4. Addio Ultimo Uomo (The Last Savage) (1978)
By the time Addio Ultimo Uomo was released, you would have thought that the mainly Italian Mondo genre had exhausted itself feasting on all the weird stuff that goes on in the Oriental, Occidental and Third Worlds. Africa Addio (directed by the legendary Jacopetti and Prosperi) was the pinnacle of the genre for me. Surely nothing could be more upsetting and grotesque? However the Castiglioni brothers had different ideas and went completely balls out with Addio Ultimo Uomo. It is a putrid film - in fact it positively wallows in putrefaction. For me, it is far more disturbing than the lugubrious Faces of Death. Faces of Death has a goofy narrator who dispels a lot of the horror going on around him with his silly commentary. Addio Ultimo Uomo is relentless in its exploitation of 'savages' and their customs and culture, treating us to footage which is revoltingly stomach churning. The horrors chronicled in Addio Ultimo Uomo include: vivid castration sequences - both male and female, animal snuff (including a dog being killed, skinned and roasted over an open fire), way out there rituals, African mud hut sex, self mutilation and body scarification which is compared to the craze for plastic surgery in the Western world and there is a lot of footage of a very dead, very rotten and very pungent man being prepared for burial. The film doesn't even have the grace to tell the viewers why this mayhem is unfurling upon the screen. Instead they just jump from country to country and tribe to tribe with ever more shocking scenes. There is no way I could sit through this charnel house of a movie again. It is even worse than some of the Faces of Death type movies which just feature unrelenting death footage. At least you know what you are getting in those movies and they are honest. Addio Ultimo Uomo is just pure exploitation of the 'savage' Third World and its peoples in the most voyeuristic and perverted fashion.