Customer Reviews

Primitive Love & Mondo Balordo

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Not quite as deleriously goofy as Jayne's post-mortem masterpiece "The Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield" (Hint: PLEASE! Something Weird put that one out on DVD!!!), but sure to thrill fans of Jayne and her bizarre exploitation phase, the best of her career. One scene, which might just be the dictionary definition of "camp", has Jaynie hula-dancing in a fake jungle set with a black wig to the strains of an Annette Funicello record! The plot, such as it is, involves Jayne's quest for academic acceptance of her anthropological theories in an uncaring world. She demonstrates her ideas with the usual array of "mondo" film clips in her hotel room. Shameless mugging ensues from Franco and Ciccio, two Italian comics who are delightfully surreal in their sheer UN-funniness as they try to get a peek at Jayne and her shocking footage. Jayne also does a tame (no real nudity) but sexy striptease which turns a guy into a werewolf. Jayne's husband Mickey Hargitay has an unusual, challenging role in that he appears in several scenes but has the same line in each. Although I don't know a word of Italian, the weirdly catchy theme song got stuck in my head for days.
The second feature, Mondo Balordo is also a lot of fun but Boris Karloff only narrates and doesn't appear in the film. It's a typical "Mondo" movie not especially more or less shocking than Mondo Cane, but like all of these movies, has a handful of great scenes. More fun are the trailers for other mondo movies that trim the filler and show the best gore and debauchery moments, for those of us with attention deficit disorder.
Both movies look great on the DVD when compared to VHS copies, though DVD purists might be annoyed by some flickering color fading in "Primitive Love", but it's certainly the best you will ever see a rare title like this that isn't curated like some studio "classics".

This is an interesting document of "mondo" (world) films from the 1960s, when I guess they were in vogue. "Mondo" movies were collections of live, on-the-spot films of people in their native environments, the more unusual or "forbidden" the better.

This disc includes trailers for about a dozen such films, most of which feature nudity and sensationalism. If the two feature films are not particularly shocking anymore, the trailers still have the power to shock or offend people (see in particular the trailers for "Mondo Freudo" and "Mondo Oscenita"). The bottom line is usually "Never have you seen anything like this -- you won't believe your eyes, but everything you'll see in this movie is REAL!!!" This sort of thing fits nicely in the context of the Sexual Revolution, as it tends to justify a revolt from the staid mores of Western civilization by showing various options available to the adventurous thrill-seeker.

The two features on the disc, Primitive Love and Mondo Balordo, are definite examples of sexploitation masquerading as an academic effort to reveal the Shocking Truth of human behavior. Primitive Love is certainly a wretched comedy, an Italian feature in the unfunny teasing/slapstick tradition of Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, but the home-movie portions (the "mondo" segments) are interesting. Mondo Balordo is about 20 minutes too long, but some of its segments hold up well (the opener, where a midget lady is escorted down the sidewalk by a normal-sized man and hustled into a back seat for some heavy petting is guaranteed to please...). Fans of Jayne Mansfield and/or Boris Karloff will certainly want to see these, even if they aren't crown jewels in their respective careers.

The intermission-shorts included with these films are nicely incongruous, the longest one being a collection of ads for Pennsylvania Dutch Country merchants who doubtless would have frowned upon the very existence of "mondo" culture.

All in all, an enjoyable three hours of "drive-in" madness, and certainly something different for your TV.

I had been seeking this movie for quite a while.
The people behind ''Something Weird Video'' really believe in the notion of ''Give'em what they want'' but also the concept of ''value for money''.This combo is not as attractive as the one with ''The Wild,Wild World of Jayne Mansfield+The Labyrinth of Sex'' and that is why I give it 4 stars instead of 5.
If you forget the awful wig Jayne is wearing (was the budget so low that they could not even afford a hairdresser ?),her body looks really good,and you laugh with her,not at her when she carries on with her intricate dance numbers.Poor Mickey Hargitay has a small role,that makes you want to watch ''The Loves of Hercules'' where you could at least see his outstanding physique.The two italian actors doing a really cheap imitation of Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis duo,would get arrested if behaving in public in their peculiar and creepy fashion.
The second part ''Mondo Balardo'' has to be the cheapest ''Mondo Cane''-inspired movie.It is still interesting in a ''what the hay ?''type of reaction.
Conclusion:Get that DVD,and show it to your non-Jayne Mansfield admirers friends,if you want to make sure that they will never spend another video-night at your place.However if you are a Jayne Mansfield,watch it as a guilty little pleasure...))

Both "Primitive Love" and "Mondo Balordo" are tamer examples of the "mondo" movies that were popular during the 1960s, beginning with the success of "Mondo Cane" (best known, perhaps, for the song "More," which received an Academy Award nomination). Mondo movies were pseudo-documentaries that purported to reveal shocking, exotic rituals around the world, but, in reality, concentrated their subject matter on third-world countries in Africa and Asia (where said subjects couldn't complain too much and were probably desperate for money, if they received any at all). By any stretch of the imagination, much of the footage would today be appallingly racist.

"Primitive Love" is an inept Italian sex farce starring Jayne Mansfield (already past her prime and obviously desperate for movie work) that includes some footage of so-called "primitve love" rituals from around the world. Some of these "rituals" include graphic documentary footage of the slaughtering and disembowling of animals that featured so prominently in the mondo-movie genre. Animal-rights activists would have a field day with these movies if they ever became popular again. What is inadvertantly hilarious about this movie is definitely not the antics of the two co-stars (a bargain basement Italian version of Martin and Lewis), but Jayne's voiceover narration. It may be the only time in cinema history where you are afforded the chance to hear a blonde bombshell sex goddess seriously conversing on Marxist economic theory!!!

"Mondo Balordo" may have been one of the last gasps of the exhausted mondo-movie genre upon its release, and it features a narrative voiceover by Boris Karloff. It's an incoherent mess of a movie, with random footage spliced together that promises insights into exotic rituals from around the world, but looks more like a package-tour travelogue through a very boring hell.

The real problem with this DVD release, however, is the attachaed trailers for other mondo movies. Here, you get the full, noxious variety of how degrading these movies became over the course of time in an effort to provide more shocking and disturbing thrills to jaded 1960s audiences. Easily the most offensive is a trailer for the mondo-movie "Secret Africa," which features typical National Geographic footage of bare-chested African women that may have been shocking 35-40 years ago, but now seems nothing less than degradingly racist. But more offensive is the inclusion of footage of a baby being held down and, in bloody close-up, ritually scarred as it screams in pain. Also included are close-ups of disfigured victims of the then raging war in Angola. This is appalling, graphic and inexcusable.

Because of the content of the attached trailers, this DVD is unfit for viewing -- certainly by minors and advisedly by any adult with a sensitivity for human misery, suffering and degradation. I would rate this no stars at all if given the chance.

lousy foreign film pass on this one