Porno Mondo: An In Depth Study of Porno Films

Porno Mondo: An In Depth Study of Porno Films (1971)

** (out of 4)

This sixty-minute film is a fake "documentary" that pretends to interview various people involved in the business. We hear from a producer, a writer (Rene Bond), a performer, a theater owner and various others.

If you're looking for an actual documentary about the porn industry during this era then this here really isn't here. While I'm sure there are some truths to the stories, for the most part this film is just trying to present itself as something educational while the main goal is to just show off sex. The problem is that none of the stories are overly entertaining and the sex scenes aren't all that interesting either.

If you're a fan of the porn from this era then you might want to check this out but for the most part this is a pretty bland film. While there's nothing horrible here, at the same time there's really nothing good either. Plus, whose bright idea was it to have Rene Bond in your film and not feature her naked or in any sex scenes?

Not to be confused with the far better release titled "Mondo Porno", this "Porno Mondo" deserves to live on inside a landfill rather than its placement by those undiscriminating folks at Vinegar Syndrome as part of a 12-hour DVD set saluting cheapo porn.

Disguised as a documentary, it merely dwells on mechanical sex footage probably shot for the occasion, or purchased from some itinerant producer, while we listen to total b.s. from the mouths of various industry folk, all singing the praises of porn as an art form and complaining about police raids (since it is still sort of illegal at the time this was released).

Using both Rene Bond and Ric Lutze as non-sex talkers is pretty stupid, but the anonymous filmmakers here are definitely idiots if they think any viewer then or now would fall for this nonsense tract. Its title suggests some sort of survey, but instead of "in-depth" we get a one- note, one-source (apparently only one film or shoot was tapped for the XXX footage) rather than any attempt at comprehensiveness. Had they shown clips from dozens of contemporaneous porn shoots, the result would at least have had a time capsule value.