Mondo dismo: Noun. Definition: A man who is not to be trusted. To women in particular, a self-centered exploiter.
Mondo Dismo is an expression that I first heard of in Romancing the Stone, the 1983 adventure/romance starring Katherine Turner and Michael Douglas The premise is that a homebody romance writer, Joan Wilder, finds herself suddenly thrust into a murder mystery/treasure hunt in the jungles outside of Cartajena, Columbia. There, she meets more than one kind of man, and more than one mondo dismo. But not all is what it seems.
Two Women Walk into a Bar
The phrase first comes up in a bar scene early in the movie. Joan and her publisher Gloria look over the men at the bar and Gloria passes judgement. “Loser, loser, major loser ,,, mondo dizmo.”
“Total sleeze bucket,” Gloria continues. “I actually used to go out with this guy … ” the man, unaware perhaps that they are talking about him, raises his eyebrows, nods, drinks.
What made him a mondo dizmo isn’t specified, but for some reason the guy doesn’t seem to remember his interaction with Gloria; perhaps that’s a start. He smiles with a come-on smile across the bar, a guy who’s been with so many women that he can’t recognize the ones he’s bagged before.
And Into the Jungle
Later in the movie, Joan calls Jack Colton (Douglas), the hero, a mondo dizmo and when he replies, with asperity, “I’m a what???” she says:
“A mondo dizmo. A man who takes money from stranded women.”
This is because he asks for $300 in traveler’s checks in order to take her out of the steaming jungle to somewhere with a telephone. Which proves to be no small feat.
Here in modern times, on the internet, a Usenet group on the topic of “what is a mondo dizmo?” suggests that the word “mondo” means “very, total, and complete” and “dismo” possibly means stupid, boring, or both.
The sense of the term in Romancing the Stone, however, is clearly towards exploitation. The mondo dizmo is, in the terms of Urban Dictionary, a user:
“Someone who toys with another’s emotions just to receive what they desire from that person.”
Derivative Term: Mondo Dizmo Beer
Hoof Hearted Brewing in Marengo, Ohio, created a coffee beer with the name Mondo Dizmo. It appears to have been a one-off. The image below shows the cans. Reading the description of the beer in an Instagram post from the brewery gives you a feeling that these guys who brewed the stuff were true beer nerds. Their can artist is something else too. However, the Mondo Dizmo beer was available only on or around November 24, 2023. The can art features two guys who would have been even scarier to Joan Wilder and Gloria than anyone in their little black books or anyone they met in Columbia.
As Cat Stevens sang all those years ago, oh Baby, it’s a wild world, it’s hard to get by on just a smile. And it’s full of mondo dizmos, apparently.