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ECCO, AND OTHER MONDO MAD CLASSICS...PART 2 IS HERE |
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Three scenes from the classic ECCO |
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MONDO CRESSE!!! ...or, how Olympic got away with creating all of their brilliant madness! |
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Koji Wakamatsu and friend. Wakamatsu has also been distributed through one of Olympic's competitors, Box Office International (THE CONCUBINES). Get GO GO SECOND TIME VIRGIN for a great film! |
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If the reader was expecting a sober look into a very respected company that released highly sophisticated films, then that person should look elsewhere. "MONDO FREUDO will disgust you!!!" claimed the first line of the great ad-HOUSEWIFE REVEALS ALL!!! screamed the one-sheet for THE SEXPLOITERS-an import distributed through this company was bluntly called HENTAI (Meaning perverted not Anime)-and these were the people who gave you LOVE CAMP 7, the start of Reichsploitation.
The world of Olympic International was not exactly one of Family Values!
...and I'm not complaining at all!
In the Monster Nudie style, Olympic was already off to a seedy start. HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN (1962) featured Bad (oops, the credits read "lovable"...whatever you say!!!) Bob Cresse in drag as Granny Good, who has a fondness for holding a whip, and has plenty of well-shot footage of skin, skin, a Nudie Twist Costume Party, booze, booze, and skin surrounded by a very slim plot involving a Girls' School which has a bootlegging operation underneath which has a wolfman named Krakow (humm...) working for slave labor. While being a sharp example of the more humorous edge of the Olympic history, which even had Cresse known for his stand-up comic ability that is a connection with the Johnathan Winters-esque Granny character, it was noted that it was one of the most costly Nudies of the era. Complete with make up by Harry Thomas, noted in the B and Exploit fields, and some exciting work by Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, later to be a team after the Olympic years, HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN is something to look into for an example of Early Ghoulie Nudie. |
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BARE MOUNTAIN was what got Cresse into trouble for the first time with the censorship boards, as well as a police officer who destroyed a copy of the film in front of TV cameras in a desperate tactic to get noticed while claiming that he saw more than what was allowed back in 1962 (Full nudity beyond just breasts was made legal to show in the US in 1965, depending on the state, before The Ratings came about in 1968). Olympic won in their attempt to show as much skin and breast as possible as the ladies' costumes in the Twist Party sequence make Dave Friedman's SPACE THING look like a prude's party as the policeman was in deep water in quick time thanks to his public outburst and false claims! Later on, there would be some notice for MONDO FREUDO in 1966 in which the bad boys won again! |
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The MONDO film trend was something that was suspect from day one after MONDO CANE proved that documentaries could bring in the money if they are weird and wild enough. Cresse, who quit his job with MGM to produce his legacy with ex-commercial director Lee Frost, knew that if it had skin and sin, the film would win. HOLLYWOOD'S WORLD OF FLESH (11-08-63) would prove that quick as the film dared to expose the underbelly of the city and then go to a casting party at Bob's at the end. SEXY PROIBITISSIMO (THE MOST PROHIBITED SEX) in 1964 had it's ad stating that "The world is applauding...SEX" and claiming that it was not a film which was "filmed in someone's back yard" while the film iteslf was a interesting pick-up Costume nudie from Italy involving a timeline of sex plus a sexual dance-ritual that hinted at the madness to come from Cresse and Frost themselves. |
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Below-three from SEXY PROIBITISSIMO. |
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While distributing a couple of films from Cresse's stomping grounds in Florida, where he went to a university with Forman Shane, Olympic helped distribute OLGA'S GIRLS and then went into overdrive with getting all of the films they wanted in their aim to be the most notorious "Art House" film company around. While geting films like NIGHT OF LUST by European directors like Jose Benezarref, sometimes through the help of presenter-friend Dick Randall (PARIS OOH LA LA for American and later THE WILD WILD WORLD OF JAYNE MANSFIELD), Olympic was noted for distributing Japanese Kinky Classics like Koji Wakamatsu's THE LOVE ROBOTS and Kan Mukai's THE BITE in 1965. Later Japanese films would go beyond these as HENTAI (Takashi Shiga, 1966) and THE ADOLECENT (Osamu Yamaskich, Dec. 1967) went into some more risky business. |
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ONE MORE TIME...HENTAI IS AN ACTUAL WORD (I had to get this right for all of the sad Anime fans who wandered into this world who think that the word means Anime. Now, I LOVE Hentai Anime...OVERFIEND, LE BLUE GIRL and all of that, but I hate the misinterpitation of the word!!! GET IT RIGHT! |
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THE LOVE ROBOTS was Wakamatsu's pre-political wonder that was more of a simple classic Exploitation film about a mad doctor drugging and hypnotising girls to do his will which his more snobbish followers will discard completly like Later-Day-Only Beatle snobs would do to a copy of PLEASE PEASE ME. THE BITE was a story of a bored lady who hires a young man to entertain her in fornt of a two-way mirror (Shades of YOU in 1968) with various beauties he brings in, all ending up with the angered street teen enraged with the antics enough to go for the lady's very young daughter. HENTAI was about one man's search for his kidnapped daughter only to find out that she was abducted by the very company he works for that happens to have some kinky underworld going on, and THE ADOLECENT was about the violent sexual awakening of a girl done in the classic Japanese style. |
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