Up until Awakening Of The Beast, the films of José Mojica Marins had been weird, yet still vaguely accessible, but this one was completely baffling—a surreal, drug-fuelled experience full of bizarre imagery that rapidly outstayed its welcome.
The film opens with a panel of experts, led by Dr. Sérgio, discussing cases of drug use, the first of which involves a woman injecting drugs into her foot (a horrible scene for anyone with a phobia of needles), before stripping in front of a group of leering men and squatting over a chamber pot; it's a scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film by being totally incomprehensible. After this, things only get even more baffling.
The next case sees a young woman taken to a room full of hippy men who are playing musical instruments and smoking weed; the girl takes a puff from a joint, climbs through a window, stands on a table, and—one-by-one—lets each man put his head up her skirt. One of them removes her panties, and then they all laugh and begin to repeatedly chant 'babaloo-aye!', after which the girl exclaims 'my world is multi coloured'. The men all hold up their index finger, start whistling, and poke her in the nether regions. Then a man dressed as Moses appears and sticks his wooden staff between her legs, killing her in the process. Confused? You will be!
Several more cases of drug use are discussed, all of which are thoroughly bizarre and involve women getting nekkid, after which Dr. Sérgio describes an experiment he has carried out on four drug addicts in order to study the effects of LSD. While focusing on a poster of Brazilian horror icon Zé do Caixão (AKA Coffin Joe), the subjects slip into a gaudy, nightmarish hallucinatory world—the film's only colour sequence—where Zé conjures up some freakish imagery, including a spider with a woman's head, people in weird masks, a strange creature in a bush that breathes smoke, a human staircase, and buttocks with faces painted on them (I kid you not!). This psychedelic scene goes on and on and on and on, and proves surprisingly boring.
Finally, the film returns to the panel of experts, as Dr. Sérgio explains to his colleagues that he didn't give his human guinea pigs LSD: the injections were of distilled water, and the hallucinations were self-induced, thereby proving the theory that drugs are an excuse to release the instinct in a human being, and that if someone commits a crime whilst under the influence it is because their mind was already sick. In short, the drugs aren't bad it's the people who are bad. It's an abstruse message befitting of a film that is completely bewildering all the way through.
The film opens with a panel of experts, led by Dr. Sérgio, discussing cases of drug use, the first of which involves a woman injecting drugs into her foot (a horrible scene for anyone with a phobia of needles), before stripping in front of a group of leering men and squatting over a chamber pot; it's a scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film by being totally incomprehensible. After this, things only get even more baffling.
The next case sees a young woman taken to a room full of hippy men who are playing musical instruments and smoking weed; the girl takes a puff from a joint, climbs through a window, stands on a table, and—one-by-one—lets each man put his head up her skirt. One of them removes her panties, and then they all laugh and begin to repeatedly chant 'babaloo-aye!', after which the girl exclaims 'my world is multi coloured'. The men all hold up their index finger, start whistling, and poke her in the nether regions. Then a man dressed as Moses appears and sticks his wooden staff between her legs, killing her in the process. Confused? You will be!
Several more cases of drug use are discussed, all of which are thoroughly bizarre and involve women getting nekkid, after which Dr. Sérgio describes an experiment he has carried out on four drug addicts in order to study the effects of LSD. While focusing on a poster of Brazilian horror icon Zé do Caixão (AKA Coffin Joe), the subjects slip into a gaudy, nightmarish hallucinatory world—the film's only colour sequence—where Zé conjures up some freakish imagery, including a spider with a woman's head, people in weird masks, a strange creature in a bush that breathes smoke, a human staircase, and buttocks with faces painted on them (I kid you not!). This psychedelic scene goes on and on and on and on, and proves surprisingly boring.
Finally, the film returns to the panel of experts, as Dr. Sérgio explains to his colleagues that he didn't give his human guinea pigs LSD: the injections were of distilled water, and the hallucinations were self-induced, thereby proving the theory that drugs are an excuse to release the instinct in a human being, and that if someone commits a crime whilst under the influence it is because their mind was already sick. In short, the drugs aren't bad it's the people who are bad. It's an abstruse message befitting of a film that is completely bewildering all the way through.