Brutes and Savages is a typical entry in the bizarre subgenre of mondo films. In it, narrator and explorer Arthur Davis visits Africa and South America in search of weird ceremonies and cultures. The film is basically trying to educate the viewer with a "partial" look at the locals' everyday activities and beliefs and it tries to make everything look authentic and real. It clearly isn't. Numerous camera angles and ridiculously staged events kill the illusion early on. So what do we get? An African hand-to-hand combat, a turtle wedding ceremony, a llama festival, simulated bestiality, snake vs. rodent, snake vs. bird, crocodile vs. man, crocodile vs. jaguar (!), an erotic pottery museum, various animal sacrifices and much more. It's a mixed bag of sleaze and violence. The breathtaking scenery is well filmed for the most part and the visit to the village slums is appropriately saddening, but the rest of the "money shots" just look incredibly staged. Aside from the llama festival, the rest of the festivities/fights/sacrifices are obvious fakes, making the animal deaths all the more useless. Even the scenes of animals vs. animals look like they were forced. How would a jaguar really find himself pitted against three crocodiles in nature? And a camera just happens to be filming it all. Right! Can I recommend all this? Surprisingly yes. Although faked and drenched in animal blood, these are supposed to be representations of actual ceremonies from these two continents and for that, it was fascinating. But anybody who thought the turtle scene in Cannibal Holocaust was too harsh might want to look elsewhere.