The Most Depraved Movie You’ll Never See
The Romanian/Hungarian English-language horror exploitation film Mondo Vulvavoré played in select theaters in Eastern Europe between late 2010 and early 2011. Beyond that, little is known for certain about the film. Those who have seen Mondo Vulvavoré, however, unanimously claim that it is more repulsive than I Spit on Your Grave, The Last House on Dead End Street, and Cannibal Holocaust combined. According to one bewildered American national who was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to attend a screening of the movie, “It makes A Serbian Film look like It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Mondo Vulvavoré allegedly contains prolonged scenes of torture, mutilation, murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia, as well as some light coprophagy. Viewers have universally remarked upon the film’s impressive gore effects, many of which seem nigh-impossible for a project so low-budget. This has led many to conjecture that Mondo Vulvavoré documents real atrocities. With all that said, it’s not clear what Mondo Vulvavoré is actually about, as the script is, by all indications, rather scattered.
None of Mondo Vulvavoré’s cast members had previous theater or film experience, and all of the actors hail from economically disadvantaged post-communist Eastern European countries. The lone exception is Grant Woodridge, an adult film actor from the United States, who plays the film’s ostensible lead. Co-star Jenica Vasile has declared that all of her sex scenes with Woodridge were simulated. Woodridge, by contrast, claims to have had non-simulated intercourse with all female cast members while on the set, and that he was too intoxicated throughout production to discern whether or not the cameras were rolling for any given sex act he performed.
Save for Woodridge, none of the actors have worked again in film, pornographic or otherwise. No fewer than three cast members passed away prematurely in the decade following the film’s release, with overdose and/or suicide given as their suspected causes of death. Others have been reported missing. Tara Voiculescu, for instance, who is listed in the film credits as “Weeping Girl 2,” disappeared in the midst of production. She has not been located since, lending further credence to the theory that Mondo Vulvavoré’s sex scenes weren’t the only thing that went un-simulated. At least two other members of the cast live in total isolation, unwilling to speak to anyone about the film or, for that matter, about anything else. The film editor, Abel Craciun, currently resides in a Bulgarian sanitarium. The director, George Donceanu, would go on to work in children’s television under a pseudonym.
Surviving members of the cast and crew have said that Donceanu talked incessantly about “making a movie more horrific than Salò.” They refer here to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious 1975 film that reimagined the 120 Days of Sodom against the backdrop of fascist Italy. But in the rare interviews he has granted, Donceanu insists that he has never seen, or even heard of, Salò.
And you, dear reader, will never see Mondo Vulvavoré. Allegedly, the Romanian government ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed, with operatives of the nation’s Police Agents Corps seizing negatives from theaters and incinerating them. The Hungarian and Romanian tourism boards, meanwhile, purportedly pooled their resources to buy up all prints screened at theaters in surrounding countries, offering exorbitant sums for these purchases. These prints were then cast into the Black Sea, or so the story goes. Other sources report that theater owners themselves destroyed copies of Mondo Vulvavoré upon screening it, with one Ukrainian projectionist even taking an ax to the spinning reels at the movie’s midway point.
Regardless of whether or not these stories are true, there are no known prints of Mondo Vulvavore in circulation. Searches for the film inevitably end up fruitless, at least on the publicly accessible internet. Rumor has it that Mondo Vulvavoré can be found on the dark web for a steep price — if you know where to look.
And as for your author, yes, he has seen Mondo Vulvavoré. Now his fingers tremble on the keyboard, and he feels the bile bubbling up atop waves of nausea in his stewing gut. He knows all of the above allegations to be correct. He was that aforementioned bewildered American national. Now he can’t even bring himself to use the first person, for to use “I” in the context of this film is an affront to the human self. To watch Mondo Vulvavoré is to forfeit some fragment of your very subjectivity, to perforate your psyche, and to have your consciousness colonized by thoroughly vile and ineradicable images. Mondo Vulvavoré confirms the non-existence of the soul.
So be grateful, dear reader, that your eyes will never be assailed and infested by the celluloid malignant growth that is Mondo Vulvavoré. The latter half of its title is, very unfortunately, not misleading.
