled gym users, and both new locations soon closed. During the postwar resurgence in gym users, Tanny's gym entered a new location, a former USO facility of 7,000 square feet, in Santa Monica, "and it soon became

1720-560: The village dictator. In a Vic Tanny health club in Los Angeles , overweight women work on losing weight to recover from a previous marriage. At a Hong Kong market, exotic animals are sold for food. At the New York restaurant The Colony , canned exotic animals are served for rich Americans. At a Singapore snake store, a snake is chosen and butchered for consumption. In the Italian village of Cocullo , on Saint Dominic 's day,

1763-490: Was an American bodybuilder , entrepreneur and physical culture advocate. He is considered a pioneer of the modern health club . Tanny was born into an Italian family in Rochester, New York . His father was a tailor. Amid anti-Italian sentiment during World War II , some of his family members legally shortened the surname, Iannidinardo , to Ianni . From this, Victor made a new surname, Tanny . In 1935, while

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1806-465: Was purported by viewers to feature at its end the brutal execution of a young Arab rapist by public rectal impalement. This episode was, however, believed to have been a staged execution by some viewers. Mondo films in the 21st century feature gore, exemplified by the Faces of Gore and Traces of Death series. There is less fake footage, and many use news footage of accidents from East Asia . The late 2010s saw another resurgence, beginning with

1849-539: Was written by Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero , and was given new lyrics in English by Norman Newell . In 1963 , the song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song , where it lost to " Call Me Irresponsible " from the film Papa's Delicate Condition . The film spawned several direct sequels , starting with Jacopetti and Prosperi's own Mondo Cane 2 (also known as Mondo Pazzo ), released

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