1. Africa Addio (1966)
Italian Mondo movie made by those two ne'er do well film directors Gualtiero Prosperi and Franco Jacopetti. This time, they are up to mischief all over the continent of Africa, documenting the fall of colonial rule there and the problems the natives had in adjusting to that loss and establishing democracy and order in a continent riven with ethnic hatred. This, for me, is the big Grand Daddy of gruelling films. I watched it behind my hand with a finger on the fast forward button. I haven't done that since I watched Exorcist 3 when I was 15. The animal slaughter is so evil, so sick and so unnecessary - oh let's go kill a family of hippos for no discernible reason - that it is beyond the pale, even for a Mondo film. And that is before you get to the human slaughter. Thousands of Arabs in Tangeria are put in holding pens to be murdered. Many of them are desperately fleeing to the sea, but there is no rescue there. The next day thousands of Arabs lie dead. This film footage is the only proof this massacre took place. Apart from the slaughter of Arabs, Jacopetti and Gualtiero find us a pile of severed human hands, people being executed at point blank range by mercenaries, the aftermath of the Mau Mau uprisings and various other unpleasant things which have mercifully faded from my memory. Besides all of the controversy over 'Is this real or is this staged?' scenes, an unpalatable aspect of the film is its racism. The white African woman's body is fetishized through shots of young Afrikaner South African girls bouncing up and down on a trampoline and running to the sea. Black Africans are nearly almost shown in a negative light. The narration is racist and condescending. It is all just a beautiful, horrible ordeal to sit through. Africa Addio will jigger up your brain cells and make you feel morose and disgusted. Even after all of these decades, Africa Addio remains the ultimate gruelling film to sit through