Review of Savage Man Savage Beast

Now, here's a blithely sleazy speculative mondo documentary that really goes out of its way to give you your grubby money's worth. This baby starts out with a literal bang: a big game hunter stalks and shoots a large deer. After that promising beginning, things get even more wild and scuzzy. Amongst the definite highlights are the incredible sight of well-endowed African natives making love to the ground (it's a fertility ritual, of course), another group of natives engaging in ritualistic masturbation, the genuinely startling shaky hand-held camera footage of a luckless tourist getting mauled to death by two vicious lions, a flock of long-haired hippie freaks not only shed both their clothes and their inhibitions, but also wrap themselves up in paper and plastic in order to protest against hunting and killing animals (one hippie chick even breast feeds a baby lamb!); Eskimos slaughtering ducks so they can surmount depression, and man's futile attempts to prevent endangered species from becoming extinct. This picture crams in everything from cannibalism to abundant male and female nudity to copious animal killing and cruelty while exploring the centuries old topic of hunting and the human race's uneasy coexistence with animals. Plummy-voiced narrator Alberto Moravia manages to give this crudely sensationalized junk a smidgen of class. The pretty cinematography offers a wealth of strikingly beautiful images and makes occasional inspired use of stylized slow motion. Carlo Savina's neatly eclectic score alternates between lush orchestral music and rousing jazzy acid rock. Sure, this film is crass and pandering to the ninth degree, but it's certainly never dull and always interesting. Only a few obviously staged moments and several hideously sappy songs on the soundtrack detract a bit from this otherwise hugely worthwhile mondo romp.