Mondo Cane 2

I recently picked up the "Mondo Cane collection" from Blue Underground. The third of the official Mondo films is the sequel to Mondo cane. Some of the segments are interesting, some are boring, some are heart-breaking & some seem like filler. On a whole this is not as good of a documentary as the first Mondo film was. Still worth watching at least once, i guess.

My Grade:C

Dvd Extras: 2 theatrical trailers (USA & international); radio spot; & poster and stills gallery

MONDO CANE was an educational documentary featuring shocking scenes of human life and animal life. MONDO CANE 2 is just as educational and interesting, unlike the many imitators that erupted on video (i.e, FACES OF DEATH, etc.).

I can't really write a full-fledged review of the film, as it is just sequence after sequence. It's all interesting and you really learn things from the way it's presented. Some of my favorite scenes: the Parisian transvestite bar; a daring Mexican police shooting range; the Mexican Festival of the Dead (with skulls filled with cream, marzipan corpses, and live parasite tortillas); bugs turned into jewelry; Hawaiian tourists bathing in radioactive mud to freshen their skin; numerous religious fanatical acts in Italy and Portugal; rituals of pain in India; modeling sessions for gory pulp fiction book covers; smuggled footage of illegal slave trading in Africa; Sudanese tribes collecting dewdrops from plants because of a limited water supply; dancers wearing toilet paper being squirted with seltzer water; the Festival of Hard Heads in Italy (must be seen to be believed!); the artist Achille's paint-spitting party; a musical symphony enacted by slapping faces; Asian monks committing self-immolation; a heartbreaking sequence of pollution causing baby flamingos to mutate and die; and an African tribe becomes sterile because of their crocodile meat diet.

Amazing stuff throughout and never too boring, MONDO CANE 2 is lots of fun and will please those looking for something odd, intelligent, and something you can learn from.

Second in the popular shockumentary series is less violent and disturbing than its predecessor, but still has its moments, and packs a punch for squeamish viewers. More bizarre human practices include bug-eating, African slave trade, war, and a dying tribe of primitives in Africa. This last sequence is fairly sad, but most of the other footage is just exploitation for the sake of making another bizarre chronicle of oddities around the world. These films are somewhat educational, but their highly exploitative nature takes away from the credibility. Still, if you liked the first one...

"Mondo Cane 2" is little more than a quick cash-in on the first film's popularity. The giveaway is the fact that, although the film runs shorter than the original, it somehow contains less interesting footage. Some powerful sequences do exist (the tortured kids, the baby flamingos that die because their waters have been contaminated by a nearby factory), but on the whole the film is much inferior to the original, and the narration is often cheeky, hokey and annoying. (**)

Mondo Cane 2 is on the same league as its predecessor. A lot of gory, shocking scenes and also some lighter and comic ones just to even things out. The commenting remains smart but some scenes start to seem rehearsed or directed. I think it's not so spontaneous and unprompted any more. Nevertheless there are some memorable moments, especially the maimed and crippled kids by their exploiters. Definitely for tough stomachs. I don't think it should be in Mondo Cane anyway, because this is not a ritual or something similar, it's just a criminal action.