Dir - Paolo Cavara/Gualtiero Jacopetti/Franco Prosperi
Overall: WOOF
The film which is credited with kicking-off the mondo genre, A Dog's Life, (Mondo Cane), is designed for both the strong-willed and for the faint of heart who are provoked with a barrage of unsettling "real" images. In typical mockumentary fashion, the film shows actual events by also manipulating them and the specifics as to what was staged and what is genuinely caught on camera is a line left deliberately blurred. A travelogue with lighthearted narration from Stefano Sibaldi, it is a bizarre watch that fuses up-tempo, swinging music with unrelated vignettes that range from innocently bland to horrifying. The filmmakers, (three credited directors Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti, and Franco Prosperi respectfully), traveled the globe to collect their data, which covers everything from Japanese massage parlors, to water-skying Americans, to naked tribal rituals, to various countries murdering, force-feeding, abusing, and eating animals. The depiction of the latter unfortunate element is the most egregious and difficult if not impossible to defend in such a sensationalized context that presents itself as educational entertainment yet was actually done for exploitative purposes. Also, proprietors of the mondo sub-genre would continue to try and one-up each other, ultimately leading to horseshit like the Faces of Death series. Historically significant for the cinematic movement that it inspired, but still best left unseen.
Dir - Luigi Bazzoni/Franco Rossellini
Overall: MEH
This adaptation of Giovanni Comisso's 1962 novel La donna del lago, The Possessed, (La donna del lago, Love, Hate and Dishonor, The Lady of the Lake), was the full-length debut from director Luigi Bazzoni, as well as the only credited work from behind the lens from usual producer Franco Rossellini. American Peter Baldwin's depressed writer decides to look up an old crush at an old vacation spot, only to find that she was either murdered or committed suicide under mysterious circumstances. As a precursor to giallos, the movie plays out with film noir motifs in tow. We have a gruff protagonist in a trench coat, a femme fatale who may have pulled various heartstrings, suspicious townsfolk, civilian investigations that go cold, and a bleak open ending. Also, Leonida Barboni's cinematography is evocative and occasionally flashy, focusing on eyes looking through doorways and hazy nightmare sequences, moments that are also enhanced by an eerie and subtlety-used musical score from Renzo Rossellini. While plenty atmospheric, it looses steam in the third act without any gasp-worthy revelations to bring everything to a more fetching conclusion.
(1968)
Dir - Piero Vivarelli
Overall: WOOF
A dull-as-can-be fumetti neri crime film with a sci-fi/magic potion angle thrown in, Satanik's cheap production values, comatose pacing, and sleep-walking performances render it a waste of time. Though the title character gets her name and transformation gimmick from the Max Bunker and Roberto Raviola comic which ran from 1964 through 1974, the script by Eduardo Manzanos, Luciano Secchi, and director Piero Vivarelli bares no other resemblance to the source material and is its own unique, painfully drab concoction. Polish model Magda Konopka makes for an alluring antagonist when she is glammed out, but she has the thespian charisma of a bucket of used paint and looks ridiculous with the low-rent "old hag" makeup that represents her natural form before she takes a Jekyll & Hyde type serum that mutates her into a ravishing starlet. Besides some ominous thunder claps in the opening scene, the rest of the movie is void of any oppressive atmosphere let alone suspense-laden set pieces. Though some hip wardrobe choices and zippy jazz music by Romano Mussolini and Roberto Pregadio give it a swinging Italian flavor, the meandering plot line never steps on the gas and hefty amounts of screen time are nothing more than musical montages in between one-note guys in suites who talk, sit down, talk some more, poor themselves a drink, shoot guns, and get smitten with Konopka's leggy, villainous vixen.
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