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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as his first film, June 3, 2004
Director Jose Mojica Marins took Brazil by storm with the 1963 release of "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul," the first entry in what would soon become known as the Coffin Joe franchise. It may be quite surprising that such a low budget black and white film made in Brazil forty years ago would merit a DVD release, but when you watch the movie, you will readily agree that there is something special about Marins's vision. After the release of this movie, the Brazilian director churned out numerous sequels that ultimately led to his becoming a pop culture icon in his native land. Marins often turned up in public dressed in the trademark Coffin Joe attire: a black cape, a black top hat, and hook-like fingernails about three inches long (the fingernails are real, by the way, as an interview with Marins confirms). Genre fans in the United States picked up on the Coffin Joe craze and sought out hard to find copies of his films until an American video company released them here few years ago. Now we can watch the horror that is Coffin Joe on DVD. Ain't technology grand?"Awakening of the Beast" came out in 1969 and is even weirder than the original Coffin Joe film. The movie is sort of a movie within a movie, as director Jose Mojica Marins appears on a Brazilian talk show and takes part in an interview to tell the world about Coffin Joe and his personal philosophy. Citizens get to stand up and take their anger out on Marins, lambasting him for his atheistic and nihilistic attitudes. The private interview sequences between the director and a couple of noted psychologists are more interesting. The three talk about drugs and its effects on the country's youth. Between each chat session we see a black and white depiction of people abusing narcotics and then engaging in outrageous behavior. Marins's film is an obvious attempt to link drug use with social and sexual depravity. He provides scene after scene as evidence to prove this thesis. But is it a provocative argument? In a way, yes, but there are plenty of films much more effective in their depiction of the dark side of drugs. "Requiem for a Dream" works wonders with this theme without being as obtusely dense or just plain odd as Marins's production. "Awakening of the Beast" goes right for your throat, attempting to smother you with pure shock value scenery. What's with that dance at the beginning of the film, where a woman gyrates crazily as a group of sweaty men leer eerily? And the scene in the bathroom shortly thereafter? There's a group of strange hippies running their hands over a girl while whistling the theme to "The Bridge Over the River Kwai." Another woman shows up for a job interview as a maid only to fall prey to the grasping hands of the sweaty owner of the employment agency. The last ten or twenty minutes is the real reason you should watch the movie. Coffin Joe, absent up until this time, finally makes an appearance in a nightmarish sequence fueled by a collective LSD trip. This part of the movie is in color and contains some of the most disturbing images of the entire film. You would have to see it to believe it, but trust me when I tell you it's some of the oddest stuff ever caught on camera. None of this makes much sense, but that's beside the point. The original didn't make sense either when taken as a whole, so why start complaining now? While I enjoyed some of the inventive scenes Marins came up with, I thought "Awakening of the Beast" was a poor successor to "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul." That movie, the first to feature Coffin Joe, was a masterpiece of low budget black and white cinema. Every frame contained some clever item the director whipped up on the spot because he didn't have the funds to go out and buy props. It was in that film that Marins glued glitter directly on the negative to create a creepy looking aura around the spirit of a deceased man. You just don't get the same sort of wildly inventive stuff in this movie. "Awakening of the Beast" is wacky, no doubt about that. It just contains a lot of things I'm not particularly looking for in a Marins's film. Even worse, Coffin Joe himself doesn't even show up that much, making a very short appearance at the beginning of the film and then not reappearing until the very end. The DVD comes with several trailers for a couple of other Coffin Joe films and a short interview with Jose Mojica Marins today. He's older, but he's still got those creepy looking fingernails. In the interview, he discusses how he came up with the idea for the movie and how difficult it was to get it released in Brazil in the late 1960s. Apparently, the director witnessed a cop beating up a drug-addled woman on the street one day, which gave him the impetus to create "Awakening of the Beast." When he finished the movie, the military dictatorship in Brazil outright banned the film. It took nearly twenty years before the film finally played in a theater. Marins seems quite pleased with his reputation, as well he should based on his first couple of films. This one, though, is quite different and not as interesting. It would be, however, a good film to pop in the player when your uptight friends turn up for a visit.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Are you ready for this trip, man?, January 29, 2007
Jose Marins, Ze de Caixao in Brazil, and Coffin Joe to us, makes surreal, disturbing, wacky films, and is a genuine indie filmmaker. This film, the 3rd Coffin Joe opus, is out of left field, and is almost experimental in its near plotless surreal collection of druggie imagery and sexual weirdness. Marins deserves far more attention as a filmmaker than he gets, for he is a true original. I don't quite know what to make of this film, but i enjoyed watching it. The plot has something to do with a doctor's theories on drugs and sexual perversity, and involves experiments on junkies. I think, anyway. Marins appears as Coffin Joe and as Marins the director, giving this film a self-referential element that was new when this film was made. Great Brazilian tropicalia soundtrack, akin to the sounds of Os Mutantes and other way out groups, this is a one of a kind piece of film. Not for everybody's tastes, but for fans of eccentric film, a must.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Turn on tune in and drop out, Brazilian Style, September 25, 2005
Awakening of the Beast differs from the first two Coffin Joe movies as it's done more in a "shockumentary" style, sort of a portrayal of the downfall of Brazilian society due to drugs and the resulting perversions of such activity. OK, now that I've tried to sound semi-intelligent this is one weird flick, and while it's not in the same vein as his first two films it's still strangely appealing in its own bizarre way. It's part "panel discussion" and part horror flick and part acid trip. Xe Do Caixao (Coffin Joe) is sort of "on trial" on TV because of implications that his movies and comics are perverting society. Sound familiar? And this was made in 1969, so not much has changed in the world. Complete with the usual bizarre imagery (look for the butt-heads) and and an experiment with 4 "addicts" and doses of LSD make this one compelling but oddball film, and if you enjoy Marins' other flicks you'll be sure to like this as well. I look forward to getting my mitts on other releases by this wacko when they become available. I hope.
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