Ecco! (1964)

An early Italian Mondo known under a plethora of titles (it was called This Shocking World in the UK), Ecco! occupies an interesting place in the evolution of the Mondo movie.  It's original Italian title was Mondo di Notte 3 - the first two films in this series have been mentioned here before, in that they were part of a films which were effectively 'proto Mondos'.  like the contemporaneous Europa di Notte and America di Notte, they were a body of films which focused on presenting various night club acts from around the world to cinema audiences, in the days before you could see that sort of thing nightly on TV.  Their focus on 'forbidden' content (the sort of acts they presented would often have been considered 'risque' at the time), puts them in similar territory to true Mondo movies.  Unlike the late Mondos, however, they stopped short of presenting grotesquery as entertainment and simply presented the acts 'as were', rather than engaging in the sort of fakery their successors were accused of doing.

With part three of the Mondo di Notte films, the series morphed nto a full on Mondo.  Clearly, the producers realised that simply showing night club acts was no enough for cinema audiences in the wake of the likes of Mondo Cane.  They obviously felt that, if you can't beat them, then join them.  As with all Mondos, the film's trailer strives to give the impression that this is actually a perfectly legitimate documentary.  The English language version even sports a 'name' actor in the form of George Sanders to provide narration.  (Although by this point in his career, Sanders was appearing in lower and lower rent movies, rapidly eroding his standing as a 'serious' actor).   But other than Sanders' presence, Ecco! is pretty much a standard Mondo movie, albeit one more easily available in English than many others.