Friday 29 May 2015

TANGO PUSHED BACK TO JULY! PRE-ORDER BUNDLE COMING SOON!

We’re sorry to announce that we are pushing back the DVD release of TANGO OF PERVSION from June to July. Most likely July 14th, although that date is still to be confirmed. The reasons are numerous and technical, but the long story short is we had to send the masters back to Greece several times in order to get them presentable. What we have now wouldn’t be blu-worthy, but we think they are going to be very nice looking DVDs indeed. We’re also in the final stages of pinning down some pretty interesting extras. More info on all that and final specs coming soon. The 2nd film in our Greek Collection, THE WIFE KILLER, will follow later in August or September.

Unless you order directly from us! Sometime early next month we will have a pre-order bundle deal available for both titles, arriving at or ahead of TANGO’s official street date. That means you’ll be getting WIFE KILLER at least one month early! This deal will only be available through our webstore, mondomacabro.bigcartel.com

Look for more info on that pre-order in the next couple of weeks!

Friday 10 April 2015

Aaaaaaaah!


Written/directed by Steve Oram 
starring Julian Barratt, Toyah Willcox, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Steve Oram, Noel Fielding
 Soundtrack by King Crimson ProjeKcts 

 COMING SOON

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Sandy Whitelaw, RIP















We were very sorry to hear of the death on Friday of Sandy Whitelaw, who directed the Mondo release Lifespan.

I was first introduced to Sandy via a mutual friend, the documentary film maker David Thompson. I phoned Sandy in Paris, where he lived, and he immediately insisted I give him my number and he would call me back. “People tell me I talk a lot,” he said, in his dry, American voice. “So probably best if I pay.”

Indeed. I think we were on the phone that first time for well over an hour. And I soon became used to these marathon calls. I both dreaded and adored them. Dreaded, because if you had anything else to do, you might as well forget about it, and adored, because I always learned so much and was so enormously entertained by talking to Sandy. After the call was over I felt like I’d had a thorough course of mental calisthenics. Sandy was always bubbling over with ideas, theories, scabrous tales about the great and the not so good – names that had figured in his life in some way, like Mick Jagger, Jane Fonda, Polanski, Grace Kelly. There didn’t seem to be any important event or iconic figure of the last 50 years that Sandy didn’t have some personal link with or insight into. He was the original “six degrees of separation” man. Although with him it was more like one or two degrees. I remember after we first discussed Lifespan he had obviously checked out our website and said to me later: “Oh, I see you released a film produced by Luciano Ercoli” - it was Death Walks at Midnight. “Yes,” I said. “Do you know him?” “Oh, not really, Sandy replied. “We sang together in a blues band in London in the late 50s.” That was the kind of intriguing nugget he was prone to casually toss one’s way.

Although we talked a lot over the years, I actually learned very little about his life. He would drip feed you information and there were things he didn’t talk about but only alluded to. I always felt that details would follow and there would always be time to ask him again. But now time has run out. And we’re left with what we have and must join the dots to create some kind of a portrait.

He was born in 1930 (or was in 1925?? – another mystery) and I know his father
was a Scottish career soldier. Sandy attended Harvard and later worked for David O Selznick, the famous Hollywood producer of Gone With the Wind. Sandy’s command of five languages and his wide ranging cultural and artistic connections made him an ideal assistant for someone like Selznick who had a definite Euro-centric and old world leaning. Sandy became a producer and later Head of United Artists in Europe, living in Paris. He worked on a number of big budget productions, including Taras Bulba, Reflections in a Golden Eye and Night of the Iguana.


His restless mind and devilish sense of fun made him an unlikely Studio Executive. I remember him telling me a story about Gucci loafers – slip-on shoes favoured by wannabe hip US execs back in the day. When a group of them visited him in Italy, their main concern was finding out where they could buy the much coveted loafers at a bargain price, as they were expensive in Los Angeles. Sandy took them to a seedy location in the commercial district of Rome and waited as they greedily fingered the display of white leather shoes. It was the time of the Brigado Rosso, murderous freedom fighters, and as he watched the execs at play, Sandy had a fantasy of the armed urban guerrillas cordoning off the street and weeding out anyone wearing the thoroughly bourgeois Gucci footwear before taking them off for summary execution.

The loafers made a dramatic re-appearance at a crucial moment in Lifespan, his first film.

Sandy’s second film as a director came a mere twenty two years after Lifespan. Vicious Circles was not widely seen, and is a an eccentric work. But it’s packed full of fascinating details and original ideas. Perhaps he was just too individualistic and too little fond of compromise to make it as a commercial film maker, but the two titles that bear his name reward repeat viewings. I’ve not seen Venus, the film that he directed pseudonymously, but I assume he had a reason for keeping his name off it.

Since 1975 he had “fallen accidentally” (his words) into a second career as a script translator and subtitler of many prestigious films from French into English. He worked on more than a thousand scripts. This had led to his third career, as actor in films such as The American Friend, Lady Oscar and The Beat that My Heart Skipped, where he has a small but key role as Mr Fox, the agent who auditions the piano playing protagonist.



















In recent years, Sandy was still talking about making another film. He sent me a long treatment for it, on strict promise of keeping it to myself. “Loose lips sink ships,” he reminded me. I loved it of course and pleaded with him to write it as a novel, just in case the film didn’t happen. Well, he didn’t and it didn’t. The film was to be called Time to Go and told the story of a young American who comes to Europe in search of his “biodad”, Sam Whitman . Who turns out to be a former film producer and director of “not cult movies, collectors’ movies”. Sam is quizzed over his various celebrity love afairs. “Three month mercy fucks” he calls them. And he’s been hounded by biographers in search of anecdotes on Jane Fonda, Natalie Wood, Ava Gardner, Warren Beatty…

“You had an affair with Warren Beatty?! Was he bi ?” the excited visitor asks him.

“If he was, it’s news to me…,” replies Sam. “We’ll tackle that later…”

The “we’ll tackle that later…” dropped in at the end is typical Sandy. Now there is no later, and we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. Let’s be thankful for that, at least. For a man fascinated by immortality (it was the subject of Lifespan) Sandy put in a pretty good effort, but I suspect his lasting legacy will be the influence he had on the many people who knew and loved him and who will find him a hard, if not impossible, act to follow.

Pete Tombs


Monday 26 January 2015

THE FAN: Red Case Limited Edition Pre-Sale!



                  







  





BUY IT NOW

Pre-sale runs through Feb. 8th. Copies will be mailed out around the week of the 16th.

Tuesday 13 January 2015

Everything You Need To Know About Our Release of Eckhart Schmidt's THE FAN on BD and DVD

We will be issuing this incredible 80s arthouse thriller soon, so here's everything you need to know right now about the two different versions we'll have available.

In February we'll put out a BD-only version in a red case, limited to only 500 copies, numbered, and sold exclusively through the MM website, $25.

The following month will see a widely distributed BD/DVD combo, which will itself be limited to either 1500 or 2000 copies, SRP $29.99.
The content of the two editions will be exactly the same, the only difference being the packaging.

If you are interested in this release and want to see more MM blu rays, I urge you to buy the direct-sale limited version. We will be doing this for all our BD releases, trying to offset the huge costs involved. Thanks!

The pre-order date for the LE will be Jan. 26th. Keep an eye out here or at our Facebook page for more details in the coming weeks.

Oh, and yes, we will ship international.