User Reviews

The mondo shockumentary genre is a strange thing. Either they are very very bad, or very very average. "Ecco" falls firmly between the two extremes. George Sanders slurs his way through this globe trotting collection of shocking and amazing footage not easily accessible to mid-1960's American audiences. Sanders quotes Shakespeare, translates for the brutish audience, and is so completely bored the viewer quickly shares the sentiment. I won't go scene by scene because the film's producers seem to have found more footage in France than anywhere else. So, we'll start all the cinematic mayhem that is not French, like Berlin! Berlin has a secret sword duelling society that slashes faces but never kills. It's like "Fight Club," only you never talk about secret German face slashing duelling society. And you won't believe what those crazy Japanese are up to. They play audiotapes while their adorable newborns are sleeping so the kids will be smarter! And after this shocking footage, a lame karate demonstration! My blood pressure! In Greece, mountaintop monasteries collect priests who never leave the facilities, even after they die. Dunsmore, England has a thriving Satanic church, complete with a topless gal getting sprinkled with fresh chicken blood. Rio de Janeiro is home to Pele and Mardi Gras. In the film, the carnival is about as exciting as a three hour soccer match. Topless dancers in Nairobi give the idiot tourists a savage jiggly show before they head to jazz clubs. Some tourists in Africa stay in tall hotels while "on safari," where they can watch wild animals from air conditioned comfort. One interesting fact brought up here has Elizabeth II at this very hotel the day her father died and she became Queen of England. Reno has oiled male bodybuilders thrilling the gals while a blonde female singer in San Francisco bends steel bars and rips phone books in half for the guys. The Portuguese hunt "monsters of the deep" by hand, using a harpoon and a rowboat. Once the viewer learns the "monster" is a humpback whale, you will start cheering against the Portuguese. Crazy teens in Stockholm down carbonated soft drinks, invade country fairs, and drive recklessly. Hundreds of half naked teenage boys in Osaka work themselves into a frenzy in a Buddhist good luck ceremony. The original Grand Guignol Theatre gives a last performance, unable to compete with the violence of the modern world. Los Angeles has a female roller derby, a Lapland reindeer roundup involves one chick who castrates animals with her teeth, Argentine gauchos leer at a masculine female singer in a gold bikini, and finally the film ends with different, but non-explicit, looks at artificial insemination in Rome and Exeter, England.

The majority of the stories took place in France. A debutantes' ball in Paris is cleverly juxtaposed with a circus for the poor in the French Alps. A group dedicated to touching and idolizing the female rear end is profiled. While most working Americans take a coffee break during the work day, some French market laborers get a cognac break complete with a stripper- I wish the stores I worked at had that, I would insist on a full hour lunch. The mondo staple lesbian club is profiled, but the most disturbing sequence in the film belongs to a man named Yvon Yva. He shocks a group of doctors and reporters by driving long needles through his chest and throat, and a rapier through his abdomen. Grimace worthy, to say the least. In all of its widescreen glory, "Ecco" is so typical of so many other shockumentary films that it does not succeed in setting itself apart from them. Sanders is awful, never seen onscreen, and the film quickly dives into tedium with the exception of one or two segments. For the record, Sanders tells us that "ecco" means "to observe," although I am not sure in what language.

1st watched 1/20/2003 - 2 out of 10(Dir-Gianni Proia): Weird concoction of rituals, religions & customs held in many different parts of the world that I believe is intended to shock you. This it does, but I couldn't figure out the connections or the reason for the Italian filmmaker to make something like this. There is a variety of strange human rituals including women in Las Vegas gauking over muscle-bound men to women performing castration by teeth on reindeer in the northern Icelands and then getting married to men who choose them after this is done. I could go on and on but it's not really needed. If your idea of a good time is watching naked Japanese men trouncing each other for the sake of a possible good year according to their priests or seeing chicken-blood being spattered on a naked woman as part of a satatic ritual then by all means watch this movie. For others who just want entertained and not disgusted, stay away from this.

I don't know much about mondo except that it's mostly exploitation, sometimes racist, and occasionally just stagey lies. However, Ecco is highly entertaining in its variety of rituals from different cultures all over the world. I had to Google the reindeer thing, and it's actually true (or once was before it was outlawed). There's also some reasonably tame but historically accurate presentations of burlesque dancing. This isn't the sort of documentary that you could share with the whole family, because of the adult content and also because with mondo cinema it's unclear what is real and what is exaggerated or staged. But this one's fun!

Before TV and video bringing us the strangeness of the world there was the travel film which brought the sites into local theaters. Then in the 1960's we had the travel film spawn the Mondo movie where all of the weird things in the world were brought to your local theater. Most of the films were an odd mix of real and staged events (many mid-cycle films were all staged). Most have dry witty or pithy commentary by a well known star.

The films were mostly of the sort of thing where "if you've seen one you've seen them all". Ecco rises some how above the standard rut of the Mondo movies. Yes, there are things to turn your stomach and others to make you question if its real or not, as all of these films do, but Ecco has one thing the others don't and that is George Saunders doing the narration.

Saunders was a master of dry wit and his delivery works wonders with the material. In all of the other mondo movies you remember the momentary bits that shocked you, but here you remember Saunders voice, with his inflections revealing infinitely more than the words do. You want to hear his narration which seems to rise above the material.

For the life of me I couldn't tell you one thing that happens in this movie, but I remember the voice. Its the voice that makes me want to watch this every now and again while almost every other mondo movie I've seen could disappear and I wouldn't care.

If you must see one mondo movie in your life see this one. If you want to see one that doesn't suck see this one.

8 out of 10.