Amazing mondo nonsense courtesy one Arthur Davis, a Beatle shag-sporting film distributor who fancied himself an adventurer and a filmmaker, so he lit out for the Third World in his best G.I. Joe Safari outfit to capture the weird rites and customs of the “primitive” world on film, just like those Italian fellas had done with Mondo Cane, Mondo Pazzo, and so on. Like his fellow mondo directors, Arthur attempts to support his flimsy central premise with a Whitman’s Sampler of bizarre and grotesque images – an Incan sun ceremony, African manhood rites, an “erotic pottery museum” – liberally spiced with sex and gore to keep the voyeurs happy (animals pull the short straw here – a jaguar is torn to pieces by alligators, a llama’s still-beating heart is ripped from its chest, and a monkey is blown out of a tree and roasted whole over a fire, among other unpleasant sights). Unfortunately, Brutes and Savages has the flimsiest of premises, even for a mondo movie – uncredited narrator Richard Johnson (Dr. Menard from Zombie) struggles mightily to lay the whole “we are the brutes and savages” rap on the audience to justify the onscreen slaughter, but it just doesn’t fly, and so what’s left is scenes of Arthur Davis tenderly fondling a teapot with a cock for a spout and native newlyweds unable to restrain their laughter as they rub decapitated toucan heads against each other as a prelude to consummating their marriage.

Clearly, the whole thing needed some spicing up, so Arthur did what any enterprising director would do – he faked a bunch of scenes. Chief among these is an alligator attack during the manhood ritual in Africa, which cuts between the unlucky tribesman flailing in a river and another actor having a slapfight with a flapjawed alligator puppet in a swimming pool. The whole Africa sequence, which also includes natives screwing in the jungle for Arthur’s camera, and a wrestling match between warriors over the chief’s daughter, is highly suspect (the Sudan looks very much like Arthur’s home state of Florida), and only adds an element of total ineptitude to the well-congealed, gristle-heavy stew of crassness and incoherence that makes up Brutes and Savages. Hardened junk movie fans with strong stomachs are encouraged to dig in with both hands, but should mind the bones.