I saw this movie in 1979, I was 17 or 18, when it was released. The theater was perhaps 1/4 full when the movie started. Ten minutes into the movie me and the friend who went with me to see the film were the only two people in the theater. The movie was really weird and had no plot or reason to its script and people demanded their money back. We decided to stay for the ENTIRE movie.... why endure such torture??... here's why. We wanted to be true movie critics... to have a standard to base all other movies on it is hard to justify saying you have seen the best movie (a 10)they always come up with something better. But, it is easy to be able to base all other movies off of the worst movie ever made (and this is it... a 1 at best). There may be other movies out there that truly qualify as a 1, but I have yet to see them. I now base all movies I see on a scale based on this worst....I AM A TRUE MOVIE CRITIC...he he.

I rented this last night, after having been impressed by the credentials and the fact that NBC refused to air it. Very rarely has a video failed to live up to such lofty expectations; then again, I may have expected too much.Even though I knew from the first two sketches that this was going to be a very annoying and unfunny video, I stayed with it, expecting that, at some point or another, the show would connect--say something funny, make some sort of original statement, anything. Nothing. It aims to be shocking, but ends up extremely boring. (Throwing a cat into the pool is funny. Turning that one single act into a long, slo-mo montage of cats being throwin into the pool--well, it seemed like five minutes instead of two. And two minutes is about 100 seconds longer than this sketch had to be.)Much of this is stream-of-consciousness in the vein of Monty Python, only without any of the wit. Most of the jokes seem to have been written by O'Donoghue at three a.m. while coked out in a room with only a typewriter. (Am I far from the truth? I'm not up on my SNL trivia.)Watch this video as a lesson on how to take what is potentially hilarous and cut it off at the knees. It also stands out as a document that testifies to a very empty and decadent niche in our cultural history.In short, it stinks on so many levels.

"Mr. Mike's Mondo Video" is almost indescribable in terms of its mind-blowing bizarreness. This is Michael O'Donoghue's vision unfettered and it's not a pretty sight. (This is, of course, not to discount the contributions of his fellow writers Mitch Glazer, Emily Prager and Dirk Wittenborn, but this is Mr. Mike's show through and through.)This is definitely the sort of film that has a polarizing effect on its audience. You either love it or hate it; it's hard to feel indifferent about it. Personally, I think it's brilliant, even if each individual segment isn't. Some things -- like the Klaus Nomi dream sequence and the cat tossing -- go on a bit too long, but they're almost invariably followed by something which is outrageous and/or laugh-out-loud funny. (My favorite segments are the non sequitur-like commercial lead-ins --"Gig Young's groceries... Looking up Cheryl Tieg's dress.")A must-see for fans of Michael O'Donoghue. As a cultural document it is irreplaceable.

The title of my summary pretty much says it all. The movie is hilarious, but there are less "belly" laughs than there are "Where the hell did that come from?" laughs. As National Lampoon fans know, Michael O'Donoghue was an "evil genius" of comedy. His philosophy was that there's no such thing as "too far", and that rings clearly in this film. The movie was banned from TV by the FCC, for obvious reasons. I highly recommend this movie to lovers of dark, surreal comedy, or the underground movement. Chances are that if you have a short attention span, or stay with the mainstream, it's not for you. Praise Jack Lord!