MONDO FREUDO

The scenes in this film are real - too real for the immature!

How about another trip around the world with Lee Frost and bob Cresse? This time it will be even spicier than the last time. Directing their focus now, almost entirely on the subject of sex, we are invited into Mondo Freudo, the Freudian world. “A world full of sex, sex symbols and the strange and unusual lore that governs them.” The film opens up with shots of various people frolicking at the beach in California¨, filmed with a telescopic lens. This shot serves only as an appetizer as the following sequence is of the same beach, only at night, now filmed with an infrared camera. Trying to capture a couple having sex, all they find is an young couple making out. Let’s move on. We are informed that we are Hollywood, later the same night, to film the many strip clubs featured in the film. The narrator tells us how the rules in the US apply to topless dancers and what they can and can’t expose to the leering audience.And on that note we are quickly swooped to London and to new strip clubs, from private to public ones, giving us mundane facts about the British legal system concerning striptease and nudity. After visiting a couple of the more seedy clubs of London we get to see the prostitutes, hanging their photos and phone numbers on billboards, since streetwalking prostitutes are illegal in England. We visit two of these working girls, hoping to get a demonstration of their lesbian skills for the camera, but they will only perform if the camera is off. When the camera is mercilessly turned off, we head back to the US to San Francisco, were we witness a topless fashion show, the Kabuki watusi club and oil painting on naked women. Following the shots of women with red paint all over their bodies, we travel on, south of the border, to Tijuana. Here the camera reveals poverty in an Indian village, were girls are sold into slavery as prostitutes. Showing us one of these slave auctions, the narrator happily informs us that the girls are better off working as private sex slaves and in local strip clubs. On that reassuring note, we leave Mexico and go to New York to se a black mass performed by witches on a loft near Times Square, and more prostitutes filmed with “hidden cameras”.
Staying on the topic on prostitution, we head to the east, for Japan to learn that prostitution, striptease and S&M clubs are legal, showing us footage from one of these “sadism” clubs. Our final destination is Germany were we are titillated with a scene from a restaurant which features some high class entertainment; Mud wrestling!

Mondo Freudo, filmed in 1966, probably back to back with Mondo Bizarro, has the focus entirely on the subject of sex. As you may have guessed the only thing we ever get to see are the buttocks and breasts of the women in front of the camera and nothing else. One should think that a Mondo film with a more focused objective would be a good thing, but Frost and Cresse hasn’t managed to do anything particularly good with the film. Most of the narration is just as stupid or even more stupid than it was in Mondo Bizarro, and many of the scenes are done in the same fashion. Again they are using the ever hip “hidden” camera and telescopic lens, trying desperately to add more to the movie. To be honest, the topless girls got boring after 20 minutes and there really isn’t anything else to this film other than topless girls. It’s also apparent that they tried to mask the obvious fact that it is a nudie picture by inserting too much useless and boring “facts” about the legal system around the world concerning nudity and sex, comparing each countries laws on the subject. As with Mondo Bizarro, it is very difficult to tell which of the footage is real and what is faked, when all of the club scenes seem to be filmed inside a tiny set. One improvement is that we get to see a little bit more of each location we are going to, but also here is it hard to tell if it is stock footage. Mondo Freudo is easily the weakest entry in the Mondo genre I’ve seen so far, and I can’t really recommend this to anyone, you’re actually better off watching Mondo Bizarro again.