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How soon before you start foraging or hunting? How soon before civilization is just a word you knew from the past? How soon before you’re willing to do anything to survive or to have your family survive? How soon before you’re the one performing barbaric acts just to get by? In 1962, the world was introduced to the first of a series of films with Mondo Cane (Italian for “Dog’s World.”) Mondo, as a subgenre, focused primarily primar ily on the idea that the footage was real, showing realistic realistic situations in everyday life in cultures spanning the globe, hence the term for the genre of mondo, meaning “world.” When it was released, Mondo Cane caused a stir, both negative and positive. It won an Academy Award for Best Song, as well as the Palme d’Or at Cannes. So why is a documentary in a book about horror? Because it was horror, only it was the real thing. These types of films not only opened the audience’s eyes, it kept them glued open. The documentary approach showed sensational, unaltered scenes of real cultures performing acts that were considered bizarre by Western sensibilities, such as devouring live insects or intentionally mutilating the face as a mark of honor. Once that door had been opened to these kinds of subjects, besides depicting ritualistic torture, rites of passage, and other bloodletting, many other filmmakers would jump on the bandwagon with their own interpretations. Russ Meyer’s Mondo Topless (1966) used the subgenre as a vehicle for his continuing sexploitation cinema while giving audiences a peek into the lives of strippers in 1960s San Francisco. Mondo could be considered the predecessor to modern reality television, only without any commercial breaks and censor ing. The filmmakers of mondo would continue to outdo themselves up to present day, combining as much raw, real footage of accidents, autopsies, and so on with as little staged action as possible. Arguably the culmination of mondo mov movies ies would be in the Faces of Death series, which started in 1978. By this point, however, staged footage was mixed with real footage to heighten the shock to the audience even more. In either case, these types of movies again explored man in his unadorned psychological state, both as animal and as victim of his own trappings. Another big subgenre of horror hor ror film emerged in the 1960s: the zombie movie. The dead were rising from their graves and craving the flesh and brains of the living. Night of the Living Dead (1968), directed by George 13
