![]() ![]() ![]() *** Paolo Cavara and a few others were wont to say that Gualtiero Jacopetti, whose career we looked at way back 2011 in a R.I.P. ** Franco Prosperi, not to be mistaken with the other Italian director Franco Prosperi (2 Sept 1926 – ), only truly left the shadow of Gualtiero Jacopetti and the genre of mondo once in his life, in 1984, with the Italian slab of fun but stinky cheese (featuring a lot of real animal abuse) that is the animal-gone-wild horror movie known as The Wild Beasts (1984 / full film), his only solo directorial project. Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971 / trailer) and the decidedly offbeat (and less known) Plot of Fear (1976 / trailer) of less interest but nonetheless fun is his singular spaghetti western, Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears (1976 / trailer). He went on to direct two relatively respected (and good) giallos, La tarantola dal ventre nero a.k.a. double bill with Hell's Belles (1969 / trailer), was a thinly veiled biting criticism of both his former partners and the mondo genre itself. His first film, L'occhio selvaggio (1967), which debuted in the US as The Wild Eye ( trailer) on an A.I.P. ![]() * Of the three Italian "documentarians", Paolo Cavara eventually grew alienated towards his fellow misogynistic colonialists-at-heart and, after doing his solo (and last) shockumentary Malamondo (1964 / trailer), moved into fiction film. Mondo Cane pretty much set up the template for all the mondo "documentaries" that were to follow (and are still being made). World by Night (1960 / full film in Italian), and as early as 1930 you can find titillating "documentaries" of "shocking" and "true" sights like those found in Ingagi (1930 / full film) and/or the somewhat more serious Mau-Mau (1955 / full film), the latter of which is arguably a first cousin to Prosperi & Jacopetti's mondo Africa Addio (1966 / title track) **** - but Mondo Cane was perhaps the most influential and remains, outside of Faces of Death (1978 / trailer) and its numerous sequels, perhaps the best known. European Nights (1959 / full film in Italian) and Il mondo di notte a.k.a. Gualtiero Jacopetti himself even worked on two earlier and very tame semi-sexy mondo-forerunners prior to finally hitting paydirt with Mondo Cane in 1962, namely Europa di note a.k.a. Mondo Cane may have been the daddy of the mondo moniker, but despite claims it was far from the first shockumentary out there. ![]()
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