A typically exploitative '70s shockumentary, made by those darned Italians who apparently cornered the market during the decade by making sick variants on MONDO CANE. These films were designed to gross out and disgust the viewer whilst hiding behind the "safe" genre of the documentary, allowing the film-makers to fill their movies with more sex and violence than is usually witnessed in similar US or British productions. MONDO MAGIC is a particularly strong and graphic example of the genre, focusing almost totally on native and primitive life in Africa and South America.
Viewers bear witness to such pleasant sights as decapitated chickens being used for divination, healers urinating on the ill as a method of healing, and that old favourite, the breast-feeding of puppies. In central America we see children having parts of their mouths removed and their skin mutilated due to age-old customs. Elsewhere in the Philippines there are some genuinely impressive and inexplicable examples of "psychic" healing in process, where a healer pulls foreign bodies from the sick and ill and leaves no wound, despite copious amounts of bloodshed. In South America, jungle natives cook large poisonous spiders for their Sunday lunch and eat the bones of old witch doctors to protect their tribe.
Over in Africa, children shower liberally in cow pee and witch doctors are left to rot back into the earth after death. Cow dung is used as an insect repellent and in a particularly repulsive interlude, we see an elephant being used as a pincushion as the natives spear it to death. Listening to the screams of pain and watching the blood stream from this proud and giant creature is a test for any emotional or squeamish viewer and to make matters worse, this moment seems to go on forever as the elephant refuses to die. Elsewhere we have a man suffering from a "genital disturbance" being treated by herbs (am I the only one who found this hilarious?) and a possessed child having his genitals wrenched from his body by a rope. The focus of the film seems to be on naked native tribe members going about their business, all loosely linked into some magical element.
At around the hour mark, the film seems to lose focus and instead concentrates on the usual round of gyrating native dances, guys lying around on beds of nails, and sex rather than violence. Don't think that for one moment the sight of two sweaty and naked natives fondling each other is titillating though, as this footage is perhaps even more gruesome than the earlier violence that the film offered up. I don't know which is worse. The repulsive barbarity of the first half of the film, or the poorly-shot out-of-focus dullness of the second. I enjoyed the cool familiar song they keep repeating through the film though, it definitely adds a sense of class to some of the scenes they don't really deserve to have. I don't know how much of this film was faked or whatnot, but at the end of the day it's a run-of-the-mill addition to this in-your-face sub-genre.
Viewers bear witness to such pleasant sights as decapitated chickens being used for divination, healers urinating on the ill as a method of healing, and that old favourite, the breast-feeding of puppies. In central America we see children having parts of their mouths removed and their skin mutilated due to age-old customs. Elsewhere in the Philippines there are some genuinely impressive and inexplicable examples of "psychic" healing in process, where a healer pulls foreign bodies from the sick and ill and leaves no wound, despite copious amounts of bloodshed. In South America, jungle natives cook large poisonous spiders for their Sunday lunch and eat the bones of old witch doctors to protect their tribe.
Over in Africa, children shower liberally in cow pee and witch doctors are left to rot back into the earth after death. Cow dung is used as an insect repellent and in a particularly repulsive interlude, we see an elephant being used as a pincushion as the natives spear it to death. Listening to the screams of pain and watching the blood stream from this proud and giant creature is a test for any emotional or squeamish viewer and to make matters worse, this moment seems to go on forever as the elephant refuses to die. Elsewhere we have a man suffering from a "genital disturbance" being treated by herbs (am I the only one who found this hilarious?) and a possessed child having his genitals wrenched from his body by a rope. The focus of the film seems to be on naked native tribe members going about their business, all loosely linked into some magical element.
At around the hour mark, the film seems to lose focus and instead concentrates on the usual round of gyrating native dances, guys lying around on beds of nails, and sex rather than violence. Don't think that for one moment the sight of two sweaty and naked natives fondling each other is titillating though, as this footage is perhaps even more gruesome than the earlier violence that the film offered up. I don't know which is worse. The repulsive barbarity of the first half of the film, or the poorly-shot out-of-focus dullness of the second. I enjoyed the cool familiar song they keep repeating through the film though, it definitely adds a sense of class to some of the scenes they don't really deserve to have. I don't know how much of this film was faked or whatnot, but at the end of the day it's a run-of-the-mill addition to this in-your-face sub-genre.