Many horror fans were probably surprised when it was announced in 2018: the unabridged version of “Mondo Cannibal“ is no longer on the index! More than 36 years after the cannibal film ended up on the list of media harmful to minors in 1982, actual rehabilitation followed. You can now get the film completely uncut with an 18 stamp on DVD and Blu-ray:
Years later, the next upgrade follows – aimed at everyone for whom the full and HD movie is not enough: The film is now available in 4K for the first time. If you want to experience the film in Ultra HD, you better hold on tight now…
Traditionally, distributor ’84 Entertainment releases the film simultaneously in a number of strictly limited collector’s editions (for example in various media books and wooden boxes), which are available from, among others JPC And OFDb can already be ordered. While the majority of editions only include the Blu-ray and DVD, the 4K disc is available in the ultimate complete package – which will put quite a dent in your wallet:
The UHD version of “Mondo Cannibale” costs a whopping 299 euros – and is released as an elegant art book edition in leather, including a 4K disc, two Blu-rays, two DVDs and a soundtrack CD and also provided with a particularly extensive, impressive booklet of 84 pages. There is a lot of bonus material on board, and you can also look forward to four film versions in one go (!): the German theater version, the uncut version, the Super 8 edition and the animal sniff-free version.
This is Mondo Cannibale
‘Mondo Cannibale’ is, in addition to films such as ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, also known in this country as ‘Naked and Mangled’, one of the best-known representatives of the cannibal cinema that flourished mainly in the 1970s and 1980s – which at the time caused heated debates and major controversies and remains one of the toughest the cinematic landscape has to offer.
In pseudo-documentary fashion, these films usually deal with alleged barbaric customs and customs of various peoples from around the world – and typically rely on graphic depictions of violence and questionable scenes involving animal snuff.
Umberto Lenzi (“Eaten Alive”) shaped the much-discussed subgenre like no other – and in “Mondo Cannibale” he tells in typical genre style the story of a journalist who opens the gate to hell on earth during a trip: the De Brit John Bradley (Ivan Rassimov) travels through remote Thailand, where he is innocently suspected of murder – and eventually flees into the jungle. This was his goal anyway, because he wanted to take some extraordinary photos. But the photography adventure soon takes a sinister turn when he falls into the trap of the natives living in the green thickets – who make him their slave…
Lenzi’s “Mondo Cannibale” is known as the first contribution to the exploitation cannibal genre, but became one nonetheless. inspired by another film – which, however, is more likely to be set in Western cinema: Elliott Silverstein’sThe man they called Horsefrom 1970 tells a similar story about an English aristocrat who is captured by Indians – but it does without such a merciless depiction of brutality, making ‘Mondo Cannibale’ and the like classics of extreme cinema to this day.