Mondo Mod (1967)

What a waste of my time!!!

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

While the Mod era got most of the hype and coverage, the Hippies had their own little spots here too.We cover the LA area here. We get a good look at the dirt bike races and surfing scenes. A tour of the local clothing shops as well. It's interesting to see the fashions displayed without even a hint of irony.A few rock bands are shown too. Local acts, many with the greaser look still. But a few are showing Beatles influence too. And in all honesty. the groups and songs were pretty good.The inevitable scenes of riots and protests are here too. Along with an acid fueled orgy at the end. Lots of close-ups of girls in go-go boots and minis dancing as well.Not a bad doc at all. The DVD has "Hippie Revolt" as an extra. That's for 60's completests especially.

Most of us who see this will watch the Something Weird presentation which pairs this with "Hippie Revolt." "Mondo World" is the more miss-able of the two films. It has its moments of unintentional humor that we watch Something Weird films for, but they are few and far between. Probably the best moment is when a women is trying out a dress in a ill-lit boutique looks at the owner and says, "Could this be made any shorter?" The dress coming down to about a centimeter below her crotch. The film never defines "mod" but shows a collection of unrelated phenomena. Outside of the drug use, they might unnerve a grandmother in Kansas, but no one else. Guys with short hair on surfboards? Guys on dirtbikes? It's not a cultural revolt, it's people with a little spending money and leisure time, although the leering narrator seems to think differently. For the most part, this film seems to be the kind of second feature shown at drive-ins intended to bore people into putting away the speaker and leaving after fifteen minutes or so."Hippie Revolt" aka "Something's Happening" is a little more worthwhile; it at least works as a cultural document. Noteworthy in the running time: scenes of the Haight-Ashbury district of the time, which it is claimed had about one person every six square feet. I don't know if that was accurate, but the people did seem packed. The camera panned for a minute on a weekly community group seminar on how to avoid gangbangs, venereal disease, beatings and starvation, letting us know that not all was peace and consensual sex among these young, pad-crashing transients. Then the film moves to a commune called "Strawberry Fields," where it was revealed that the locals had problems with these hippies moving into the area. As no one seems to be doing anything productive, I might have problems myself. The property probably is still an outdoor slum thanks to these people. Mostly this part of the film lets us know that people zonked on drugs can sound really, really dumb. "The total presence of God and the total absence of God, it's like, the same thing," says a nubile young girl in a short dress, while a man nods in agreement; no doubt wondering how much more of this crap he will have to listen to before she will let him get into that dress.Easily the best part of the disk is the extras. You get to see previews for sleazy, and I mean, sleazy, roughies like "Smoke and Flesh" and "The Dean's Wife." And deleted scenes from "Mondo Mod" showing nudity. (If and when you see a nice body in these extras, keep in mind: she's probably expecting her first great-grandchild right about now.) Best of all were the posters of drive-in movies shown while a voice-over used a drive-in in Greenville, SC plays. I found it amazing that two movies, "The Miracle of Birth" and "Birth of Triplets" were advertised here over and over. I didn't know 'birth films' were a genre? Either that, or obstetricians were a big part of the drive-in audience....

MONDO MOD is aptly described by its trailer as "the film that took a trip and never came back!!!" It attempts to document the hip "mod" scene of the mid-60s and focuses solely on southern California. As a result, the film offers a very distorted look at the "youth culture" of that era. The most popular "mod" activities are, according to MONDO MOD: surfing, rioting, martial arts, Go-Karting, dancing, smoking pot and taking LSD, and riding motorcycles. The Vietnam War is never mentioned. A thirty-something acidhead and the young, very "mod"-stylish owner of a fashion boutique are interviewed. In my favorite scene the acidhead, wearing a mod-ified (no pun intended) executioner's mask to hide his identity, talks about his dozen LSD trips while he is purportedly tripping, and his interlocutor repeatedly turns to the camera to dispense a frightening anti-drug message that utterly contradicts the acidhead's statements. There are a few extended sequences with hot chicks dancing and systematically (not to say "semiprofessionally") disrobing. On the Something Weird Video DVD of MONDO MOD you can see two 7 minute reels of "alternate footage" from the film (with nudity excised from the theatrical release) and the ridiculously over-the-top trailer, plus a whole slew of other hippie-exploitation material.

Purporting to report on the new "Mod" culture of the 1960's (the director doesn't bother to distinguish between mods & hippies, & uses the terms interchangeably), this film is really nothing more than a cheaply-made, cheaply-put-together exploitation film. Lurid details, long (& boring) pieces about "exciting" youth events (motorbikes, surfing, go-carts), & the obligatory warning against drugs (including an "interview" with a guy tripping on LSD) are happily presented alongside upskirt shots of go-go girls, girls in bikinis waxing surfboards, girls in bikinis being shared by bikers, & a tedious climax with a guy & two girls walking zombie-like around a candle, gradually disrobing as the pot apparently takes effect.Like some exploitation films, the whole point is to slip the sex in underneath the alarming news that these people are overrunning the planet - lots of weird statistics are tossed out by the fakey radio deejay narrator, including the fascinating fact that 95% of all teenagers in Iran commit suicide - fascinating, if true, but what the hell does it have to do with kids on the Sunset Strip? - but be warned, while the girlies are awful cute (I was partial to the stripping girl who dances all through the diatribe against pot & acid), there is no actual nudity. Plus, the Something Weird print that I rented had a terrible audio dupe.Not worth it, &, for those of you who think this is really some kind of documentary - give me a break.