Hilarious and surreal
Just to counteract the first customer review, let me say that I found a beat-up VHS copy of this a few years ago and became totally obsessed with it. It's wonderfully bizarre and dark, closer in spirit to the National Lampoon Radio Hour than the tame-by-comparison SNL. It's downright amazing that Shout! Factory is rescuing this from obscurity, and it will be a fantastic discovery for fans of Mike O'Donoghue and the other early SNL'ers, most of whom make brief appearances.
One Day You Will All LOVE MONDO VIDEO
I saw Mondo Video 4 times during the week it ran theatrically, because I KNEW it would never be seen again. I wanted to burn it into my brain. Happily, I was wrong. One brave TV station in Pittsburgh actually ran it ONCE and I taped it. Now, SHOUT! has somehow seen fit to preserve it (or most of it) for posterity. Geez! Paul Anka is such a loser to deny permission to let them include Sid Vicious singing "MY WAY". Anyway....
Definitely not for everyone, Mondo Video is for the adventurous who love dark, dark humor and appreciate the celebration of hype - as this is what O'Donoghue is doing here. He endlessly promises the shocking, the perverted, the astounding...and just like the "Mondo" movies he's parodying, he doesn't deliver on the hype. But it's a VERY funny trip.
Much funnier than any of the alleged 'counter-culture' comics around today.
Very twisted. Very funny. A must-have. If you have the cajones for it.
"Restoration" leads to disappointment.
"Mondo Video" was conceived as a summer replacement series for "Saturday Night Live," produced by Lorne Michaels and written and hosted by SNL and "National Lampoon" veteran Michael "Mr. Mike" O'Donoghue. A pilot was shot and rejected by NBC as being too disturbing even for late night. Michaels and O'Donoghue took the pilot to Showtime who showed it...once, then canceled any plans to pursue the series. The show had a very low-key history after that. Showtime showed it again years later just to reassert rights to it. It had a limited VHS release that was marred by Paul Anka (but more on that later), and had a couple of 35mm prints thrown for the festival circuit.
My mother managed to tape the original showing back in 1979, and it's been one of my greatest guilty pleasures. Now, to celebrate its 30th anniversary, it's finally been released on DVD, and to some degree I wish it hadn't been.
The loss of Sid Vicious' performance of "My Way" is understandable, as...
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