lee frost

Django Nudo and the Smut Peddler are joined in the studio by Kitty Lash to explore the weird and wonderful world of Mondo films. First we explore parallels between Netflix's "Clark" (2022) and "I - a Summer Lover" (1972), the former starring Bill Skarsgård while the latter his dad Stellan Skarsgård and both getting nude while sleeping with mother/daughters, as well as "The Vicious Breed" (1955). 

Having argued over definitions of 'Mondo' and whether it is right to call tribes 'tribes', we dive into mondo movie maelstrom:

Pigalle Crossing of Illusions (1973) - Spy thriller about stripper smuggling microfilm, but really just an excuse to show off lots of striptease and erotic acts from Moulin Rouge and other Pigalle venues. Include cowboy acts. (In Paris? Pourquois cowboys?)

Mondo Balordo (1964) -  Boris Karloff guides us through a world "throbbing and pulsing with love, from the jungle orgies of primitive tribes to sin-filled evenings of the London sophisticate." And Bedouin pimps - or maybe Lebanese. 

Mondo Freudo & Mondo Bizarro (1966) - We have visionary American 'scumbags' Lee Frost and Bob Cresse to thank for adding an American twist to the Mondo genre with their Olympic International films. "Possibly the creepiest of all the Mondo films," according to Kitty, but sexy in bits depending on your fetish and "strangely erotic". Mondo Bizarro also has an opening credit sequence and music track ripe to be ripped off by Quentin Tarantino.

The Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968) - In which we are taken on a tour of Rome and Paris by Jayne Mansfield, before she is then killed in a car accident (though not decapitated). Graphic, horrific footage from the crash. Made after her death, the film is narrated by a Mansfield sound-alike, talking about getting her bum pinched in Rome and interviewing tranny beauty queens. Her death car can be seen as part Scott Michael's Dearly Departed tours of Los Angeles. 

Mondo Pazzo, aka Mondo Cane 2 (1963) -  Sequel to their ground-breaking shockumentary Mondo Cane is another beautifully photographed but equally disturbing crackpot travelogue of global gross-outs and international insanity.

Kwaheri (1964) - We now go into darkest Africa. Warning from Kitty Lash: this Mondo film was the most stomach churning, with the open skull brain surgery by the African witch doctor. Cannot be unseen! Plus "wild orgies of the body and mind."

Malamondo (1964) - Early Mondo film about weird teens doing things like skiing nude, distinguished by the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. The score does not so much support the pictures as beautiful photography seemingly there "to give visual accompaniment to a hauntingly sublime score."

Mondo Keazunt (1955) - Four Italians cross the "Green Hell" of the Amazon, with snake fights and piranhas eating a cow alive. Keazuntheit!

Don't miss the sublime Spotify Mondo score collection and we promise to have Kitty Lash back soon. We end with a brilliant Mondo radio ad.

Django Nudo gives Smut Peddler a verbal spanking, celebrate George A Romero's birthday; free-to-view films on Cultpix; a new Top 10 and the kids film by Boarna Vibenius.

The career of Lee Frost (1935-2007) pretty much covered every genre going: nudies, comedies, westerns, war films, thrillers and more, as director, producer, DoP, editor and sometimes actor.  According to IMDb: “Lee Frost rates highly as one of the best, most talented and versatile filmmakers in the annals of exploitation cinema.” 

"Surftide 77" (1962) - Frost's directorial debut, about a private eye who has to find a girl with a butterfly-shaped birthmark on her breast. So an excuse to show lots of breasts.

"House on Bare Mountain" (1962) - is a particular obsession of ours, not least as it is where the Cultpix Radio ident comes from with the still of  the werewolf and the beauty. Producer Bob Cresse is back in drag as Granny Good who runs a charm school that's actually a bootleg operation. 

"Hollywood’s World of Flesh" (1963) is Frost's early take on the Mondo genre, a  hilariously bogus “documentary on the film capital of the world”. 

"The Defilers" (1965) - Two amoral and sadistic rich kids "guzzle liquor, smoke grass, cavort with masochistic beach bunnies, and eventually kidnap and imprison a beautiful young girl."

"Hot Spur" (1968) sees Frost tackle the Western, as a young man takes a job on a ranch, just so he can take down a high-and-mighty 'cowbitch' - kidnapped, beaten and tied up in revenge for what the woman and her husband did to his sister. 

"Love Camp 7" (1968) - created the Nazisploitation genre. Two busty female US officers seek to infiltrate a women's POW camp in Nazi Germany to... well, it's not important to the plot. They get caught, with torture and misogyny ensuing. 

"The Animal" (1968) - Perhaps Frost's most disturbing film. Ted Andrew boozes, smokes pot and spies on women neighbours through his telescope. "He made her an animal... Now all he needed was a leash!" is the unforgettable tagline. 

"The Pick-Up" (1968) - Another legendary 'lost' roughie that SWV found in Copenhagen of all places, thanks to a Scandi tour arranged by Klubb Super8. Friedman and Cresse play mob gangsters out to collect some money and torture chicks who steal it.

"The Scavengers" (1969) - Tagline: “They spell love like you’d spell lust, and they’ve already turned ten towns to dust!” This western sees Confederate soldiers trying to rob a Yankee coach of its gold.

"Ride Hard, Ride Wild" (1970) - Cashing in on the twin-trends of biker films and Scandi nudies, this pretend Danish film sees Lee Frost credited with 'Dubbing Supervisor', but we suspect the 'Elov Peterssons' directing credit is one of his many aliases.  We end this episode with the movie's theme song. 

"Zero in and Scream" (1970) - "When a man climbs on top of a woman, she becomes ugly!" explains a proto-Incel sniper. Tapping into the Manson/Zodiac zeitgeist, this film is unique in being filmed extensively through the scope of a rifle.

This week's Spotify list.