Mau Mau Sex Sex
(2001) dir. Ted Bonnitt
viewed: 08/23/06
Despite the luridness of the title, this film is actually a pretty simple documentary about David F. Friedman and Dan Sonney, two pioneers of the Exploitation genre. The title comes from a quote by Sonney who says that a film that they were trying to release called Mau Mau didn’t have a marketable title, but if changed to Mau Mau Sex Sex, then you’d have something that would drive people in.
This film is a lot better, if less ambitious than Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (2001), which I just watched a couple weeks ago and also featured interviews with Friedman. Friedman is an interesting character, now in his 80′s, still running a Carnival and very vested in the history of exploitation and its roots in the Carnival, sideshows, and P. T. Barnum. They amuse themselves greatly with the tease and promotion of the content, saying how he’d work longer on the movie poster than he would on a script, since once you got people in, that was the bulk of the work.
One of the reasons that this film is better than Schlock!, is simply that it doesn’t use any narrative voiceover to try and explain things. The only real analyst of the content from a modern perspective is an interview with Frank Henenlotter, a film historian and a somewhat notable trash filmmaker in his own right, director of Frankenhooker (1990), Brain Damage (1988), and Basket Case (1982). Henenlotter is actually quite amusing in his riffing knowledge of the oevre.
The film captures its subjects late in life, octo- and septagenarians (actually catching Sonney only a year before his death) and besides trying to create the history of their work and contextualize their films and lives, it also focuses on the present of the film, 2001, and has many moments following the elderly fellows around their homes and families, giving a glimpse at who they became. It’s actually kind of interesting in a way, but then again, by this time, they are largely elderly fellows in daily moments, watching t.v., washing dishes, looking for missing thermos lids. It’s not exactly riviting as the clips of nudies and ripped-out tongues and eyeballs from their films.
Actually, Dan Sonney is the son of Louis Sonney, whose story is told as well, reputedly the first independent filmmaker and initiator of the Exploitation genre with his film Maniac (1934) which looks totally insane and contains the scene of a guy popping a cat’s eye out of its socket and eating it. I mean, this was 1934 for Chrissakes! It’s radical. It’s avant-garde. Even Un chien andalou (1929) was only five years earlier. It’s nuts! I have got to rent that one.
As a film on its own, it’s no great shakes, but its subject matter is interesting and fun, though occasionally drifts off toward “senior moments”. Still, Friedman is a fascinating character. I am feeling inspired to watch a few of these classics of trash now.
