Census Bloodbath: Brazil Nuts

Note: The only accessible copy of this Brazilian slasher movie was in unsubtitled Portuguese, so take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1984
Director:
Custódio Gomes & Fauzi Mansur

Cast:
Marcelo Braz, J. Brito, Rosângela de Faria
Run Time:
1 hour 10 minutes

Plot: Karma - Enigma of Death (originally Karma - Enigma do Medo) is set at a secluded farm hotel that was the site of a horrific massacre in the 1800s that was orchestrated by the spurned lover (Mauro Pinto) of one of the women who lived there. The spirits of the slain are growing restless, and mysterious supernatural phenomena lead to the death of Elaina (Tatiana Mogambo)'s husband Fausto (uncredited co-director Custódio Gomes). Fausto's spirit emerges from his corpse and is shown the ropes of the astral plane by a spirit guide (Alain Fontaine) dressed in a prince costume that looks like it was stolen from a high school theater production of Once Upon a Mattress.

Various strangers, including a professor of the paranormal, a married couple, a drunk, and a nun - who are all reincarnated versions of the victims of the massacre - all arrive at the hotel. They are then killed one by one, only for their spirits to join the fray and begin killing the living as well (either by possessing other bodies, operating on the astral plane, or straight-up rising from the dead like zombies). 

Analysis: In case my plot synopsis didn't make that clear, coherence is not high on Karma - Enigma of Death's list of priorities. I usually find it helpful when the killer in a slasher begins mowing down victims, because it means that I have fewer characters to try and keep straight. Such is not the case here. Once people die, they not only stick around in the narrative but multiply like the heads of a hydra, sometimes interacting with the story in three different ways simultaneously (as ghosts, as dead corpses, as living corpses, and/or as possessing spirits).

I think I would have found this frustrating even if I could understand the dialogue. However, the supernatural elements are batshit enough that the movie is deliriously entertaining regardless. 

While I can't say that I love the yellowy film-negative imagery that is used to represent the spirit realm, the movie is exuberant, zestily throwing every possible strand of story spaghetti at the wall (including a demonic pig and a ghost resentfully bonking a woman with a car door), so I couldn't help but admire it.

Honestly, it's much better than I would have expected from this cast and crew, who were primarily known for pornographic movies (my favorite credit from the collected ensemble is the Mauro Pinto movie Meu pipi no seu popo, which roughly translates to My Pee-Pee in Your Butt). 

I wasn't necessarily inclined to trust the Brazilian adult film industry given how profoundly boring the 1983 softcore slasher Momentos de Prazer e Agonia proved to be, but art is art and artists are artists, no matter the medium. And Karma might not be capital-A Art, but I dug this enough that I'm very eager to revisit director Fauzi Mansur when he returns to the slasher genre in 1989 with Satanic Attraction.

Killer: Basically Everyone

Final Girl: Elaina (Tatiana Mogambo)

Best Kill: One character has a sword laboriously shoved through the front of his neck in a pretty killing blow.

Sign of the Times: The hunky dude who shows up to have sex with the widowed Elaina shows up with a sweater tied around his neck like he's a bully in a summer camp movie or something.

Scariest Moment: A character hides from a horde of zombies in the closet, only for them to appear on either side of him and grab him.

Weirdest Moment: One of the characters walks in on the nun conducting a Satanic ritual that involves lighting a liquid-filled bowl on fire, shrugs, and continues about his business.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 10; not including the one or two confused shootings shown in brief flashbacks to the massacre that took place 100 years ago.

1. Fausto is impaled by a sword that spontaneously appears through his torso.
2. Dark-Haired Woman is hanged offscreen.
3. Drunk is drowned.
4. Fisherman is strangled.
5. Blonde Woman dies offscreen.
6. Brunette is stabbed in the chest with a pitchfork.
7. Brown-Haired Guy is stabbed in the gut with a sickle.
8. Servant is stabbed in the shoulder with a sword.
9. Blue Shirt Guy is stabbed in the chest.
10. Mustache Guy is stabbed in the neck with a sword.

TL;DR: Karma - Enigma of Death is a baffling but effortlessly enjoyable affair.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: Talk About A Brazilian!

Warning: Images in this post are NSFW. I have decided against censoring female-presenting nipples, and though no other body parts some might consider inappropriate are shown, the ones that we see are in, shall we say, compromising positions.

Year: 1983

Director: Adnor Pitanga

Cast: Rossana Ghessa, Anthony Steffen, Rinaldo Gines

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

We've already covered a Brazilian slasher in Census Bloodbath with Shock: Evil Entertainment, but that came out in 1984, so Momentos de Prazer e Agonia (which translates to "Moments of Pleasure and Agony," though there is no official English title for the film), in addition to being our final slasher of 1983, joins the ranks of the many first entries from new countries that we've seen this year. By 1983, the slasher genre had permeated every territory enough that more filmmakers understandably wanted to get in on the fun (read: money), but director Adnor Pitanga's particular vision was to use the trappings of the genre to spice up what is otherwise a fairly rote softcore lesbian movie. 

Fairly rote means there's also a lot of sex with men.

A quick caveat. While I did manage to snag a subtitled copy of this movie, the English subtitles were extremely literal translations that didn't adjust the grammar whatsoever, so some of the exact details of the story were lost on me, considering I don't speak Portuguese (see Champion Dialogue for my favorite bit of wacky translation).

Momentos de Prazer e Agonia follows schoolteacher Marília (Rossana Ghessa) as she... I dunno, just kind of exists. She is a city gal from São Paulo who has moved to the remote town of Rio Bonito and started dating local construction boss Rodolfo (Anthony Steffen, a spaghetti Western mainstay who played Django in several of those early films). She has the opportunity to partake in a lot of same-sex experiences thanks to Rose (Ismênia Kreis), a student with a crush on her, and the sudden arrival of Renata (Fátima Leite), a former flame from the city.

However, after about 45 minutes of sex scenes, a mysterious killer begins bumping off the women one by one, with a lot more sex in between, don't even worry about it. This killer is so mysterious it's obviously Rodolfo before he even picks up a knife. 

You said it, dude.

Obviously, this film's primary objective is to show as much sex as possible. So it's a little weird how skittish it seems to be about the actual act. It can't seem to decide whether to discreetly fade to black on an erotic situation that's developing, or just lean in with jackhammer ferocity. These opposing instincts meet in one glorious scene where Marília is helping Rose shower (she's quite bad at it, apparently). The camera pans away demurely... over to a mirror, where you can still see everything.

Maybe the actual problem is that it's a lesbian film for straight men, and the sex acts in those types of films never have a direct relationship to anything two human beings actually do with one another (unless all lesbians kiss one another's knees underneath a waterfall and they just aren't telling me). Other than those silly moments peppered in, the sex is obviously pretty boring for someone not interested in getting their jollies out of them. The film is much better when it's being saucily exploitative, like the scene where a woman runs away from the killer so hard that her boobs come flying out of her shirt, then she just happens to fall into some mud, like this is a scene from a Scary Movie entry.

Also this might be the funniest image in any film from 1983.

Most of the sex and the banter leading into it are shot capably, if a little too harshly lit, which frankly doesn't help it be interesting. The film is at its most charming when it's being inept. Take the music, which can't even decide what instruments it wants to be played on, let alone how it should tonally match a scene. Most of the sex is underscored with entirely inappropriate upbeat jazz or Suspiria-esque whispers and moans, but the score really starts cooking with gas when it brings out the motif that sounds like a recorder harmonizing with a kazoo. Or in the film's two most important narrative moments, which are underscored with a bongo/monkey noises duet and a delicate train whistle/referee whistle arpeggio respectively.

The kills kind of ride that line between fun-bad and generically functional. The first kill is entirely offscreen, but the eventual body reveal shows that she has not been covered in stab wounds so much as graded with a red pen like an essay. And I must give the movie this. There is a lot of business with a log splitting machine early on, and I didn't dare to dream it would actually pay off, but friends - it does. The gore gag looks like a flesh-colored pillow being punctured bloodlessly, but still, it's delightful.

Oh, also, I suppose I should mention that there's a grotesque moment where a chicken is slaughtered, and let's just say that PETA probably wasn't monitoring movie sets in Brazil in the early 80's. It's... a lot.

But despite having a higher body count than the similarly sex-fueled Killing of the Flesh, Momentos de Prazer e Agonia is just not interested in being a slasher movie at all. And yet it's better than quite a few of the other entries from 1983. God, what a grueling year it has been.

Killer: Rodolfo (Anthony Steffen)

Final Girl: Marília (Rossanna Ghessa)

Best Kill: C'mon. The log splitter thing. You set it up. You pay it off. Even if you don't have the budget to make it real gross, it's by a long shot the best thing in the movie.

Sign of the Times: Renata rolls up in a car so angular, it would take a week to wash every square inch.

Scariest Moment: With ten minutes left in the movie, a woman starts undressing and I thought dear god, not another sex scene. 

Weirdest Moment: When Renata is smearing shampoo all over Marília's boobs in the shower (as you do), there's just a giant house plant sitting right there behind them. In the shower!

Champion Dialogue: "I've been thinking a lot lately about the direction that I have given this poor life of events of mine."

Body Count: 4

1. Rose is killed offscreen, presumably stabbed.
2. Renata is hacked with a machete.
3. Lucinha is slashed with a straight razor.
4. Rodolfo gets a log splitter right in the abdomen.

TL;DR: Momentos de Prazer e Agonia is a softcore slasher made with basic competence so go for it if you like lesbian sex, I guess.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1125

Census Bloodbath: Blame It On Rio

Year: 1984

Director: Jair Correia

Cast: Jurandir Abreu, Cláudia Alencar, Elias Andreato

Run Time: 1 hour 14 minutes

MPAA Rating: LOL no

Committing myself to watching every single slasher movie released in the 1980's has sure brought me to some dark corners of cinema history, and we're about to enter one more such corner today. I watched Shock: Diversão Diabólica, AKA Shock: Evil Entertainment, a Brazilian slasher movie for which I could find absolutely no subtitles. Even though I don't speak a lick of Portuguese, I will remind you of what I've said in my previous foreign slasher reviews: this is an exercise in slasher aesthetic and structure anyway - we all know the dialogue barely matters in these movies.

Don't worry, I've got this.

One thing I am completely unable to provide, however, is a particularly coherent plot synopsis or character names, but I'll give the bigger motions of the narrative a shot. According to several reviews I've seen online, the characters who are gathered at the music venue that is our setting are members of a band who are waiting for a van to come pick up their equipment. These reviews don't seem to mention why easily four of the main cast members are already having sex away from the main hall while the band is still performing, but perhaps their set was earlier in the evening. Who can tell.

Anyway, we have a very small platter of Meat, all told. After the first place-setting murder, there are just three couples left behind: Preppy Guy and Monologue Girl, who try to have sex but she turns him down and he falls immediately asleep for nearly the rest of the movie; Legwarmer Girl and Stripe Guy, who have a lot of sex and provide the movie its requisite nudity; and Scarf Lady and Beard Man, who are visibly older than the rest of them and eat sandwiches. That's about all I've got. There's also an unseen killer in black boots wandering around with a hankering to strangle, and there's our movie sorted!

Time to get down to business.

I want to remind you that you should take this review with a grain of salt, because maybe the script as written is a masterpiece character study or delectable Sirkian melodrama. But as a slasher film, it is deeply shitty. How does it fail me as a Census Bloodbath entry? Let me count the ways.

To start, the kills are underwhelming at best. I've seen my share of low budget slashers, and while I always get frustrated by films with an overreliance on cutaway gags that don't show the actual kill, those would have been far preferable to the bloodless, tedious stranglings delivered by our villain here. I admire that they found a cheap effect that would still allow an onscreen kill, but personally speaking I prefer at least a little splashing blood and knifeplay here and there. The only times knives are even a major presence in the film are in a weird red herring where a chef chops a hot dog in the first scene, and when Preppy Guy is framed for the death of his girlfriend by having a bloody blade placed in his hand. This somehow works despite the fact that, as you might be able to put together, she was strangled.

The villain could have almost been interesting or even iconic if not for this disappointing M.O. I like the way they've translated the Italian giallo trope of the black gloved killer into a black booted killer, and the amount of random shots of people's feet early on (I was beginning to wonder if Quentin Tarantino was guest director on certain scenes) start to make sense as his steel-tipped shoes start clicking menacingly through the frame. And there's this uncanny thing he does between killings where he sits onstage and starts riffing on the drums. Doing something so mundane and non-threatening in between violent murders is actually pretty creepy, but the kills are staged so laxly that it doesn't play quite right.

And then we have to contend with everything outside of the killer and his antics. Again, there was obviously an important element missing for this viewer, but the characters seemed especially shallow this time around. If they're not having sex, they're screeching at each other in panic. And there's a lot of screeching because at least sixty percent of the movie is our entire cast barricaded in one room debating what to do and not ever reaching a decision.

And the prettiest couple in the movie doesn't even have a sex scene, so I don't understand what we're doing here in the first place.

During the final third of the film, the director apparently decided he wanted the movie to have some style, and it does shake things up a bit at least. Some of the filmmaking decisions (like setting an entire kill sequence under an unmotivated strobe light effect) are dire, but some (like smash cutting to the killer's next victim's scared face every time he takes a step up the stairs toward her) are visually interesting to a degree I can't say I was expecting given the evidence of the rest of the film.

Or maybe the editor of the film just plain didn't know what they were doing. The longest and most exploitative sex scene is even more incoherent than the one that opens A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Drem Child, presenting random close-ups of pulsing flesh that are indistinguishable as human body parts and flagrantly cross the 180 degree line to boot.

I can see the much better movie this could have been standing on the sidelines and begging to be put into play. Unfortunately, almost none of Shock's best qualities end up on the screen for a satisfying amount of time. So I'm just going to have to pick up that rock I found this beneath and put it back where I found it, hoping nobody is unwise enough to follow my example.

Killer: We don't ever actually find out, and that's not because I couldn't get anybody's name down

Final Girl: Scarf Lady

Best Kill: A guy who was framed for being the killer is tied up, then the killer uses the very rope he's tied up with to garrote him.

Sign of the Times: Every single character's hair is exactly the same, regardless of age or gender.

Scariest Moment: If somehow you missed the title card, the poster, or any advertising, the first kill would be a pretty shocking surprise, because for the first twenty minutes this movie gives absolutely no indication that there's a killer lurking about.

Weirdest Moment: This girl who keeps pointlessly monologuing to her sleeping boyfriend leaves the room and starts monologuing to the killer instead.

Champion Dialogue: "Assassino! Assassino!" (I got that one)

Body Count: 7; including a rat who gets the most slasher-y death of anyone in the movie.

1. Boots Lady is garroted in a car.
2. Monologue Girl is lifted off the ground and strangled.
3. Preppy Boy is garroted with a rope.
4. Beard Man is garroted.
5. Legwarmer Girl is strangled.
6. Rat is stabbed with a butcher knife.
7. Stripe Guy is killed offscreen.

TL;DR: Shock: Evil Entertainment is not a movie I was able to fully review due to the language barrier, but if that was removed there's every chance I might have liked it even less.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1239