O Ritual dos Sádicos

In the first half of the film, after an interesting opening lettering simulating comic books, a beautiful cinematography and a cunning edition (often with dark humor) depict a wide range of sexual depravation situations (sometimes combined with mysoginy, violence, and work harassment). Those bizarre cases are interwined with a debate between psychiatrists, in a noir footage, about the possible causal connection between those dire social events and the usage of illegal drugs. One of those experts is José Mojica Marins, the director himself, who is also known as his character Coffin Joe, then merging reality, the story of the present movie and also his previous films (besides a horror comic book character who also appears in a newsstand). It is mentioned that another scentist, Sérgio, made experiments with LSD with four patients to investigate that issue. Then, Coffin Joe appears in a TV show being interviewed by intelectuals about his role as filmmaker in Brazilian cinema, being judged as in a court. After that, the movie continues showing Sérgio's experiment to find out if there is a relation between LSD and perversion. After going with the four patients to watch Coffin Joe's films in a theater, he shows them images of that character and uses syringes to inject the solution on them. That last quarter of the film is partially coloured, what does not happen in rhe whole rest of the film. Situations even worse and weirder than in the beginning of the film take place inside their thoughts and minds. In those scenes, Coffin Joe shows his sadism and mysoginy, and have magic powers that did not appear in his three first movies portraying the character. The four human guinea pigs have macabre hallucinations, and the young woman suffers lots of violence, just like undistinguishable unknown people who are present in that hellish nightmare. Off course the whole film is an excuse to exploitation, and there is very little story between the weird real or oneiric situations. However, José Mojica Marins does try innovative cinema aestethics throughout the film. In the end, researcher Sérgio explains his experience (no spoilers here), when they are also shown in the mentioned TV show. Coffin Joe has the elements to keep making his films.

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.

I really don't understand why so many people around the world rave about Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe). I've seen two of his films: "Esta Noite Encarnarei No Teu Cadáver" and now "Ritual Dos Sádicos" and I was disappointed.

His films run like this: long scenes filmed by a non-moving camera spiced up with long speeches by Zé do Caixão. The way he imagines Hell (Esta Noite Encarnarei No Teu Cadáver) or a psychedelic trip (O Ritual dos Sádicos) are somewhat funny but they are no visual wonder at all - people howling and squirming around, long dark corridors, lights blinking and suddenly we stumble on another of the lengthy speeches delivered by Zé do Caixão in which there will be reflections about life, death, the human vanity etc.. It may at fist seem funny, but as there are many of these speeches, as the time goes by the laughter will disappear and boredom take its place. Imagine a radio horror play illustrated by slide images and you won't be far from Zé do Caixãos films.

Zé do Caixão has good ideas and a very dramatic fantasy - his main problem it that he expresses his obsessions more by words than by images - his nightmare images are static. I think that in a film images and words should flow together - there should be something like a symphony.

All in all, I don't deny Zé do Caixãos imagination but (unlike, for instance, Dario Argento and Jean Rollin) he is not able to express fully the richness of his world visually and that is essential in a film.

I have been along time fan of Coffin Joe. I kept hearing about this film and finally go to see it on Channel Four a few years ago. Many say it is the best Coffin Joe film but I think maybe they are wrong.

Sure, it is great and different. Going down a different road than the first two. The idea is great and the short story's are funny and often disturbing. I love the soundtrack and the colour segment at the end in the LSD trip into the world of Coffin Joe.

I can see why it was banned at the time and it is still shocking today.

Not Coffin Joe's best but it is probably close...

It may take some finding but you should definitely hunt it 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).