Brutes and Savages (1978)

When a film's titles open with the legend 'The Arthur Davis Expedition in', the casual viewer might expect to see some light hearted vehicle for a prog rock band.  Perhaps even a surreal animated feature in the vein of Yellow Submarine, featuring animated cartoon versions of the eponymous band involved in psychedelic adventures.  Sadly, though, 'The Arthur Davis Expedition' wasn't a rival to the 'Alan Parsons Project', but rather another fake artifact in a would be Mondo movie full of all too obvious fakery.  Far from being some kind of scientific expedition engaged in serious anthropological studies, the 'Expedition' is actually an exploitation film crew fronted by Arthur Davis himself.  To be fair, Davis was a real person, not, as you might assume from watching Brutes and Savages, some down on his luck actor with an extensive wardrobe of seventies safari suits, badly impersonating some kind of fearless explorer.  In fact, Davis was a well known exhibitor and distributor of exploitation films, particularly in the Far East.  Not satisfied with just distributing other people's pictures, Davis eventually decided to make his own exploitation films, settling on the Mondo genre for his first, as he reasoned that these films were easy to make, requiring neither cast nor name director to sell them to their intended audience.

The result was Brutes and Savages, a supposed serious examination of the cultures of 'primitive' tribes in South America and Africa.  Well, depending upon which version you saw - the film was originally presented in two versions: a ninety four minute cut which focused on the South American footage, and a ten minute longer cut using some of the African footage.  Eventually, a hundred and seven minute version would be released on video, featuring a twenty eight minute opening section set in Africa, followed by a re-edited version of the South American footage - this is the version I've seen and so will form the basis for my comments here.  According to Davis, the African sequences were shot in Sudan, near the border with Uganda.  The problem is that it just doesn't look like any part of Africa ever committed to film.  Indeed, the viewer is left strongly suspecting that it was actually filmed in Florida, with local extras running around in loin cloths pretending to be African tribesmen - a suspicion reinforced by the fact that at the start of it, Davis converses with the local 'Chief' in English.  None of the rituals shown are remotely convincing and the 'fight to the death' over the Chief's daughter is anything but, with both participants alive and well at the end.  The least convincing part of this section of the film is the infamous 'crocodile' attack which occurs during a supposed 'coming of age' ritual which involves three young tribesman having to safely cross a crocodile infested river in order to achieve manhood.  The crocodile is obviously rubber and its attacks are clearly filmed in a pool, (probably Davis' swimming pool), and are poorly (not to mention obviously) intercut with scenes filmed on an actual river.  It all culminates with the fake crocodile swimming off with a rubber head in its jaws, while some equally fake severed limbs float past.

After this farrago of face painted African natives, (it is never adequately explained how they make or otherwise obtain the paint), bare breasted women and a prurient focus on the sex lives of the Africans, the action moves to South America.  These scenes at least have the virtue of having been actually filmed in Bolivia and Peru, but most of the footage is, nevertheless, as fake as the African scenes in terms of their depictions of native rituals.  Once again, there is a voyeuristic interest in the sexual activities of the film's subjects and a relentless focus on animal cruelty, whether it be in the form of alleged ritual sacrifices of turtles and llamas or a long sequence of various wild predators attacking and devouring their prey.  These are all chronicled in stomach churning detail, something which helped Brutes and Savages become a Section Three 'Video Nasty' in the UK.  Incredible statements are made: 'adult crocodiles grow up to fifty feet in length'; 'we are about to see the world's largest collection of erotic pottery'  - made by a people whose 'only leisure activity was sex' (and pottery, presumably).  Astoundingly, a character introduced to us originally as some kind of expert on the local tribes is later revealed to also be a top brain surgeon - which is a stroke of luck as he is able to operate on a man seriously injured during the traditional annual stone throwing contest between two remote villages.  Cue lots of stock footage of some very gory brain surgery.  Moving from the ludicrous to the ridiculous, the film winds up with some more animal cruelty: a ceremony involving locals simulating sex with llamas.

Most of this footage, we are repeatedly told, has been shot surreptitiously, using concealed cameras with telephoto lenses.  Yet it clearly hasn't.  Many of the shots are in close up, or are of interiors which could only be filmed with the camera in close proximity and clearly visible to the participants.  This whole pretence becomes most ridiculous during the 'turtle wedding' sequence, where are told that the local chief has forbidden its filming, so the secret long range cameras were instead used.  Except that the shots are clearly elaborately staged, with cutaways, over-the-shoulder shots and other shots which require quite complex camera set ups.  The killing of the turtle, if you can bear to watch, is filmed in close up.  The whole sequence culminates with the new bride and her husband about to engage in sex in a hammock, in a shot clearly filmed inside their hut.  What makes this obvious fakery surprising is the fact that the film's set up goes to such great lengths to try and establish its authenticity: quite apart from the zoom lens nonsense and the 'Arthur Davis Expedition' conceit, the opening titles also claim that the whole enterprise has been endorsed by the (non-existent) 'Institute of Primitive Arts and Cultures'.  It underlines the fact that Davis clearly had no real understanding of true Mondo movies and was contemptuous of their audiences.

Indeed, the main thing that Brutes and Savages achieves is to underline the true genius of Gauliatero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, fathers of the Mondo genre.  Davis' film simply cannot bear comparison with films like Jacopetti and Prosperi's original two Mondo Cane films, or their Women of the World and Africa Addio.  Nor, indeed, can it be compared to later, lesser Italian Mondo movies like Scattini's Sweden: Heaven and Hell or Climati and Morra's 'Savage' trilogy.  From the outset, the genuine Italian Mondo succeeded in establishing a certain documentary-style air of 'detachment', maintaining a (fake) sense of distance and objectivity with regard to the film makers and their subjects.  Although, as a viewer, you might suspect that some of the sequences are faked, you can never quite be sure (unless you recognise a supposedly 'real' person as an actor, as in one part of the 'Savage' trilogy).  At worst, you might suspect that a scene has been 're-staged' for the benefit of the film-makers, but that the rituals and ceremonies it is showing are probably genuine.  In Brutes and Savages, by contrast, it is all too obvious that everything is being faked for the cameras.  Something underlined by the frequent on screen interpolations of Davis himself, clad in a variety of outfits he clearly thinks scream 'explorer', but which, in actuality look incredibly camp, (early on he wears what appears to be a pink safari suit (although it might just be a quirk of the film's colour processing) while interacting with the African tribes people.  His constant appearances also rob the film of any sense of 'distance' or objectivity.

The Italian Mondos also succeed in lulling their audience into a kind of suspension of disbelief while they are running: even though we know that what we are seeing is expolitative of its subjects and being presented largely for the purposes of shock, sensationalism and titillation, part of us is carried along with the pretence that there is some kind of serious anthropological purpose behind it all.  To be fair, a few Mondo films, most notably Africa Addio, do seem to have some serious purpose behind them, (albeit presented in sensational terms).  This is entirely absent from Brutes and Savages - its trappings of seriousness are so feeble that nobody is fooled for a moment into thinking that it is anything other than crude exploitation.  And crude it is - Davis clearly had no conception of how successful Mondos were structured, with their jumps from sequence to sequence, (sometimes the sequences would be thematically linked, sometimes they were arranged to provide jarring contrasts, usually between 'primitive' and 'civilised' worlds, sometimes a light-hearted segment would follow something more harrowing in order to leaven the mood), providing a rhythm to the narrative and building to a conclusion which, more often than not, brings us back to the film's original thesis.  It all seems to progress naturally and logically.  Davis' film, by contrast, simply feels like a catalogue of atrocities, piling shock sequence upon shock sequence without regard for structure.  The Italian films even manage to make their, frequent, scenes of animal cruelty seem,.if not justifiable, at least more acceptable within their own contexts by framing them in such a way as to make them illustrative of some part of their overarching thesis.  In Africa Addio, for instance, the lengthy and harrowing sequences of wild animal culls are 'justified' as an example of the changing face of the continent from Imperialist playground to self-sufficient, self ruled states which required more land for agriculture in order to support their populations.

Another vital ingredient of the classic Mondo movie is the musical score, the best of which help manipulate the viewer's reactions to segments, emphasising and accentuating the on screen action and carrying the audience into each new sequence.  Interestingly, Brutes and Savages boasts a score by the great Riz Ortolani, who provided magnificent soundtracks for most of the original Jacopetti/Prosperi Mondo movies.  Here, however, he seems to show his contempt for what unfolds on screen by providing an electronically driven funked up disco score, which simply underlines the ludicrousness of what's on screen.  Consequently, we are treated, for example, to scenes of African native women dancing to disco beats.  Clearly hoping to add some gravitas to proceedings, Davis employed Richard Johnson, (whose acting career was in something of a trough), to provide the narration.  Presumably, Edmund Purdom, the usual choice for English language versions of Italian Mondos, was unavailable, (or worse, thought that Brutes and Savages was beneath even him).  Unfortunately, Johnson's narration (which he sensibly ensured went uncredited) is insipid in comparison to the sneery, sceptical, tones of Purdom, (who claimed that he never bothered watching the on screen images as he read the script).

Now, I know that I've been savagely brutal in my treatment of Brutes and Savages, but that isn't to say that, on some levels, it isn't an entertaining film.  Just not in the ways its makers intended.  The animal and brain surgery sequences aside, the whole thing is more than mildly hilarious, playing out like some kind of surreal parody of a travelogue, as the bizarre figure of Davis wanders around in search of pornographic pottery and secret sexual rituals.  None of the 'facts' presented in the narration have actually been fact checked, while what we see sometimes contradicts the narration, (villagers described as 'miserable' are all happily smiling for the cameras, for instance).  But if you want to see a real Mondo, then watch Mondo Cane or Africa Addio, or any of the 'Savage' trilogy, or just about any of the Italian made Mondos of the sixties.  They are both more rewarding and far more professionally made.