Mr. Mike's Mondo Video

I watched the movie Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video, directed by Michael O’Donoghue, released in 1979. It is a non-linear film that is much in the vein of the Mondo films of the 1960’s (Mondo Cane, Mondo Hollywood, Mondo Trasho, etc.) though Michael’s version seems to be more of a dark comedic spoof of such films (though to be fair, those films were kind of fringe as well and were not to be taken seriously as well, as I have heard since I really haven’t seen any of them). I happened upon this movie by accident, late at night (which is right where the audience should be according to Mondo films, midnight movie runs/grindhouse theater kinds of films) and I was struck by it. Michael O’Donoghue was a writer and featured player for Saturday Night Live in the 70’s and 80’s. His brand of comedy, like I stated, was very black kind of humour, satirical, and very weird (in artistic kind of way). I don’t know much about this movie other than it was produced by NBC as filler for SNL. The film is broken up into vignettes that are somewhat hit of miss (much like SNL) and Michael himself is onscreen narrator/voice over narrator. I had a hard time watching the first sequence of the teaching cats to swim as a guy was throwing cats in a pool and of course they would swim around but it seemed like cruelty to me. The rest of the film jumps around to scene to scene, not jarringly but in a funny way, if that makes sense. There are some pretty impressive cameos in it as well. I wonder if they managed to get these through tapings at Saturday Night Live (as guests) or simply that Michael knew them, it was New York in the late 1970’s and it was all about art. It isnt important though to worry with that though. The production is very loose, using film and video but also clips repurposed and used for funny commentary. It looks cheaply made though that is part of its charm as a film. There is also a part in there where Sid Vicious sings My Way that was taken from another film, The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, directed by Julien Temple, released in 1980 that is about the Sex Pistols though in Mondo Video, it is muted because the rights holders wouldn’t allow it on video, though I have seen that in the theatrical release for Mondo Video, it was there. There is a statement crawl during this portion of the film that explains this for the viewer.
If you can find this film, I’d say to watch it, if only to see the cameos and the general weirdness that Saturday Night Live used to have in the early days.