Following closely to the perversely entertaining Mondo Cane and with a title that roughly translates to “crazy world,” Mondo Balordo is one of the earliest exploitative travelogues to offer shocking glimpses of the misbegotten world of 1964 that was only really brandished about in the nudie-est of men’s magazines.
Hosted by the effortlessly charming Boris Karloff, we’re taken to a large swath of Europe to see sexy transvestite Spaniards on stage, the smoking-hot German lesbian scene, stuffy British bankers dancing like penguins, and Italian strong men throwing fake boulders on a film set — it’s a crazy world!
Meanwhile, in America, women raise money for the pyramids of Luxor by having their own pyramids of flesh judged and rated; an elderly man is married by a lady of the night and is then dumped at an old folks’ home; and a sexualized little person is taken to the abandoned back seat of a car parked in an alley and illicitly made love to — it’s a crazy world!
In India, hungry fisherman pull giant turtles out of the sea and tear them apart flipper to flipper; a little person sings terrible rock ’n’ roll on stage; and some random crooner tries to recapture the success of Cane’s “More” by singing a ballad that rationalizes all that is about to visually scar you in this film — it’s a crazy world!
With terrifying trips to an opium den, a ladies’ balloon-wresting ring and plenty of dirty streets filled with a mix of three-legged dogs and one-legged humans, all directed by Robert Bianchi Montero (of Sexy Nudo fame, of course), Mondo Balordo, like many of the mondo flicks of this era, is an acquired taste of delicate putridity that will willingly seduce any less-traveled pervert after 3 a.m. After all, it’s a crazy world! —Louis Fowler