MAU MAU SEX SEX

Mau Mau Sex Sex is about two geriatrics who made exploitation movies back in the 1930s to 1960s, basically your father (or rather grandfather’s) smut. Things are enlivened by clips from those movies, which boasted titles like The Defilers, Thar She Blows! and Blood Feast.

Chances are that even if you’re a dedicated Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan (the now defunct TV show that lampooned “so bad, they’re actually good” movies) you’d still be awestruck by some of these clips.

“Infectious fun” is how one critic described Mau Mau Sex Sex and he got it right. (Click here for an in-depth review.)

THE DISC: Sound and image quality are as good as can be expected. After all, some of the movie clips date from the 1930s.

Also, the documentary itself was filmed on a digital camera. Very much a case of DIY film-making, production values are however surprisingly high. The image is often crystal clear and so is the sound. The film is presented in full screen, but this is probably the aspect ration in which it was originally filmed. Impressive for such a cheaply made independent movie.

The rest of the disc can also compete with the best of what the major studios can offer. Menus are animated with music, and the disc boasts more extra features than many mainstream movies I have recently seen.

For starters there are four original trailers for some of the exploitation movies featured in the documentary itself. If you may have entertained the idea of actually checking out some of these movies, then these trailers will quickly disavow you of any such notions.

(The trailers are for The Ramrodder, Starlet, Space Thing and Thar She Blows! - all of them available from www.somethingweird.com.)

Man! Do they look bad: we’re talking Manos – Hands of Fate bad here! Very, very bad!

Then there are two commentary tracks: one by the subjects of the documentary themselves and one by the makers.

In addition there is a photo gallery consisting of stills and some rare exploitation movie poster art, samples from the movie soundtrack and selected filmographies and production biographies.

WORTH IT? All this makes for a well-rounded package, better than most indie DVDs I have seen and on par and even superior to some major studio offerings.

RECOMMENDATION: Mau Mau Sex Sex is a whole lot of fun and the disc is definitely worth buying even if it is just for those four dreadful movie trailers. They’d be fun if any of your parties runs out of steam one day. Think of them as guaranteed conversation pieces, and something that might even help in getting rid of unwanted guests . . .