Mondo Texas
Posted 21st June 2010 at 07:32 PM by Sam@Cult Labs
Updated 8th July 2010 at 12:30 PM by Sam@Cult Labs
Updated 8th July 2010 at 12:30 PM by Sam@Cult Labs
Year: 1964
AKA: Carnal Secrets of the Cowgirls / The Sins of the Oil Well
Tagline: Shock After Terrible SHOCK! Everything You'll See is True!
The wild fire success of Italian Proto-Shockumentary Mondo Cane inspired Hal Manciano is pitch in with own collection of old news reel footage, faked scenes and erotic travelogue in 1964. Pitched at thrillseekers craving seedy jollies that couldn't be found in the white bread TV broadcasts of the era, Mondo Texas stands a testament to one mans desire to make money by whichever cynical means he had at his disposal.
Wrenched forcibly from retirement, Veteran actor Blink Hostner (The Sensational Trial of Frankie Milk / Post My Heart Back to Montana / The Wrong & The Restless) provides the bright, breezy narration which jars oddly with the unfolding horrors on the screen.
Blink Hostner (With Florence Millicent).
Publicity picture for the 1925 production 'Rise of the Flappers'
Choosing Texas as his location, he set about touring the seedy underbelly of the Lone Star State, filming as many Mulatto hookers, Transvestite Cowboys and Ku Klux Klan family barbeques as he could find.
Stock footage of small town beauty pageants and Cattle Ranchers knocking out Steers at the State Cow Punching Championships add to the head spinning mix. A visit to the Dallas long term Psych Ward and an enlightening look behind the scenes at the Boonville Freak Show also add much needed colour.
Manciano also inserts faked footage of Suburbanite Dallas wives at a seance and a sequence of Oil Drillers praying to Satan for Black Gold.
Protesters picket a 1966 showing of the movie in Mississippi (Under the title Texas Laid Bare)
As with many Mondo movies, the film exists in numerous cuts, as the director edited the movie to suit the sensibilites of different territories. Hal's masterstrokes include releasing the movie in Salt Lake City as 'Heathens Warning" featuring a different narration slanted towards Mormonism, with each vignette presented as a cautionary tale, and re-issuing the film at the New York Grindhouses in the early 70s with twenty minutes of unrelated Danish Hardcore footage culled from two Kurdt Søndergaard smutfests (1969's Scarlet Nurses and 1970's Bad Milkmaid).
Extras narration was added to try and tie in the new XXX material, but the result is a complete mess. Hal knew his audience for the new edit, so matters of sense and geography made little difference to the paying crowd, who kept the film on the Deuce for nine months.
The song "Mondo Texas" which features frequently throughout the picture, went on to be a world wide smash for Chinese Country crooner Ming Haggard.
Blink Hostner - Selected Filmography
1919 The Hunchback of Philadelphia
1919 Menace of the Yellow Men
1920 Fatty Arbuckle Meets the Vampire
1921 Knockabout Jamboree
1922 Nanook Goes South
1923 Our Glorious Klan
1923 Klanstone Kops
1924 Klanstone Kops in Jazz Town
1925 The Jitterbuggers
1925 Rise of the Flappers
1926 The Jitterbuggers Make A Million
1927 Jazz Jungle Jump (First Talking Picture)
1929 Al Capone's Smarter Brother
1930 Happy Songs for Sour Times
1931 Golddigging Bitches of '31
1932 Chain Gang Wedding
1933 Frankenstein Goes to Harvard
1933 Little Caesar Meets the Wolfman
1934 Buzz Berkeley's Broadway Treason of '34
1935 The Square-Jawed Patriot
1936 Dustbowl Dames
1937 Dick Flagg and the Ruby Skull
1938 Hitler, America's Friend
1939 Don't Burn the Plantation!
1940 Uncle Tom's Crazy Cabin
1941 Lucky Muldoon and the Reno Gorillas
1943 I Got Rich With War Bonds!
1944 I Married a Coloured Man
1945 Sordid Crimes of the Self-Abuser
1948 Post My Heart Back to Montana
1948 Grandpa and the Missile
1950 Alaskan Monsoon
1952 The Wrong & The Restless
1955 I Married a Communist
1956 Conformity - The Only Choice
1958 The Sensational Trial of Frankie Milk
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Absolutely brilliant stuff!
As a bit of useless background info, the German distributor opted for the rather lame retitling of "Texas Report" to cash in on the success of the early 70's "Schulmädchen Report" series and the countless other "faux documentary" sex-reports it had inspired by the time.
The German dub for "Mondo Texas" is one of the best examples of German exploitation distribution, as they made the dialogues way sleazier than the actual makers could have possibly aimed for, resulting in over 30 (!) mins of censorship cuts to the dialogue scenes alone for the butchered German vhs release
Needless to say the tape still earned an immediate entry on the dreaded "index of restricted movies". Supposedly one of Germany's best known actors is featuring on the film's German language audio track in a very early role- hard to tell, as the movie has yet to make a re-appearance in one of those handy "hartboxes".
Posted 24th June 2010 at 06:07 PM by Peter Neal
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