Arlis Fuson
This movie is about Africa after the English, French and Portugese and whoever else pulled out in the 60's and the aftermath. It shows scenes of how big game were slaughtered and how bad the people had it there, and how bad and unruly things became when Africans tried to take Africa back.I am a huge fan of the faces of death and any of these violent films that show death. They are disturbing at times but I find them rather interesting. I don't mind watching people die as bad as I do animals as morbid as that may sound, but it's true.This film starts off with an extremely long amount of time talking about the history of Africa and everything leading up to the 60's. It finally gets going and shows animals being killed for a long time. The animal deaths are brutal and violent. It later shows people being killed in numerous amounts of ways, some shot in the head and some killed execution style. It shows many dead bodies including children.I kept waiting and waiting for this film to get to the point and by the time it did it was rather too little too late. Animal poaching and big game hunters as well as tribes killing and spearing innocent creatures was not pleasant to watch, but not interesting in a shocking manner.I don't know what to say about this film, it isn't amazing, it is not interesting. Some people claim it has beautiful scenes and great editing but I beg to differ, it was garbage and out of about 50 shockumentary films I have about death, this was by far the most boring. I would not recommend it to anyone..it was not over the top or unbelievably gross or anything and I say avoid this film and don't buy into the hype.1 star out of a possible 10 -- this film SUCKS!!!
Reed Richards
somebody say, "Disgusting!" and when I realized I was the person who had said it (I was alone) I also realized that I didn't just mean the movie was disgusting but that I was disgusting for sitting through it. You want a spoiler? Here's a spoiler: the movie shows people getting killed, the camera sharing the killers' point of view, and not just once but twice, ad hoc executions of men, the second of whom is desperate to survive, to explain himself, but instead he is shot point blank twice by an affectless white mercenary, who says, "I'll do it," and walks up to him and shoots him dead. No due process, no proof of any crime except the voice-over's say-so. The first execution, about a minute earlier in the movie, is by a firing squad, sloppily carried out, and once the man is on his knees, face in the dirt, either dead or seconds away from it, a final, egregious shot is fired, apparently hitting the victim in the face and sending up a splash of dirt and blood.If you haven't figured out by halfway through that this is the direction the movie is headed in, then you have been sucked in and manipulated by probably the most cynical excuse for a documentary ever made. Red flags immediate go up with the film's opening claim that the camera is completely objective and only reports what it sees. The film then proceeds systematically to contradict this claim by mocking everything that comes before the lens. The movie pretends empathy for the displaced, abused and murdered whites in Kenya, then shows them behaving ridiculously and exposes their complacency. A white judge sentencing Mau Mau rebels to extremely harsh punishments (though not necessarily harsh for their crimes) stifles a yawn. Telling details, you'd think, cleverly captured, except when they take their place next to other instances of derisive sound effects and people (supposedly) saying ludicrous things in ludicrous voices with their backs to the camera.The movie combines its mocking with the kind of prurience you'd find in 1950s "sun worshipper" magazines and then with out and out salaciousness. In a scene obviously staged, the movie illustrates its completely racist point that black men, given the opportunity, lust after white women, by putting a group of clueless Africans in front of a white stripper. They don't seem to know how to react as she caresses her body, and when she encourages one man to remove the pasties from her nipples, and he does so only because he was instructed to, the poor, embarrassed man is left looking at the pasties in his hands as if he doesn't know what has just happened. The bizarre scene is then punctuated by a revelation of the stripper's face, which has been angled away from the camera to this point, and it is horsey and grotesque, with a smile that reveals frighteningly long, vampirish teeth.If you've been fooled into thinking the film has any empathy whatsoever, you should be undeceived by the episode in which the film makers, along with some German colleagues, try to land their two planes in rebel territory in Zambia? Rwanda?, the Germans landing first and being swarmed by rebels who take them captive and burn their plane. The Italian film makers get away as their plane is shot at, leaving the Germans to their fate, and the movie excuses itself from any followup when the voice-over says, "At least they were still alive." It occurs to you at this point that the Germans may have been patsies, decoys sent in to test the waters, the proverbial canaries in the mineshaft. It occurs to you that the film makers are guilty of much more than just disingenuous bad taste. By the time we get to the animal carnage it should be clear that what we are watching is pure adventure porn. It finds the place in the viewer that is disgusted by man's inhumanity to man and to nature, panders like crazy, and then treats us to scene after scene after scene of slaughter and dismemberment. Is there empathy for the animals? Can you imagine there is in a movie so up to its chin in blood and guts? The movie goes so far as to show stillborn calves being pulled from slaughtered elephants. Point of view is a real issue here. These film makers had to have participated willingly in these travesties (including the human murders at the end) in order to turn them around and toss them in the viewers face, purposefully making you feel implicated, while they throw their hands up and say, "Hey, the camera only reports what it sees." This is a movie that lies even when it tells the truth. This is a movie that pretends sympathy with the animals while displaying almost complete ignorance of their habits and behavior. This is a movie that can't tell the difference between a stork and a vulture. This is a movie that cheapens the value of a human life for the sake of a spectacle. This is a movie that wallows in rotting corpses, the victims of political upheavals, the aftermaths of colonialism and other versions of political opportunism and corruption, and then ignores politics, ignores causes, for the sake of wading into rivers of blood, and then the movie says, "Don't blame us. The camera only reports what it sees."
Thomas Jensen
Africa Addio contains some really strong scenes of animal cruelty and human death. However the editing, lack of storyline and historical facts in general disappointed me. If the directors had taken their time to research the events they portrait, the movie would have come out much better and informative. Some scenes are beautifully shot and made, but others seems added to just to shock and disturb the viewer. Generally the whole "Mondo" genre needs much more depth and facts, instead of the pure intention to shock the audience.Africa Addio is a movie that could have been so much more, but lands as an average gore filled documentary which display the lack of insight of the directors. Filming animals getting killed for sports, people executed, stacks of severed hands, rotten corpses along the road and mass graves for the sheer shock value seems uninspiring and sometimes plain dumb. The creators of Africa Addio invented the Mondogenre - but at the same time, they hit a new rock bottom for the whole documentary genre. It could have been so much more, but ended up real sad. I have seen the "Directors Cut" of the movie - which according to the directors should be "more political, historical and informative", all themes lack, and a movie which could have been highly educational end up as a sad shocker. Mondo Addio.
dbborroughs
Sent to Africa to make the next Mondo Cane movie the film makers found themselves in the middle of several revolutions. What they would film would form the basis of a damning attack on everyone, both black and white, involved in the shift in power on the Dark Continent.I've watched the three versions of this film and I'm a fan of all of them. Interestingly the one I like the least is the original cut of the film which has several snide comments and re-dubbed voices that make the film truly rude and cruel for no good reason. The original cut goes out of its way to have a holier than thou view that is missing from both of the English cuts. The original cut also has several more minutes of animal cruelty that is completely uncalled for.This film ran into serious trouble upon its original release because charges were brought, though later found to be false, that the film makers had paid some of the soldiers to kill some one so that they could film it. (this charge would form the basis for The Wild Eye, a fictional film about the making of a mondo movie made by another Mondo Cane director) Considering all of the the death and destruction in this film I find it hard to believe that anyone would have had to have been paid to kill anyone.Yes, its a tough film, but it leaves no one with clean hands, even the film makers.See this film. It will make you think.
