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Sergio Martino's 'Mondo Cane', American Style...

4-Legged Defender | ATL. GA. | 05/22/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Just before he began making some entertaining Gaillo's, crime dramas and sex comedies, Sergio Martino plundered the 'Mondo Cane' franchise, but instead of exploiting Third World countries by showing us rare rituals, bizarre sexual behavior and senseless animal cruelty, he chose America as his campsite for the perverse.

Watching this nonsense you'd think the US was no more than a toxic waste site full of losers, drug addicts, homeless people, mental retards and that we shun our elderly to die in the streets (today, this wouldn't be such a stretch...). We also see African Americans slanderously portrayed, hippies smoking pot and walking around naked, later learning a mental defect causes them to act this way (was watching 'Reefer Madness' a reference study tool?). Even the infamous Altamont concert is further distorted, as a slow 50's-style torch song is used to underscore the scenes of the frenzied naked hippie bacchanal, failing to even mention the Hell's Angels or the racially motivated fatal stabbing of Meredith Hunter.

Overall the film is boring, outright laughable and without any merit, much like 'Forbidden Paris' (1969) by Jean Louis van Belle (don't get me started on this one). I've always known the other Italian 'mondo' movies were overly-sensationalized, highly contrived and inaccurate, and this one's no different. Fans of Martino won't find any of his style here either, so grab one of his flix with Edwige Fenech instead, unless deadpan distortions or tripe like 'Faces Of Death' is your thing, in which case you need to be removed from society immediately and permanently
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