BRUTES AND SAVAGES (1976)

 

Death by paper mache crocodile

 

In bald terms, the word ‘Mondo’ in Italian simply means ‘world’.  In cinematic terms however, the word has been co-opted to represent a particular brand of exploitation movie – Documentaries (or faux-documentaries) with a stated aim of exposing westernised audiences to either cultures and practices from lesser-known tribes and  groups in the developing world, or sub- or counter-culture groups within their own society.  Whilst a small number of mondo films do exactly this, and as a result are often genuinely fascinating, the majority say they’re documentaries but, to be frank, lie about it.    These are straight up exploitation movies, dog and pony shows (literally in some cases) who’s primary purpose is to titillate and appal in equal measure.  They couch their images in the language of the documentary, for the most part, because their canny producers and directors recognise that the format gave them the best possible chance to get material otherwise unacceptable to national censorship boards in fictional narratives, into cinemas.  For a short period in the late 1960’s and early 1970s, it was also the case that lines between mainstream cinema, exploitation cinema and art cinema were blurring and central to that was the crossover success of a number of Mondo Documentaries that somehow managed to walk the line between all three. 

The key text in the world of Mondo film-making is MONDO CANE (1960) – literally translated as ‘It’s a Dog’s World’.  MONDO CANE was the work of Italian Journalist Gaultiero Jacopetti, and traditional film-maker Franco Prosperi.  The film itself is essentially a groundbreaker in cinematic terms – it broke the mould of cinematic documentaries by combining a narrative approach to an essentially newsreel format, jumping from sequence to sequence (the narrative very loosely relates to the way animals are treated by people in different cultures) on the basis of a fairly unstructured story, but which nevertheless provided a pseudo-narrative context for the sequences .  Jacopetti had previously been an Italian newsreel journalist, so he was at home tweaking the format, and with Prosperi’s background in sword and sandal exploitation pictures, the pair hit upon a formula that was, in exploitation terms, the motherlode.

MONDO CANE is a freak of a movie, a film that demonstrates that you can fool all the people, all the time.  It was a critical success, despite sequences including nudity and violence (largely aimed at animals) that would have been unacceptable in all likelihood in mainstream fictional narrative, MONDO CANE survived a mauling at the hands of censorship boards, who felt that such material was justified in a documentary context.  The film played to huge audiences across the class, race and income divide.  The success of MONDO CANE made Jacopetti & Prosperi stars, and they were to return to the same format, with more and more extreme imagery and less and less genuine documentary footage, over the next 15 years.  We’ll look at two of their films – AFRICA ADDIO (1966) and GOODBYE UNCLE TOM (1971) at some point in the future – this review after all relates to Arthur Davis’ BRUTES AND SAVAGES (1978), however it’s important to underline the role of Jacopetti and Prosperi in the Mondo genre and recognise the part that MONDO CANE had in generating a mini-industry in third world ‘documentaries’.  It did three things that always get exploitation film makers excited – it managed to push the boundaries on what was acceptable in terms of nudity and violence, it played to crossover audiences – both provincial cinemas and inner-city grindhouses, and it was relatively cheap.  It’s difficult to over-estimate how heady a concoction that is to low-budget film producers and, sure enough, there followed a bewildering number of documentaries, faux-documentaries and outright con-jobs as seemingly every western European with a camera and a passport buggered off somewhere to film something generally being cruel to something else.  As we shall shortly see, however, not all Mondo films are created equal.

BRUTES AND SAVAGES supposedly follows the ‘Arthur Davis Expedition’, which sounds like it should be a lounge jazz quintet, but sadly isn’t.  It isn’t clear whether the aforementioned Mr Davis has culled the highlights of many different expeditions together, or whether he was on one spectacularly long, globetrotting expedition, however the film slavishly follows the MONDO CANE template, bookending it’s scenes of animal slaughter and mocked up ‘love rituals’ with Mr Davis and his local Incan expert earnestly planning and reviewing their ‘trip’, in ties foul enough to frighten children.  Occasionally, Davis or his Incan expert will pop up in a segment and gurn amiably to give the footage a sense of continuity.

The vast majority of BRUTES AND SAVAGES consists of animals killing animals.  Now the uninitiated amongst you may point out that you can see such things on pretty much any nature documentary.  This is true, except that ‘Arthur Davis’ doesn’t have the skill to film these sequences in the wild, so he chucks a range of captured and/or injured animals at a bunch of alligators, or snakes, or birds of prey.  Yes, we’re here again, in the world of CANNIBAL FEROX, asking whether a film really can go too far.  Again.  Alongside the sequences of staged animal atrocities are a few filler sequences of tribal erotic art and rituals (probably faked) and tribal brain surgery/rites of passage (definitely faked) and it’s back to the animal-on-animal cruelty until the end.

Not good news if you're a monkey

The film jumps all around the place – from South America to Africa and back again.  The narrative purports to be an examination of the lives and trials of ‘primitive’ jungle dwelling civilisations, but it really isn’t.  It’s a series of barely competent semi-professional shorts with lousy effects, lighting and cinematography, almost all of which are obviously faked.  BRUTES AND SAVAGES calls itself a documentary, but Arthur Davis lied.  The fact that the film proports to be a filmed expedition probably owes much to Pierre Gaisseau’s Oscar-winning genuinely fascinating documentary THE SKY ABOVE, THE MUD BENEATH (1961), a hugely influencial work on the Mondo genre, but there is where the comparison ends.  Gaisseau's film is a remarkable document, an unflinching  vision of the 1961 Franco-Dutch expedition into the unexplored centre of Dutch New Guinea, cataloging the remarkable tribal societies they encounter, the staggering variety of wildlife and the grim conditions, with constant battles against leeches and malaria.  The ordeal of the explorers (led by Gaisseau himself) lead to a fantastic, genuinely thrilling finale in which the team discover a brand new, until then completely unknown and unvisited river valley habitat.  By comparison,  Davis' film is a cheap fraud.  Like the contemporary SAVAGE MAN, SAVAGE BEAST (1975) and SHOCKING AFRICA (1982) it's a collection of largely staged sequences sold as something else entirely.  In many respects, these films are the purest form of exploitation movie, they offer almost nothing of artistic merit and instead rely entirely on a expectation that, just as Romans knew that there'd be an audience if they threw a collection of unarmed prisoners of war into an arena with a group of hungry lions, modern audiences would pay to see a group of alligators eat a wounded panther.

Whatever that says about the human race's capacity for growth over 2000 years, BRUTES AND SAVAGES is a dismal film, made with a lack of any real care, with nothing interesting to say and who's appeal relies almost solely on an expectation that there's a paying audience for filmed animal cruelty.  Sadly, there probably is, but you (hopefully!) wouldn't pay a tenner for a private dogfight in your front room, so why would you buy this?  BRUTES AND SAVAGES is not just a million miles away from a proper documentary like THE SKY ABOVE, THE MUD BENEATH, it's not even fit to lace the boots of the best films that Jacopetti and Prosperi made. 

Arthur Davis, you cock!

JOYSTICKS (1983)

 

 

If you’re looking for the three most imitated movies of the 1970’s, then two, HALLOWEEN (1978) and ALIEN (1979), stand out as fairly obvious.  The third is, undoubtedly ANIMAL HOUSE (1978), John Landis’ broad, bad-taste collegiate comedy about campus life.  ANIMAL HOUSE made a movie star of John Belushi, and mixed heady turns from new talent (well, fairly new in the case of Tim Matheson) with reliable shifts from well-known character actors like Donald Sutherland and John Vernon.  ANIMAL HOUSE mixes period nostalgia with decent performances, a funny, if gross-out script from Harold Ramis amongst others, with strong direction from John Landis, a director always at his best with broader comedy vehicles.  It was a huge box-office draw, and as we’ve already seen, that light shines bright enough to be seen in the murkiest film-making corners, and so the inevitable happened.

Like HALLOWEEN, ANIMAL HOUSE didn’t cost very much to make, and yet, an imitator could cull out the period setting and the casting costs of assured acting vets and, it was obviously thought, catch the same fire in a bottle.  This kind of thinking was going through the heads of indie producers cashing in on HALLOWEEN – Why pay for Steadicam or Donald Pleasance?  We can just set this sucker in the woods and be done with all that.  So it was with a lot of the ANIMAL HOUSE clones – the more slavish imitators might maintain a period setting, but most just went for tits and gross-outs.

The most obvious ANIMAL HOUSE clone is Bob Clark’s PORKY’S (1981).  Clark’s film has the same period setting, much of the same sex-driven comedy (In this case embodied in the titular Cathouse) but lacks the sense of drive and (believe it or not) subtlety of Landis’ film.  The film’s sequel – PORKY’S II (1983) is even more scattergun, mixing tits and ass comedy with a deep-fried southern race-fuelled melodrama that feels distinctly odd and not particularly funny.  Other films in the same comedy sub-genre that casual viewers may already know include REVENGE OF THE NERDS (1983) and its sequels, and FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982), which is probably the best and most acutely observed of the films that followed on from ANIMAL HOUSE, and which has a little more to it than tits and fart jokes.  Of course, these films were all either made or distributed by major studios, with decent financial backing, so they’re really only of passing interest to us.  It’s the dreck that thought no fart joke too gross or pair of tits to large or small that form the primary exploitation legacy of ANIMAL HOUSE.

Amongst these films are such titles as THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN (1982), which we’ll review at a later date and most definitely  isn’t a run-of-the-mill sex comedy, HARDBODIES (1984), PRIVATE LESSONS (1983), MY TUTOR (1983), MALIBU BEACH (1982), PARTY ANIMALS (1983) and the subject of this review, Greydon Clark’s JOYSTICKS.

I could have picked any of these films to look at, but JOYSTICKS is the work of Greydon Clark, and no blog on exploitation movies would be complete without some mention of Clark.  We’ll talk a bit about the man and his work later, but save to say that JOYSTICKS is classic Clark, a cultural fad – driven low-budget movie (in this case the Video Arcade), made with a degree of professionalism, cruising the coat-tails of a big-budget hit, made on the cheap with unknowns, but with a single name actor to provide some audience recognition (in this case Clark regular Joe Don Baker).

JOYSTICKS follows the trials and tribulations of Video Arcade worker Jonathan McDorfus, who manages a video arcade in which more skin is on display than Minsky’s Burlesque and which is populated by the usual assortment of freaks and geeks.  The film is set in an unnamed sun-bleached Californian two-street burg, and the video arcade is the meeting point of high school nerds, Jocks, laughably over-the-top punks (including one of the films two antagonists King Vidiot, the San Bernardino Valley equivalent of Pete Townshend’s deaf, dumb and blind kid) and bleach-blonde Valley Girls.

King Vidiot punks his way through Bubble-bobble

Into this heady atmosphere of Pac-Man and teen groping comes real-estate developer Rutter (Joe Don Baker) and his two idiot nephews.  They want the spot that the Video Arcade is located on, and are prepared to go to all kinds of sub Looney Tunes ACME-sponsored underhand tactics to get it.  Thus McDorfus is given two parallel challenges – best King Vidiot on the Arcade’s newest machine and win the girl, and thwart Rutter and his plans in order to keep his job and protect the future of the Arcade.

JOYSTICKS follows the ANIMAL HOUSE template of kids, ultra low-brow humour and an underlying ‘stick it to the man’ attitude.  Most of these films are the modern equivalent of the beach party and malt shop teen jitterbug movies that AIP turned out in their droves in the early 60’s – usually featuring a Bill Haley and The Comets, or Fats Domino soundtrack.  Almost all of them focus on a generational conflict scenario, though virtually none of them do anything interesting with the idea beyond setting established character actors in their 50’s as comic stooges.  There’s nothing in JOYSTICKS or most of its bretheren that says much about the American teen condition beyond the fact that they’re all horny (fair enough) and that their lives unfold like a Three Stooges short.  Unlike the better entries in the genre, JOYSTICKS doesn’t really have a hook – There isn’t the ‘built in nostalgia’ of ANIMAL HOUSE (or the budget, or technical and artistic competence), nor is there the cool observation of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, or the surprisingly tough emotional impact of THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN – instead, it’s half Marx Brothers/Warner Brothers cartoon slapstick (Joe Don Baker seems to have modelled his performance on Yosemite Sam) and half sophomoric tits and ass comedy, with more focus on tits and ass than being funny.

McDorfus and his unspeakable tie.

 

The problem with this comedic sub-genre is that all the good films were co-opted into other genres.  CADDYSHACK (1980) is viewed as a sports comedy.  FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH is now part of the Christopher Crowe group of observational comedies.  THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN is often described as a drama.  The rump of what’s left aren’t very good, and as most were dirt-cheap, it’s not much of a surprise that the genre took an almost fatal kicking from the John Hughes and Ivan Reitman tag-team in 1984 – when SIXTEEN CANDLES and GHOSTBUSTERS changed the nature of the genre – it wouldn’t be until the late 1990’s, and the rise of the Farrelly Brothers that low-brow comedy would return to the top of the box office charts.

Whilst JOYSTICKS is very minor fare, it does represent a good entry point to the world of its Producer-Director Greydon Clark.  Clark started his career in the employ of 1960’s zero-budget genre mogul Al Adamson.  Adamson and his Independent International Pictures company was a low-rent version of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, turning out movies and technicians who would go on to bigger and better things.  The three best known names to emerge from Adamson’s stock company of actors and technicians were Jack Starrett, John ‘Bud’ Cardos and Clark.  On the evidence of their back catalogue of films, Starrett was the best director of the three, Cardos was the most commercially successful, and Clark was most akin to their collective mentor.  To be fair, all three have serviceable movies in their filmographies (though the only really genuinely top-notch movie made between them is Starrett’s RACE WITH THE DEVIL – 1975), but it is Clark who has the longest filmography, and who has weathered the changes in indie film distribution best.

Clark has made Blaxploitation rip-offs of Hollywood movies (BLACK SHAMPOO), he’s made Drag-racing flicks, Horror comedies, straight horror films, action movies, spy movies and even a Dance-drama.  His filmography is a temporal road map of cultural and cinematic fads from the early 70’s to the mid-late 1990’s, and almost all of them have jumped on the bandwagon right at the start, carried on the tide of success generated by their bigger budget inspirations.   His best film is the backwoods SF-Horror movie WITHOUT WARNING (1980) one of the most interesting of the glut of backwoods splatter films released on the back of the success of FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980) and we’ll take a run at that at some point in the future, but all his films, even the cheapest straight-to-video action movies at the tail end of his filmography have a certain professional sheen and Clark has a knack of packing his crews with solid technicians – JOYSTICKS is edited by Larry Bock, a New World graduate who’d go on to edit major Hollywood fare such as RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985) and BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989).  Amongst the other Technicians who worked early in their careers with Clark are people like Cinematographers Danny Pearl (PATHFINDER, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) and Dean Cundey (HALLOWEEN, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, JURASSIC PARK), Make up effects artists Al Apone (DEEP BLUE SEA, IRON MAN) and Greg Cannom (BLADE, MASTER AND COMMANDER) and production designer Chester Kaczenski (TEEN WOLF, TOY SOLDIERS, TREME) – having an eye for good technicians means that Clark’s films, no matter how daft the story or wobbly the acting, always seem to squeeze more value for money from their threadbare budgets.  I doubt that Clark, who appears in interviews to be a switched-on but amiable guy (who looks a lot like author Tom Clancy), would make any particularly strong claims for his films being anything other than cheap and cheerful money-makers.  That’s fine, the budget for JOYSTICKS was around $300,000, and say what you like about the quality of the film, you can’t argue that every cent isn’t on the screen. 

JOYSTICKS is typical of the low-brow teens and tits comedies that emerged on the back of ANIMAL HOUSE.  It’s typical in that it’s more interested in female anatomy and body function gags than building any kind of sustained comedy.  It’s cheap, cheerful and dim-witted.  Like many of Greydon Clark’s films, however, it was made for next to no money and secured a decent theatrical run, is reasonably polished and probably made Clark a shit-load of money.  I can live with that.