Mau Mau Sex Sex

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, there was a vaguely sleazy fringe world of no-budget and independently produced films which trafficked in subjects that the major studios would not consider due to censorship regulations. Mau Mau Sex Sex is a buoyant documentary from first-time filmmaker Ted Bonnitt that lovingly recalls the twin careers of the kings of the old-time exploitation cinema: Dan Sonney and David Friedman. Hard to imagine the 86-year-old Sonney and 78-year-old Friedman as being the merry minds behind these strange and often tasteless films, yet these grandfatherly gents offer a celluloid goldmine of amazing tales about the various characters, dilemmas, trends, and opportunities they encountered, as the film expertly mixes a zany trip down memory lane with a surplus of astonishing film clips that redefine the concept of so-bad-they're-good movies (many of which would be politically incorrect if they weren't so insanely dumb). In one typical adventure, supposedly filmed among the ruins of Angkor Wat in the 1930s, we find the curious story of women mating with gorillas (never mind that gorillas are not native to Cambodia or that the simians onscreen look and act suspiciously like men in bad Halloween costumes), while in the 1954 documentary Mau Mau, on the Kenyan uprising against British colonial rule, we see added footage of topless black women being chased by "warriors" (actually filmed in a Hollywood studio against a patently phony painted backdrop with local African American performers). Clearly the most amusing offerings are scenes from the "nudie" films of the late 1950s and early 1960s--actually semi-nudies, as full-frontal views and hints of sexual intercourse were forbidden; in fact, Sonney and Friedman left the film world when hard core pornography entered the mainstream in the late 1960s, claiming that such product went beyond their limits of bad taste. A breezy and charming journey which shines a long-overdue spotlight on these odd but endearing weird movies and the men who made them, this parallel universe of unashamed sleaze is worth a visit. DVD extras include two audio commentaries (one by director Bonnitt, the other by Sonney and Friedman), as well as trailers and photo galleries. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)