An Introduction to Mondo Movies
By Luca Persiani
2.0 - October 2025
Versione italiana

What we call Mondo Cinema was born in 1962, when the Italian documentary Mondo Cane (by Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi) was released. More than just a documentary film, Mondo Cane is a mixed bag of unusual and shocking visions and act-outs, at least as unusual and shocking as it could be for the average moviegoer from the 1960s. No other mainstream movie featured Mondo Cane's harsh and cynical approach to sex, death, illness, or weirdness.
The movie claimed to be as graphic and crude as reality is, despite the depicted reality being re-enacted most of the time—often clumsily and excessively—and the movie leaving the audience unaware they were watching something fictitious.

But this was no news to the movie market. Pseudo-documentary or pseudo-scientific films—often mere exploitative efforts—were shown to audiences in sideshows since the early 20th century. Soon, other kinds of educational B-movies came up, including the infamous Classroom Scare Films, inaccurate and creepy "educational" pieces shown to school audiences. During the 1950s, the Mondo Sexy genre spread out. European Nights (Europa di notte, 1958, directed by Alessandro Blasetti) and Il mondo di notte (1959, by Luigi Vanzi) were both written by Mondo Cane mastermind Jacopetti (the former with Ennio De Concini, who also wrote Divorce Italian Style). Those movies were sleazy, sexy show compilations, lightly disguised as journalistic reports. Nonetheless, the worldwide success achieved by Mondo Cane christened this kind of cinema. From now on, critics and audiences use the expression Mondo Movies or Mondo Cinema.

Rather than a traditional film genre, Mondo Cinema operates as a super-genre defined less by formal boundaries and more by an attitude: the unflinching, often voyeuristic exploitation of reality for cinematic effect. This duality—using cinema as both a documentarian medium and a tool for detached observation—anchors the essence of Mondo Cinema.

The Genres Related to Mondo Cinema

Within this super-genre, the Shockumentary emerges as Mondo Cinema's pivotal form. Designed to elicit strong reactions—shock, offense, amazement, or disgust—Shockumentaries retain the documentary shape while pushing boundaries, reaffirming Mondo Cinema's commitment to confronting viewers with taboo or disturbing realities.
From Mondo Cane to the Faces of Death series (the latter began in 1979 by Conan Le Cilaire), filmmakers exploit the morbid side of reality and provide it as entertainment to a voyeuristic audience. The Shockumentary genre includes accidental death/disaster films (home movies, live coverage of events), out-of-context professional forensic films, and compilations of sex shows.

When Mondo Cane proves to be an international hit, the Italian word "Mondo" (meaning "world") floods into exploitation and b-movie title-making: chaos rises as "Mondo" becomes improper synonymous with "kitsch", "weird", "sleazy", "exploitation", "trash" (Mondo Trasho, 1969, by John Waters) or is used literally as "The World of" (Mondo Rocco, 1970, soft beefcake by Pat Rocco).
Furthermore, Mondo Cinema is spoofed in titles such as Totò di notte n°1 (1962, by Mario Amendola) or Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979, by Michael O'Donaghue).

From the beginning of the Seventies, Mondo Cinema leaked into feature films, via Cannibal Cinema—although early signs of Cannibal Cinema can be found during the Thirties and Forties. Shockumentary is supposed to expose death: from animal slaughter to human torture and mayhem. Everything—allegedly—real. Cannibal Cinema puts "allegedly real" in anthropophagy fiction. Most of the time, we are aware we are not watching a documentary, but sometimes we are tricked into believing that a particular act of violence is an actual document caught on film. From that point of view, Cannibal Cinema borders on Snuff Cinema more closely than the Shockumentary itself. The state-of-the-art film of the Cannibal genre is undoubtedly the breathtaking Cannibal Holocaust (1979, by Ruggero Deodato), both an intense Mondo Movie and an inspiring thought about the super-genre.
Also, moving off from Cannibal tradition, another sub-genre rises on: Violent Adventure, quite far from the full Cannibal rampage but with little, occasional Mondo-sparks as well.

In the mid-1970s, a new myth spread: Snuff Cinema. From now on, the most frequently asked question is, "Is there such a thing as a snuff film?"
"Porn films gone wrong (...), bizarre religious numbers (...), filmed executions (...), home videos by psychopaths (...): none of the above constitutes a snuff movie as the term is usually understood. But the notion that there is some sort of snuff movie industry out there, complete with film crews, lab technicians, and, God help us, sacrificial actors; that these people film themselves committing capital crimes and sell the result to strangers; and that for nearly 30 years they've succeeded in concealing all traces of their handiwork, strikes me as absurd." (Cecil Adams)
The legend featured his popular debut in 1976, when Snuff, by Michael Findlay and Carter Stevens, was released in the USA. Snuff is a fictional story that includes raw footage of what was sold to audiences as a real murder on camera, a grim document from the underground Snuff industry. The footage was a fake, once again a cynical gimmick to draw the attention of the media and the public.

During the 1980s, home videos and TV proved how easy it had become to obtain filmed coverage of daily life, from your child's first steps to natural disasters. Back in the 1970s, Abraham Zapruder's 8mm film depicting the killing of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was something unique. Now we can watch live on TV or the Internet shuttle explosions, war violence, suicides, shootings, and more. Reality shows, docu-fiction, and handycam exploitation: Mondo attitude is now a standard in mainstream media.

But the classic Mondo Cinema is not dead. The Blair Witch Project (1999, by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez) is a paradoxically unique accomplishment: the tale of a group of filmmakers who disappear in the woods while looking for a witch, leaving behind hours of videotape documenting their frightening journey. Regarded by many as an uncredited Cannibal Holocaust remake, The Blair Witch Project was vehemently and successfully hyped as a real document, being in fact pure fiction.

Furthermore, feature films such as The Postman (1994, by Michael Radford) are subtle Mondo-attitude adepts. Audiences are surely more than ever moved by what they see on screen, knowing that Italian actor Massimo Troisi—who played the main character—was suffering from a terminal illness while filming. Just like his character, Troisi was going to die shortly after (actually, a couple of months before the movie was released in Italy).

Finally, Mondo Cinema has been the subject of many non-exploitation feature films, such as—to mention only a few titles—8mm (1999, by Joel Schumacher) or The Brave (1997, by Johnny Depp). Those movies stage the Snuff myth according to a stereotypical tradition of morbidity and decadence.