Mr Mikes Mondo Video

History

Mr. Mike's Mondo Video was originally produced on videotape as an NBC television special that would have aired in place of Saturday Night Live during one of its live breaks. Because of the film's racy content (and in the wake of a ratings slump they were experiencing), NBC declared it inappropriate for the network and canceled it.

Shortly thereafter, independent studio New Line Cinema acquired the rights to Mondo Video, converting the videotape master to 35 mm film for theatrical release. To pad the program to feature length, filmmaker Walter Williams created a special Mr. Bill Show episode, combining footage from his past Mr. Bill shorts from SNL with new wraparound scenes, to present at the head of the film as a short subject. Co-writer Mitchell Glazer states in the DVD's audio commentary that many other scenes were added to pad the film's runtime to the required 90 minutes for theatrical releases.

The film would eventually be seen on television, albeit on pay cable and syndication, with several cuts, such as the non sequitur "Dream Sequences."

Mr. Mike's Mondo Video was released on home video in the early 1980s through Mike Nesmith's Pacific Arts label. In January 2009, The film was released on DVD by Shout! Factory. The DVD and video tape releases mute the infamous "My Way" segment (see below), and removes Mr. Mike's lead-in to the "Church of the Jack Lord" segment due to the inability of Shout! Factory to get the rights to use the Hawaii Five-O theme song.

Plot

The film is largely plotless; a series of vignettes linked together by interstitial pieces featuring Mr. Mike discussing how upsetting and odd the sequences are. He introduces some of the pieces via voice-over, and some open with no introduction.

Sequences include:

Music

Mondo Cane features the hit song "More" (which was initially an instrumental song with words added later), sung by crooner Julius La Rosa. In Mr. Mike's Mondo Video, O'Donoghue and writer Emily Prager (who also act in the film) take the instrumental song "Telstar" by Joe Meek and add lyrics to it, creating "The Haunting Theme Song," also sung by La Rosa. The song is sung in English during the opening credits, and in nonsense Italian over the closing credits.

Sid Vicious appearance

Mondo Video features Sid Vicious performing the classic song "My Way" from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, which had not yet been released in America at the time. On the initial Pacific Arts home video release, the audio is muted before Vicious begins singing. A crawl appears onscreen explaining that the owners of the song's copyright wouldn't permit audio of the performance to be included on the tape: "It wasn't a case of money," the crawl explains, "They wouldn't even discuss it." The sound returns when the performance switches to a heavy punk rock guitar riff, and Sid pulling out a gun, firing (presumably blanks) into the audience, flipping them the bird, and walking off.

The muted audio and explanatory crawl are carried over on the 2009 Shout! Factory release, despite the fact that the Sid Vicious version of the song can be seen and heard, in its entirety, in the DVD release of The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, also released by Shout! Factory.