Savage Man...Savage Beast (1975)

Original title: Ultime Grida dalla Savana

Directors: Antonio Climati, Mario Morra

Writers: Antonio Climati, Mario Morra

Composer: Carlo Savina

Starring: Alberto Moravia

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Horrific violence, filmed as it happened!

Plot: A notorious mondo film depicting unbelievable and bizarre rituals, animal killing and cruelty, and people being killed and eaten, all by either animals or humans against each other or themselves.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

The picture opens with our narrator talking about how we shouldn't feel sorry for the giant stag we see him stalk, kill and behead.  Then it's off to Cape Cod for a peace demonstration for the rights of animals.

Yeah, I can get behind that. Up next we hit the jungle where we see a leopard kill a monkey and then an anaconda killing and eating a monkey (I'm certain this is the same snake/monkey scene used in some of the Italian cannibal pictures that followed this). More killing as we follow Aborigines in Australia hunting and killing a kangaroo and then, impressively, he brings down a giant flying bat with a boomerang.  And more hunting and killing of all manner of large animals with spears...all by naked dudes in Australia.  Then it's off to Burundi and cannibalism.  While in Africa we see a tribe poke holes in the ground...

and fertilize it with their dicks!!!

Hmmmmm.  These are salt of the Earth fellas.  Ahahahahahhaha!  While we spend a minute digesting that we're off to France for a proper stag hunt ala a British fox hunt.  Despite popular belief, the French keep their dicks in their pants.  Then it's a fox hunt but there's a catch...

Professor somethingoranother and his gang of fox lovers do their best to fuck up the hunt and save the poor animal by releasing a bitch in heat.  Their plan works!  The fox runs away to safety and the pack of horny hounds get prick teased to exhaustion. The Wild Fox Association adds another success to their books!  Next it's a hunters club in Peru.

There's some talk about the extinction of some of these animals.  But that's offset by a hunter capturing an endangered condor to give to a preserve.  The chase on horseback and music make out like it's a rousing Western.  OK.  Now I'm a half hour in and there's an hour to go.  I'm only going to give highlights at this point.  Kids chase an armadillo.  Shots all over the world of capturing rare animals to be sent to game reserves or branded for observation.  A man on a reserve leaves his car with his movie camera to film lions and promptly gets killed.  Fortunately the whole ordeal was captured on film by his family in the two cars!

Fuck, this is a violent movie.  Bring back the titties!

 

Ahhh, that's better. This is a peaceful gathering of hippies on the Isle of Wight protesting the killing of animals or some shit.  Who cares, it's loaded with naked broads.  Then we go hang out with penguins and then Eskimos in Alaska who apparently stopped hunting and spend their time drinking.  They ask how they can solve this problem to put down the bottle and pick up the guns and spears.   More killing, this time elephants (no Eskimos were involved).  Were back in Africa with dudes who left their clothes back at camp (where are the gals in the bush?).

This is the part that closes the short lived series, The Woman Show...guys jumping up and down with their dongers in flight.  It ends with mutual masturbation into bamboo with skulls on the end.  In case you're wondering, it's to ejaculate into and spill the seed into the water so that animals downstream will drink it and be fertile.  DUH!  After this it's a lot of animal action killing other animals or just seeing them do the things they do.  This is the slow, not so interesting part of the show.  There's a slightly humorous bit in the plains of Africa where we see cheetahs chase ostriches to the sound effects of a Formula One race. 

Seriously, what I've described is only about half the film.  There's a lot in this thing.  Consider these mondo films a just-when-you-thought-you'd-seen-everything kind of pictures.  They're rarely good, fun and interesting all the way through.  Most of them could be cut down to a half hour of amazing entertainment but sitting through 90 minutes of one usually wears out its welcome before too long.  Plus you've got to wonder how much of this is real and not contrived.  My money is on most of it being staged.  It would be interesting to go through one of these and pick it apart but that would also kill far too much time for such a small amount of satisfaction.  This is one of twenty films in the Grindhouse Experience DVD set from Fortune 5.