Ultime grida dalla savana
Tags: violence, cruelty, murder

Plot synopsis:
The film is a depiction of various scenes, usually violent or bizarre, that somehow relate to hunting. Each scenario is presented one after the other with little regard for narrative continuity. The opening scene introduces a Patagonian hunter who hunts stags to survive. The opening credits play over as he chases after a stag, which he ultimately shoots, kills, and beheads. Afterwards, one of the numerous scenes of anti-hunting gatherings is shown, this one in Cape Cod. The attention quickly shifts to wildlife hunting, where a monkey is killed by a leopard, and then a squirrel monkey by an anaconda. The theme changes again to the social hunt of wild game in Australia and Africa. Aborigines hunt kangaroos and other large marsupials with spears and giant bats with boomerangs. Indigenous tribes of Africa hunt large game, including antelope, buffalo, and elephants, in the savanna. Religious ceremonies are also shown, where the African hunters proceed to suck fresh blood from the entrails of an antelope, and the Australian aborigines symbolically bury their prey in dust to placate the spirits of the animals. Lastly, two brothers are arrested after partaking in a form of ritual post-mortem cannibalism of three of their relatives to acquire the hunting skills of the dead.
Other hunting traditions then follow, again rooted in religion. The warriors of the Kuru tribe in Africa commit a sacred act in which they copulate with the ground in belief that it will make the Earth fertile and produce animals for the hunt, and a stag hunt in France, rooted in ancient pagan beliefs of the Gauls, is blessed by a mass before the hunt takes place, during which the hunters and dogs chase and ultimately kill a fleeing stag. In a fox hunt, the Wild Fox Association sabotages the hunting efforts by serving wine laced with a laxative to the hunters and distracting the dogs with an Afghan bitch in heat. Their efforts are then connected to species conservation, and to exemplify that hunters are truly concerned in wildlife conservation, Argentine hunters capture an Andean condor to sell to a zoo. A collage of other conservation efforts is shown, including the tagging of white rhinoceroses, grizzly bears and elephants, which are shot with morphine darts. Argentinian deer and elephant seals are physically subdued and marked. Tourists on Africans safaris then come to view the conservation efforts, which the narrator claims to have seemingly negated the animals' violent instincts. This deception is demonstrated with the mauling of a tourist named Pit Dernitz by lions.
Another anti-hunting demonstration becomes the film's focus, this time on the Isle of Wight. Nudity and intercourse are practiced freely amongst the demonstrators, and this is contrasted with ancient hunter-gathering groups, who had strict rules concerning nudity. The narrator argues that once hunting had left this group of people, so did their rules toward nudity. Also highlighted is the contradiction that though this people are against hunting, thousands of farm-raised animals had to die to support them. The focus changes to Humboldt penguins, which cannot hunt because of polluted waters, and thus seem detached and without focus. This effect is compared to modern day Eskimos, who no longer hunt since the discovery of oil in their homeland and have fallen into depression and melancholy. To reverse the process, several groups of men go out and revive their hunting ways. Reflected in this is a montage of gun ownership, which the film relates to feelings of masculinity, followed by shots of illegal elephant poaching from Africa. To offset the dwindling number of game due to poaching, warriors from the Lobi tribe celebrate the "Ceremony of Life", in which they masturbate with ceremonial rods and pour the product into the river, hoping the animals will drink the semen and multiply. Attention shifts to large electronic probes in the Peruvian savanna used to measure the winds of El Niño for optimal fishing conditions. Fishing birds are also electronically tagged so the prime fishing areas can be located based on the birds' fishing habits. This fish frenzy in South America is reflected in the salmon run in Alaska, where kodiak bears hunt and fight for prey.
An examination of a hunting tradition in northern Europe follows, where falcons assist humans in hunting by catching wild game, such as rabbits and pheasants. Further collaboration with man and animal is highlighted, this time with cheetahs. To demonstrate the cheetah's speed and effectiveness, a chase between a group of cheetahs and ostriches is arranged, in which the birds are hunted down and killed. The next animal collaborators are dogs, which hunt wild boar in Patagonia and a puma which has attacked a herd of sheep and a shepherd. In cities, however, stray dogs are the ones hunted by dog catchers, which the narrator claims demonstrates that the hunt is still active, but the prey has changed. Indios also use dogs to hunt monkeys, but their efforts are compared to mercenaries hunting the Indios themselves to clear them from their native land for development. In one such instance, mercenaries retaliate against a death of a workman by hunting down a group of Indios, one of which they torture, castrate and murder. Various scenes of wildlife are then shown, after which orangutans are hunted to be sold to zoos. The film then ends with the coexistence of man and animal between Erik Zimen, an ecologist, and wolves, the group of animals he wishes to save.

Review: WANNA SEE LIONS MAUL A MAN...
The scene where a man is mauled by three hungry lions is very graphic.
There are also some scenes where a hippie is breast feeding a goat.
There are no human death scenes in this, or any Faces of Death for that matter.
It's all staged, and all psychological.They show you a dead body in a morgue,or real animals getting brutally killed.
Then show you a guy getting shot by executioners (not in this film,in one of the Faces of Death and I'm just using as an example only),a guy hit by a train, or a guy mauled by lions.
People see these films usually very young, and grow up believing they are real.
Even though the human deaths are fake these films are still very unsettling, and you can not unwatch it.
This film, almost like a documentary, is a story of hunting: some oppose violence to animals, others say it is a part of nature to kill.Directed and written by Antonio Climati and Mario Morra, who would go on to make more documentaries -- "This Violent World" and "Sweet and Savage", as well as having independent careers as a cinematographer and editor, respectively.Scenes show hippies in Cape Cod, rallying for animal rights...
Also, aborigines spearing kangaroos and using boomerangs on bats.There is also plenty of footage of animals hunting other animals: anaconda, monkeys, jaguar.
But the main point seems to be the variety of ways that man hunts animals for food, sport or otherwise..
What I like in this doco is a volume of realistic data rarely seen somewhere else.DVD I own accomplishes 88 min of 94 minutes a full version presents, and some film scenes are really cut short with censoring in "a free speech world", leaving more to viewer's imagination than it was probably supposed by producers themselves.With knowledge of a subject and respect, a natural beauty of hunters' bodies have been depicted while broadening viewers' knowledge of a rough reality of a world existing in different time/space dimensions on the Earth simultaneously to civilised digitally-equipped one, by screening a variety of traditional indigenous African rituals, much more logical and cognitive with environment than outdoor copulating of the educated Westerners during youth gatherings.A scene of annihilating "primitives" of Amazon is uselessly censored perhaps as shoving a member cut off might really emphasised a notion of this work, which is, as understood, convincing in "devil beneath" that is in killing ground of a human nature although lacquered upon the history with challenging laws and orders but well preserved and easily demonstrated on demand of circumstances requiring.A must to have on a shelf..
Savage Man...Savage Beast (1975) ** (out of 4) Italian Mondo movie has all that you'd expect from a film like this.
This "documentary" shows everything from cannibals to animal killings to hippies cleaning themselves at an outdoor event.
If you're an animal lover then it goes without saying that you should skip this film because all sorts of animals are show being killed and slaughtered.
Some of these are animal on animal attacks but there's a lot of footage of men hunting down the animals and killing them.
The most outrageous scene comes from an African tribe who believe they must have sex with the ground in order to get the grass to grow.
Seeing twenty some men drilling holes in the ground and then having sex with it is something I really didn't need to see.
This film isn't a well made movie but it's remains slightly interesting just by seeing these different cultures..
Whether he be a South American hunter with a fake Spanish accent or various other ethnic groups with equally fake accents, they're all just voice actor Edward Mannix and not "real" interviews with "real" people.This is like a Mutual of Omaha video gone horribly wrong.
This film consists of fake footage mixed in with a little bit of real footage.
Seriously, every time a weapon is thrown it's like a 'Woody Woodpecker' cartoon.Much of the fake footage doesn't even have anything to do with hunting or animal attacks.
Such as naked hippies, a group of Frenchmen defecating in the woods, and dozens of Africans humping the soil, literally!
With this many black men humping it's like watching a Sarah Vandella porno without Sarah Vandella.
It might be a little more convincing that this is an actual ritual and not just done for pure exploitation if all the tribesmen weren't voiced by Edward Mannix!
There's also plenty of fake footage of Africans masturbating into a river.
This is done with extreme close ups and in slow motion directed like a porno complete with close up shots of their cxx faces.The funniest scenes by far are the fake animal attacks.
The best being the lion mauling of a tourist.
As with all mondo films this "real" footage consists of multiple camera angles, and close ups of the victim's distraught family.
It's side splitting how fake it is.Some morons such as the writer of the IMDb summary actually defend it as "real." There are not enough drugs on earth to make one believe this footage is "real." No one could actually believe such a thing.Next it's mercenaries waging a war against native tribes.
Their fake costumes consist of glued on thick eyebrows and mustaches that look like Groucho Marx masks without the glasses.
In conclusion, I've never been a fan of mondo cane films but this one has some great laughs.
If you enjoy silly exploitation films this is worth a watch..
This Film has it all, from an elephant speared multiple times,the only footage i've ever seen of a man being mauled by a lion (one of many highlights),a tribe that have intercourse with the ground (its not virgin soil anymore).
Seriously you need this in your life so many animal deaths an under appreciated classic.You can get this and 19 other Grind-house films for £13 this film alone is worth that.
Animals were harmed in the making of this film and it is all the better for it 10/10.
Mostly lame Mondo about man's relationship with nature and animals, might have been more shocking in the 1970s, but now it seems like various outtakes leftover from a few National Geographic specials.Tribesmen on the hunt in footage showing real animal death juxtaposed with hippie shenanigans was both repulsive and silly.
Tourist being mauled by lions in Angola was fake, but at least it was better staged than the similar scene in Faces Of Death.
A curious vignette allegedly in Burundi mentions a tribe called Niamey , and a pair of brothers named Kano and Naro Kabila- which is odd, because Niamey is in Niger, and Kabila has roots in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not Burundi.The narrator in Faces Of Death was silly and largely false, but at least he was more charismatic and amusing than the dry, flat, monotone narrator heard here..
Graphic mondo movie is an odd mix of real and stage violence and naked natives that works, as most mondos, only in parts.
Legendary mondo movie that has lots of violence against animals and full frontal male nudity.
Long dull and rambling as many mondo movies tend to be, this film has something of a reputation because of its often graphic nature.
The film is the source of a lion attack (most certainly staged) that has been circulating around the internet where a man gets out of a car to film a lion and is promptly eaten in front of his family.
The two sequences of masturbation (one where tribes have sex with the earth to make it fertile and another involving sprinkling it in the water) are also mentioned as "oh my god moments".
I'm less impressed with those sequences (I've seen too many mondo films) and prefer the odder moments like hunting bats with boomerangs or the anti fox hunt sequence.
To be certain this is a film to make you sit up and take notice if you don't like animal cruelty.
This little nugget opens with a Patagonian talking about how he bagged a stag because he "just wanted a stag."From there we go to the animal rights activists and their pre PETA protests.
Almost tear-jerking until you see too many of them winking at the camera.The hunters in Argentina actually trying to capture endangered species to preserve them was interesting.
That scene opened in an over decorated hunting lodge.
And just as many rugs on the floor as well.The lion mauling scene was most likely faked.
Apart from a lack of consistency between the narration and the scene (Playful looking lions, visible land rovers with armed men in the background.) the OTT acting of the "victim" and his wife also looked dodgy.
This scene probably inspired the bear attack in Faces of Death.
First off, I'd like to say that I DID NOT watch the uncut version, but rather the Australian version, that's cut by 77 seconds*, and comes with the "Grindhouse Experience" DVD pack.
Even though the version I saw was cut, this is still a very violent/bizarre film, that's not for the faint of heart.
However, it is also incredibly interesting, makes very interesting and true points about animal/human and predator/prey relationships, such as how man wishes to be loved by animals, yet hunts them, and how even though people protest the slaughter of certain animals, many more cows/chickens/pigs are killed for their food.
Lastly, it talks about in one scene about how the new laws of the world punish those who follow the older, more primitive ones.
There are countless animals killed in this movie, including a snake vs.
monkey scene that's quite similar to the one in "Mountian of the Cannibal God".
We also see cheetahs killing ostriches, bears eating fish alive(In another very fascinating scene, commenting on nature documentaries), elephants getting speared, and many other things.
Of course, who could forget about the human/human violence, as well as the infamous "Lion mauls a man in front of his family" scene.
Well, let me just tell you, the lion attack footage is some of the most harrowing footage I've ever seen, yet at the same time, is fascinating.
There the aftermath of cannibalism, showing the corpses and the weapons used to cut open the bodies.
Also, several indios get shot(In a staged scene).
You've probably heard about an infamous castration/scalping scene.
First, men dig holes into the ground, and proceed to make love to mother Earth.
There's also the talked about "hippie breast-feeding a goat" bit.
While that may sound sick on paper, its really not that bad, and there's a much worse scene like it in Mondo Cane.
This scene may make male viewers(such as myself) very uncomfortable, as there are graphic close-ups of the tribes penises, jiggling up and down in slow-motion.Anyways, I recommend this film not just to mondo/exploit fans, but also to fans of nature documentaries.*In case you're wondering, here's what's cut from my version(which is also the most common): 1.
2. The lion mauling scene is trimmed, but not entirely removed.
It gets rid of some of the more graphic bitings, and removes a few close-ups of the body.
This is a 1975 Mondo film originally titled "Zumbalah".
It is done documentary style showing us animals killing animals and man killing animals almost as a forerunner to the "Faces of Death" series.
It also attempts to be anthropological by showing us naked hippies littering the beaches of Cape Cod in order to save the environment.While some of the scenes are staged, there are some interesting scenes, people humping the ground for example, that I had not known or imagined.
The film had a lot of nudity, mostly male and the narration was extremely boring..
Enjoyably lurid mondo documentary trash.
Now, here's a blithely sleazy speculative mondo documentary that really goes out of its way to give you your grubby money's worth.
Amongst the definite highlights are the incredible sight of well-endowed African natives making love to the ground (it's a fertility ritual, of course), another group of natives engaging in ritualistic masturbation, the genuinely startling shaky hand-held camera footage of a luckless tourist getting mauled to death by two vicious lions, a flock of long-haired hippie freaks not only shed both their clothes and their inhibitions, but also wrap themselves up in paper and plastic in order to protest against hunting and killing animals (one hippie chick even breast feeds a baby lamb!); Eskimos slaughtering ducks so they can surmount depression, and man's futile attempts to prevent endangered species from becoming extinct.
This picture crams in everything from cannibalism to abundant male and female nudity to copious animal killing and cruelty while exploring the centuries old topic of hunting and the human race's uneasy coexistence with animals.
Sure, this film is crass and pandering to the ninth degree, but it's certainly never dull and always interesting.
Only a few obviously staged moments and several hideously sappy songs on the soundtrack detract a bit from this otherwise hugely worthwhile mondo romp..
Not nearly as impressive, shocking or thought-provoking as any of the titles in the Mondo Cane Collection box, "Savage Man Savage Beast" poses as a documentary, but it's simply a blatant and shameless series of unrelated but massively exploitative footage of hunting rituals from all over the world.
The opening sequence is dark & grim, with the introduction of a lone hunter and harsh images of him killing a beautiful animal.
The events then abruptly switch to a gathering of free-spirited 60's hippies (with an obvious aversion to wearing clothes) that protest against the senseless killing of animals.
One of the hippie-girls even demonstrates her affection for animal through breastfeeding a baby lamb, which is quite an odd sight.
Anyway, the "documentary" only just started then but it already goes irreversibly wrong at that point, because the narrative chooses the side of the hunters.
Hunting, whether for survival or sport, is practically glorified and the narrator defenses needless violence through making weak and irrelevant statements like "nature itself is ferocious as well", "survival of the fittest", "hunting is often necessary in order to avoid the extinction of a species" and "hunting skills are often traditionally passed on from generation onto generation".
If Antonio Climati and Mario Morra intended to bring an ode to savageness and simply wanted to edit together a spitfire of gratuitous images of animals killing animals and humans killing animals, that's fine with me, but don't present it as an informative documentary.
The whole film is a wildly incoherent hodgepodge of genuine footage from around the world; from fox-hunting games in England, ritual cannibalism in Burundi in order to 'inherit' the hunting skills of the deceased, the killing of large bats with boomerangs in Australia, fishing techniques from Alaska and a much more.
"Savage Man Savage Beast" also includes the notorious amateur footage showing a dim-witted guy getting devoured by lions in a safari park and a totally pointless and exaggeratedly gratuitous 16mm movie depicting hired killers eliminating a native tribe.
Furthermore, there's a chapter about migrating penguins (I still fail to see the relevance) and a handful of truly bizarre hunting rites involving men 'impregnating' the earth by digging a little holes in the mud and stick their  You know.
I can't possibly recommend this movie to anyone, as it pretends to be a documentary but never once succeeds in hiding its true colors, namely pure & rancid Italian exploitation..
An utterly distasteful film, made at the time when the mondo movie had lost the occasional magic of MONDO CANE and simply became a bloodbath of violence against both man and animal.
This loathsome film details graphic death after graphic death unrelentingly, accompanied by the dulcet tones of a mock-serious narrator who attempts to make some sense of the carnage by endless pretentious waffling.
Now, it goes without saying that a spark of interest does lie in some of the scenes portrayed here - in fact it's very informative about native customs and way of life at times, and the daily life-and-death struggle of the animal.
But such moments are overwhelmed by endless viciousness and cruelty, so it goes without saying that only the strongest stomachs need apply.Things open with an American hunter nonchalantly shooting a stag dead before cutting it's head off - all in a day's work.
Things get worse from there, with footage of animals eating each other (predictably, a boa crushes a cute little monkey to death whilst it cries in agony) and lots of African creatures - wildebeest, antelope, and most upsettingly elephants - getting hunted and ritually slaughtered by natives.
The thing worse than the images on screen for me are the endless cries of terror and agony as the creatures are speared or stabbed - pretty sickening stuff.
Easier scenes to take include lots of naked hippies, natives having sex with the earth, a woman breastfeeding a goat, some cannibalised human corpses, and a fox hunt being sabotaged (hurrah!).As the film progresses the footage becomes more disturbing, and the high (or low) light is a tourist on safari getting mauled and disembowelled by lions who proceed to eat his guts - footage that can't possibly be faked, but here it is and in your face.
Then there's the amusing diversion of a cheetah chasing an ostrich, and a camera-van chasing the two animals and crashing, which is followed by a cruel shot of a trapped big cat getting ripped to pieces and stabbed to death by a pack of hungry dogs and their owner.
The film finishes with hunters chasing after indios who have been terrorising a building site; after catching a native they castrate him, scalp him, and finally behead him.
Although these scenes do look repulsively realistic I still have a niggling belief that they may be faked as they seem very "cinematically" portrayed.
A film for sadists and animal butchers everywhere.
A film for sadists and animal butchers everywhere.