Wednesday, November 20, 2013

A Mondo Enquiry - Who are the Women in Red and Blue?

Whilst watching London in the Raw (1964), we noticed that two certain red and blue dress-clad ladies kept popping up throughout the swinging picture, usually chatting up a gentleman bloke or the like.



A question to pose then, a mondo enquiry of sorts as it were, is who are they?

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

London in the Raw - Theatrical Version vs Mystery Version

Originally, we had no plans to do a comparison of the theatrical and 'mystery' cuts of London in the Raw (1964), the middle entry in Arnold Louis Miller's Mondo London Trilogy (preceded by West End Jungle (1961) and succeeded by Primitive London (1965)), due to the fact that the booklet accompanying the British Film Institute's (BFI) 2009 DVD release thereof included a short essay by Vic Pratt, a fiction curator at the BFI National Archive, entitled "The Long and the short of it" allegedly detailing the differences betwixt the two versions of the film. Eventually, however, curiosity got the better of us and we did end up watching the two versions side-by-side. Our findings are that Pratt's analysis is woefully incomplete, completely ignoring several key differences between the two versions of the film.


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Primitive London - British Film Institute vs Video Revelations

Originally released in 1965, Arnold Louis Miller's Primitive London is oft referred to as merely being the sequel to Miller's earlier London in the Raw (1964). However, the film can in fact be said to be the third entry into a sort of Mondo London Trilogy, with the first movie in the resultant mondo triptych being Miller's earlier foray into London's striptease clubs--West End Jungle (1961). While mayhap missing out on some of the mondo film's characteristic, uh, multiculturalism, West End Jungle nonetheless serves as a sort of transitional film from the popular proto-mondo 'sexy nocturnes' or 'mondo sexy' subgenre--which generally highlighted (often studio-staged) striptease cabaret, and nightclub acts--into the more comprehensive faux-documentary narrative of the main mondo cycle.

 vs.