User Reviews

Legendary mondo movie that has lots of violence against animals and full frontal male nudity. Long dull and rambling as many mondo movies tend to be, this film has something of a reputation because of its often graphic nature. The film is the source of a lion attack (most certainly staged) that has been circulating around the internet where a man gets out of a car to film a lion and is promptly eaten in front of his family. The two sequences of masturbation (one where tribes have sex with the earth to make it fertile and another involving sprinkling it in the water) are also mentioned as "oh my god moments". I'm less impressed with those sequences (I've seen too many mondo films) and prefer the odder moments like hunting bats with boomerangs or the anti fox hunt sequence. To be certain this is a film to make you sit up and take notice if you don't like animal cruelty. I'm not sure I'd recommend it unless you're in the mood to shock yourself with some video nasty.

This is a 1975 Mondo film originally titled "Zumbalah". It is done documentary style showing us animals killing animals and man killing animals almost as a forerunner to the "Faces of Death" series. It also attempts to be anthropological by showing us naked hippies littering the beaches of Cape Cod in order to save the environment.

While some of the scenes are staged, there are some interesting scenes, people humping the ground for example, that I had not known or imagined. The film had a lot of nudity, mostly male and the narration was extremely boring.

Not nearly as impressive, shocking or thought-provoking as any of the titles in the Mondo Cane Collection box, "Savage Man Savage Beast" poses as a documentary, but it's simply a blatant and shameless series of unrelated but massively exploitative footage of hunting rituals from all over the world. The opening sequence is dark & grim, with the introduction of a lone hunter and harsh images of him killing a beautiful animal. The events then abruptly switch to a gathering of free-spirited 60's hippies (with an obvious aversion to wearing clothes) that protest against the senseless killing of animals. One of the hippie-girls even demonstrates her affection for animal through breastfeeding a baby lamb, which is quite an odd sight. Anyway, the "documentary" only just started then but it already goes irreversibly wrong at that point, because the narrative chooses the side of the hunters. Hunting, whether for survival or sport, is practically glorified and the narrator defenses needless violence through making weak and irrelevant statements like "nature itself is ferocious as well", "survival of the fittest", "hunting is often necessary in order to avoid the extinction of a species" and "hunting skills are often traditionally passed on from generation onto generation". If Antonio Climati and Mario Morra intended to bring an ode to savageness and simply wanted to edit together a spitfire of gratuitous images of animals killing animals and humans killing animals, that's fine with me, but don't present it as an informative documentary. The whole film is a wildly incoherent hodgepodge of genuine footage from around the world; from fox-hunting games in England, ritual cannibalism in Burundi in order to 'inherit' the hunting skills of the deceased, the killing of large bats with boomerangs in Australia, fishing techniques from Alaska and a much more. "Savage Man Savage Beast" also includes the notorious amateur footage showing a dim-witted guy getting devoured by lions in a safari park and a totally pointless and exaggeratedly gratuitous 16mm movie depicting hired killers eliminating a native tribe. Furthermore, there's a chapter about migrating penguins (I still fail to see the relevance) and a handful of truly bizarre hunting rites involving men 'impregnating' the earth by digging a little holes in the mud and stick their … You know. I can't possibly recommend this movie to anyone, as it pretends to be a documentary but never once succeeds in hiding its true colors, namely pure & rancid Italian exploitation.

This little nugget opens with a Patagonian talking about how he bagged a stag because he "just wanted a stag."

From there we go to the animal rights activists and their pre PETA protests. It resembles outtakes from a lost Woodstock clone. Lots of unwashed hippies playing guitars and cuddling woodland creatures. Almost tear-jerking until you see too many of them winking at the camera.

The hunters in Argentina actually trying to capture endangered species to preserve them was interesting. Right before that was a partial list of the extinct. That scene opened in an over decorated hunting lodge. The kind with the pith helmeted Britishers and their "I say old boy" conversations. The heads on the wall completely covered said wall. And just as many rugs on the floor as well.

The lion mauling scene was most likely faked. Apart from a lack of consistency between the narration and the scene (Playful looking lions, visible land rovers with armed men in the background.) the OTT acting of the "victim" and his wife also looked dodgy. This scene probably inspired the bear attack in Faces of Death. (Part 1 in case you need to see for yourself.)

This doc is in it's entirety on youtube. Watch it there if you have time.

An utterly distasteful film, made at the time when the mondo movie had lost the occasional magic of MONDO CANE and simply became a bloodbath of violence against both man and animal. This loathsome film details graphic death after graphic death unrelentingly, accompanied by the dulcet tones of a mock-serious narrator who attempts to make some sense of the carnage by endless pretentious waffling. Now, it goes without saying that a spark of interest does lie in some of the scenes portrayed here - in fact it's very informative about native customs and way of life at times, and the daily life-and-death struggle of the animal. But such moments are overwhelmed by endless viciousness and cruelty, so it goes without saying that only the strongest stomachs need apply.

Things open with an American hunter nonchalantly shooting a stag dead before cutting it's head off - all in a day's work. Things get worse from there, with footage of animals eating each other (predictably, a boa crushes a cute little monkey to death whilst it cries in agony) and lots of African creatures - wildebeest, antelope, and most upsettingly elephants - getting hunted and ritually slaughtered by natives. The thing worse than the images on screen for me are the endless cries of terror and agony as the creatures are speared or stabbed - pretty sickening stuff. Easier scenes to take include lots of naked hippies, natives having sex with the earth, a woman breastfeeding a goat, some cannibalised human corpses, and a fox hunt being sabotaged (hurrah!).

As the film progresses the footage becomes more disturbing, and the high (or low) light is a tourist on safari getting mauled and disembowelled by lions who proceed to eat his guts - footage that can't possibly be faked, but here it is and in your face. Then there's the amusing diversion of a cheetah chasing an ostrich, and a camera-van chasing the two animals and crashing, which is followed by a cruel shot of a trapped big cat getting ripped to pieces and stabbed to death by a pack of hungry dogs and their owner. The film finishes with hunters chasing after indios who have been terrorising a building site; after catching a native they castrate him, scalp him, and finally behead him. Although these scenes do look repulsively realistic I still have a niggling belief that they may be faked as they seem very "cinematically" portrayed. A film for sadists and animal butchers everywhere.

First off, I'd like to say that I DID NOT watch the uncut version, but rather the Australian version, that's cut by 77 seconds*, and comes with the "Grindhouse Experience" DVD pack. Even though the version I saw was cut, this is still a very violent/bizarre film, that's not for the faint of heart. However, it is also incredibly interesting, makes very interesting and true points about animal/human and predator/prey relationships, such as how man wishes to be loved by animals, yet hunts them, and how even though people protest the slaughter of certain animals, many more cows/chickens/pigs are killed for their food. Lastly, it talks about in one scene about how the new laws of the world punish those who follow the older, more primitive ones. Onto the violent/bizarre bits. There are countless animals killed in this movie, including a snake vs. monkey scene that's quite similar to the one in "Mountian of the Cannibal God". We also see cheetahs killing ostriches, bears eating fish alive(In another very fascinating scene, commenting on nature documentaries), elephants getting speared, and many other things. Of course, who could forget about the human/human violence, as well as the infamous "Lion mauls a man in front of his family" scene. Well, let me just tell you, the lion attack footage is some of the most harrowing footage I've ever seen, yet at the same time, is fascinating. It ends with the narrator asking the question "Why did Pit Durmitz leave his car?" and then gives possible explanations. Among human/human violence, there's not much. There the aftermath of cannibalism, showing the corpses and the weapons used to cut open the bodies. Also, several indios get shot(In a staged scene). You've probably heard about an infamous castration/scalping scene. Well, that bit is cut out of the print I saw, unfortunately. The rituals are also quite bizarre. First, men dig holes into the ground, and proceed to make love to mother Earth. There's also the talked about "hippie breast-feeding a goat" bit. While that may sound sick on paper, its really not that bad, and there's a much worse scene like it in Mondo Cane. Lastly, there's the bit where African tribes encase their penis' into small cylinders, and pour the semen into the river. This scene may make male viewers(such as myself) very uncomfortable, as there are graphic close-ups of the tribes penises, jiggling up and down in slow-motion.

Anyways, I recommend this film not just to mondo/exploit fans, but also to fans of nature documentaries.

*In case you're wondering, here's what's cut from my version(which is also the most common): 1. The bit where a fox is torn to pieces by dogs is cut out. You just see the hunter throw it to them. 2. The lion mauling scene is trimmed, but not entirely removed. It gets rid of some of the more graphic bitings, and removes a few close-ups of the body. The uncut sequence is on Youtube, for anyone interested. 3. As mentioned before, the castration/scalping is cut out. You just see the events leading up to it.

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.