This documentary explores the rise and fall of the violent Italian poliziotteschi genre, which may have started with Dirty Harry and The Godfather clones but emerged as its own unique film form that was uniquely able to address red terrorism and organized crime.

There’s a lot to learn here, including how the idea of shooting without permits and live sound led to the creativity that these movies all have. Plus, you’ll hear from the stars and makers of these films as they explain how these low budget rushed movies were made.

Nearly everyone you would ever want to hear from in this style of movie is here, including Franco Nero, John Saxon, Henry Silva, Antonio Sabato, Fred Williamson, Richard Harrison, Chris Mitchum, Enzo Castellari, Joe Dallesandro, John Steiner and Claudio Fragrasso.

I learned a ton about why Italian movies have dubbed sound and quick zooms that I would have never known if I hadn’t seen it. Throw in some great anecdotes and an explanation of how peblum led to spaghetti westerns which led to giallo which then led to these films and I was hooked.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

“To the worm in the cheese, the cheese is the universe. To the maggot in the cadaver, the cadaver is infinity. And to you, what is your world? How do you know what is beyond the Beyond? Most of us don’t even know what is behind the Beyond.”

Mondo Bizarro blew my mind and it hadn’t even started yet.

Much like all of the Lee Frost and Bob Cresse mondos, this is a mix of both documentary and faked footage. Sure, that one way glass in a changing room is fake, but hey, Frederick’s of Hollywood is real, even if it shows up in so many mondo films that I lose track of which one is which.

This one also has a man sticking nails in his skin and eating glass, the hippies of Los Angeles, Germans watching a Nazi play (Cresse must have been, umm, Cresse-ing his jeans, seeing as how he played a German officer in Love Camp 7 with such aufregung.

The duo also used a high-powered lens to capture what they describe as a Lebanese white-slavery auction. Never mind that it’s obviously Bronson Canyon, the setting for everything from Night of the Blood Beast to Equinox, Octaman and, most famously, the entrance to the Batcave in the 1960’s TV show.

Make no bones about it. This is junk. But it’s entertaining junk.

You can get this on the same blu ray as Mondo Freudo from Severin.

Playboy Playmate Nikki Leigh hosts this series of trailers for movies that Full Moon may or may not own the actual rights to. The in-between segments are worthless, but this is packed with some great trailers, including one of my all-time favorites, 1967’s Teenage Mother.

There are also trailers for Invasion of the Bee Girls, Andy Warhol’s Dracula, The Girls That Do, Let’s Do It, The Depraved, The Teacher, Thriller/They Call Her One Eye, Caged Virgins, Axe, A Virgin In Hollywood, Mighty Peking Man, The Curious Female, Let Me Die a Woman, The Blood Spattered Bride, Mother Goose-A-Go-Go, Lucifer’s Women, The Dead Are Alive, The Devil’s Wedding Night, Deadly Weapons, Acts of Vengeance, Charlie and the Hooker, Savage Streets, Chatterbox, he Harrad Experiment, Ms. 45, Brides of Blood, Virgin Witch and The Devil Within Her.

If you’ve never seen these trailers, this is a great way to learn more about some films that really are worth your time.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi could have stopped with Mondo Cane, but no, they had more people to educate. And offend. Actually, mostly offend. This three-year in the making ode to the end of the colonial era in Africa is a barrage of brutality, set to the wondrous music of Riz Ortolani.

Some claimed that the scene that shows the execution of a Congolese Simba Rebel had been filmed expressly for the film, which led to Jacopetti’s arrest on charges of murder. The film was seized by police and editing for the movie had to stop. When Prosperi produced documents proving they had arrived at the scene just before the execution, he was freed.

The American version of the film — which is the one I saw — was edited and translated without Jacopetti, who claimed that this new version of his movie Africa Addio is a betrayal. That version is missing 45 minutes of political setup and exclusively features carnage and gore.

This film more than struck a nerve. While Prospero would say, “The public was not ready for this kind of truth,” and Jacopetti claimed that the movie “was not a justification of colonialism, but a condemnation for leaving the continent in a miserable condition,” the team’s follow-up Addio Zio Tom — while intended supposedly to be an answer to the charges of racism in this film — somehow is even more vile.

You can even see the entire film crew nearly killed while making this movie. They put their lives on the line to bring this to you. Whether you want it or are ready for it are decisions left up to you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Pasquale Prunas has only one other IMDB entry for a documentary about Mussolini called Blood on the Balcony. However, the writer, Gian Carlo Fusco, would work on several mondos like Realities Around the World and Naked World.

This movie was part of American-International TV’s “Real Life Adventures” syndicated TV package that was offered in 1966. It’s a mondo, but much tamer than any you will encounter. The highlight — other than men toiling in the sulfur mines and the night clubs of the time — is probably a trip to the Venice Film Festival, which looks as if it were shot as a home movie.

This is available as part of The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield blu ray release from Severin.

Robert Cohen also made Inside Red China, Inside East Germany, Committee on Un-American Activities and Inside Castro’s Cuba. This movie was sold as starring Jayne Mansfield, who had just died, even though she’s only in it for a moment. I love how each person narrates their own scenes in the film, setting up who they are as we explore Hollywood from 1965 to 1967.

We start with hippie vegan Gypsy Boots and stripper Jennie Lee doing a Watusi dance before meeting S&H Green Stamp — points for anyone that remembers those — Lewis Beach Marvin III, who lived in a $10 a month garage while owning a mountain retreat in Malibu.

We also get to meet doomed hairstylist Jay Sebring, Ram Dass, Bobby Jameson (whose protests and suicide attempts became more of his story than his music), surfers, fashion designers, actresses, transexuals, child fashion models, Bobby Beausoleil and more.

This doesn’t get as scumtastic as most mondo. Your mileage, therefore, may vary.

Executive produced by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, this documentary is all about Camp Jened, a camp for the handicapped in the Catskills that offered young kids the opportunity to move beyond their confined lives and feel as if they were like anyone else. The things they learned there would stay with them their entire lives.

Many of the campers would find themselves in Berkeley, California, where they learned that disruption and unity would change not only their lives, but the lives of disabled individuals throughout the nation.

I knew nothing of the battle that these brave people went through or how hard they worked and how well they came together to make changes. This one really got to me, hitting every emotion and causing big tears.

This is definitely recommended, as there are many lesson here for all of us to learn.

You can watch this on Netflix.

Burlesque, body-painting, snake-eating, mud-wrestling, alien landings, a gay wedding, and Satanism. Yep, director John D. Lamond (Felicity, Nightmares) pretty much watched Mondo Cane and said, “I borrowed a 16mm print of it and ran it on a closed circuit cinema thing and stopped and started the projector and looked at it. It ran on a sort of cycle – pathos, humour, oddity, nudity. I thought okay, what I need to do is shoot about fifty sequences, cut it into something coherent and pacey, and made it on the same sort of thing. I’d have something sexy, then something odd, then something really way-out, then something light hearted. And always do it tongue in cheek, and not have any sequence in the film run longer than about two minutes. And anything sexy, I’ll make it way-out or pretty.”

The British cut of this movie is twenty minutes less than the Australian one. That should tell you exactly how much content is in this for maniacs who need to watch Kiwi girls dance nude underwater or gratuitous milk baths.

Yes, body painting, alcoholism amongst the Aborigines, black masses and strip clubs are all side by side Down Under. I love that one of the people in this movie is named Count Copernicus. Ah, mondo!

You can get this from Severin.