Das Erwachen der Bestie

Having recently caught this strange film on Independent Film Channel,it certainly warrants a viewing, if only for the curiosity of Jose Mojica Marins.

Primarily,he uses two scenarios: a round-table of psychiatrists discussing drug addiction,and alternate scenes of the addicts in question, who are given LSD as part of the experiment.

The poverty and demoralization (particularly of women in Brazil) is explored, and the scenes are stark, turning gradually to crude, horrific and even at times humorous. There is one scene in particular where a young woman is interviewing for a job as a maid and she envisions her prospective employer, who is obese and wolfing a plate of pasta)as a hideous looking Pekingnese dog.

Overall a creative and strange commentary on the drug cultures of the late 1960's and 70's.8/10.

This isn't a Coffin Joe movie properly, but rather a film about drugs that makes stuff like Corman's "The Trip" pale by comparison. The plot isn't linear, and that is exactly the greatest strength of the movie, and what gives it the particular atmosphere it has. First we see several different little stories, all involving people behaving in the most bizarre ways due to drug use.We soon know that all those scenes are stories narrated on a tv talk show by a scientist who tries to prove his theories about drugs and the human mind with the help of Mojica and his creation, Coffin Joe. The utter absurdity of the scenes is what makes the whole experience worthwhile. Probably Mojica's best work as a proper film maker, not just a horror flick director.

The more Coffin Joe movies I see, the more I'm amazed that he isn't mentioned more in the English speaking world. Jose Mojica Marins (a.k.a. Coffin Joe) is a horror icon in his native Brazil, but has only a small (but very enthusiastic!) cult following elsewhere. 'Awakening Of The Beast' is probably not the best place to start with Marins work. It's one of his most striking and original, but also quite confusing for a fan, let alone someone unfamiliar with the whole Coffin Joe trip. Best to watch 'At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul' first. In that movie Marins created his evil undertaker character Ze do Caixao (anglicized as "Coffin Joe"). In 'Awakening Of The Beast' Marins appears both as himself and as Coffin Joe. A group of intellectuals on a TV show debate the evils of drugs in contemporary Brazilian society. We are shown various vignettes of drug-fueled perversion, some of which are very surreal! This takes up three quarters of the movie, the rest concerns an experiment a psychiatrist makes on four volunteers dosing them with acid and subjecting them to Coffin Joe! This stuff is even wilder than what has come before, and in colour to boot. 'Awakening Of The Beast' is an extraordinary movie and quite unique. Hard core horror buffs may be perplexed, but fans of psychedelic exploitation like Roger Corman's 'The Trip' and Russ Meyer's immortal 'Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls' will be in heaven! This is Coffin Joe's happening baby, and it freaks me out!

Dr Sergio leads a panel of doctors including writer and director Jose Mojica Martins in an episode of TV programme "Enlightening the Darkness". They discuss the effects of drug use on Brazilian society and discuss a set of experiments that Dr Sergio carried out with LSD and a group of users from different social classes.

What follows is a film in two parts. The first part follows Dr Sergio telling the panel stories of people using drugs and the effects they have. Essentially this is a series of short scenes where the drug takers turn to violent perverted acts after the drugs. Most of these include sexual violence directed towards women, others include sex scenes that have all the sensitivity and direction of soft core porn. Overall the lesson seems to be that drugs cause these perverted scenes and that drugs are bad. For this half of the film the "story" is disjointed and hard to follow - the discussion isn't set in any context and it just feels like an exploitation film - this is easy to believe as Mojica the director is famous for cheap horrors etc.

The second half sees the discussion become more structure as Dr Sergio describes his experiments on four LSD users. What follows a short set up is a 15 minute series of full colour (the rest is black & white) hallucinations featuring the director's alter ego - the evil Ze do Caixo. These hallucinations are quite disturbing and include a lot of violence toward women carried out by Caixo. Director Mojica comes up with very imaginative visions but they are all too gaudy and trashy horror. Again these feel overdone to shock his audience.

Following the experiments Dr Sergio reveals that instead of LSD he used distilled water and presents evidence to the same that is too easily believed ("it says distilled water!"). The conclusion of the experiments (and the film) is that these images came from the people themselves and not the drugs - therefore drugs are harmless and the people who do bad things as a result are sick anyway and you can't blame the drugs. This is a very weak conclusion given the evidence that has just gone before.

The film is an interesting bit of exploitation from Brazil - worth watching once for the film-student style of direction. However the presentation of perverted images and violence linked so closely to drug use makes the film's pro-drug message totally unbelievable and very hard to shallow (even if you agree with legalising drugs).

Awakening of the Beast (1970)

** (out of 4)

Bizarre film from Marins using his Coffin Joe character as a fake thing to try and create a social commentary on society. In the film we see a television show where various doctors are debating the effects drugs have on society. The controversial actor/director Jose Mojica Marins is involved in the debate because people are wondering if his character Coffin Joe might influence people to do drugs. The final twenty-minutes has four people given LSD to see how they react. This is a complete mess of a film but I guess that adds to the surreal nature of the movie and series for that matter. I've read that Marins couldn't get a third Coffin Joe film off the ground so he had other filmmakers send him left over film stock just so he could throw something together and this is the result. The film is extremely well made as I'd be lying if I said Marins directing style wasn't something completely original. The visual look of the film is quite amazing as the director paints a very ugly picture of the underground drug community and its easy to see why the government had the movie banned in Brazil. Marins paints a cruel and ugly world full of abuse, both sexual and physical and the images brought to the screen are certainly unlike any other. There's one sequence where men line up to put their face up the skirt of a woman. Another scene where an overweight pervert tries to seduce a young woman. We get various acts of perversion and then the LSD sequences turn to full color and really give the eyes a treat. The performances are all about what you'd expect, although Marins puts himself above the rest. The movie is all over the place and I'm really not sure how strong the message on society is but those whose who enjoy strange and bizarre movies are bound to eat this one up.