From National Lampoon to Saturday Night Live, Michael O’Donoghue made comedy dangerous.

Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video is the wildly demented comedy from the mind of National Lampoon’s and Saturday Night Live’s notoriously funny writer/performer Michael O’Donoghue. And like most of O’Donoghue’s humour, it was years ahead of its time. Originally conceived in 1979 as a television special slotted for one of SNL’s hiatuses—with much of the SNL cast onboard—it was summarily rejected by NBC as too outrageous for broadcast.

Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video is a spoof of the 1962 shockexploitation documentary Mondo Cane, which featured travelogue vignettes of bizarre cultural practices designed to titillate Western audiences. Here Mr. Mike (O’Donoghue) presents his own brand of shock in twisted sketches that make us simultaneously laugh and cringe.