Trilogia de Terror

José Mojica Marins directed one of the stories in Brazilian anthology Trilogy of Terror, so I was expecting it to be a very strange film, but I never thought for a minute that Marins' contribution would be the story that makes most sense.

The first tale is The Deal, by director Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias, but I really don't know the deal is with this one - I haven't the slightest clue what it was about. A man acts like a chimpanzee and pulls funny faces. There are topless women with beards. Three men adjust their hats at the same time. A woman laughs like possessed Linda from The Evil Dead and throws a chicken. Someone gets stabbed. People dance in a cave. And a guy wears a crown of thorns. If I could swear on IMDb, this review would be full of expletives. 0/10 for this one.

Luiz Sérgio Person directs the second story, Procession of the Dead, which isn't much better, but is a bit shorter, so we should count our blessings: a young boy, Quinzinho, is in the mountain trapping birds when he discovers a corpse clutching a machine gun. The locals are concerned that the body is related to stories of armed ghosts that haunt the mines at night. The boy's father goes to the mine to show how wrong they are, but bumps into the gun-toting spooks, who smash in his chest. At the end of this tale, Quinzinho returns to where he found the body, where a man gives the lad a loaded machine gun to fire. Your guess is as good as mine... 1/10 for the second segment.

Marins directs the final story, Macabre Nightmare, which deals with a man, Claudio, who is plagued by terrifying dreams of freaky faces and creepy crawlies, and who is scared that he will be buried alive. When Claudio and his fiancée Rosana go to the park, they are attacked by a gang of deformed criminals: Rosana is gang raped and Claudio is left for dead. After Claudio's funeral, Rosana notices something that makes her convinced that Claudio has been buried alive, just as he feared. The mourners rush back to the grave and dig up the coffin, only to find that Claudio has died in terror trying to claw his way out of his coffin. A macumba ritual in which an old dude eats bugs and worms and a man removing women's clothes with a whip is classic Marins weirdness, and the final shot of Claudio's face with bulging bloodied eyes is wonderfully gruesome. 6.5/10 for Marins' tale.

Average score: 2.5/10, generously rounded up to 3 for IMDb.

Presented by Brazilian film director/actor José Mojica Marins, the film consists of 3 stories adapted from the Brazilian TV series Além, Muito Além do Além (Beyond, Much Beyond the Beyond).

The Good Stor(ies): Procession of Dead-After playing around a remote mine, a villager uncovers the desiccated corpse of a soldier from years ago which starts to spread rumors through town of a deadly figure haunting the area. This was a generally fun segment that has quite a lot to like about it. The classic setup here involves the villager setting up the discovery of the body in a remote part of the countryside which manages to bring about some atmospheric scenes of the villagers incurring the wrath of the ghostly army patrolling the area. This offers up some fantastic elements here and has a generally classic setup, but it gets undone by some rushed antics at the end where it seems to just conclude rather than build to a logical conclusion. It's really the main issue here and thankfully isn't that bad of one.

Macabre Nightmare-Plagued by vivid and disturbing nightmares, a man with the constant fear of being buried alive manages to inadvertently trigger the incident into reality and must try to save face before time runs out. This was a spectacular segment that has quite a lot to like about it. The central setup is really the only downgrade here since it's all pretty much a given what's going to happen due to the opening setup giving away what's going to happen here. That doesn't change the fact that, by being the one with the most straightforward and clear-cut story that it can go through a series of fantastic setpieces emphasizing that particular phobia, from the healing ceremony he witnesses involving people being whipped, the traumatic rape that eventually triggers everything, and the harrowing finale seeing it come to fruition. It's all fun enough and has enough of a life to it that it really does become the highlight here and serves the film well.

The Bad Stor(ies): The Deal-Living in a small village, a woman becomes increasingly concerned about the behavior of her daughter and turns to a local for help in fixing it only to have her hands full when she realizes what's really going on. This was absolutely nonsensical and a general waste of time. The storyline here is about as good as you can make out what happens since it's next to impossible to decipher what's going on with long spells of the film going by without explaining anything that happens. The excessively overlong running time for something like this is completely unnecessary as the excessive running time is mostly made out by the use of way too many characters involved here which makes it nearly impossible to tell what's going on or being far more concerned with the outlandish visuals present which are quite wild admittedly. Offering up scenes of topless bearded women, characters with animalistic tendencies, or other such fare, this is admittedly bizarre and offbeat but it's not genre-related enough to be of much use here.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Nudity, Language, and a Rape scene.

Anthology movie with independent segments by three great Brazilian filmmakers: Ozualdo Candeias (director of The Margin and of Bloody Hunt), Luiz Sérgio Person (director of Case of the Naves Brothers and of São Paulo Incorporated) and José Mojica Marins (author of Coffin Joe Trilogy, but my favourite among his movies are The Hellish Flesh and The Bloody Exorcism).

The first segment, "The agreement", directed by Candeias, has a sophisticated cinematography by Peter Overbeck (the camera alternating which actor or extra it follows in the very beginning, and the transition from men to pigs are some examples of interesting cinematography and edition) and a quite atmospheric beginning: it showed various characters in unclear (what made it confusing since the first moment) and often discomfortable situations, it was almost silent with very little dialogue, soundtrack was dissonant, and there was a sharp opposition between the fear of the nuns and the mockery of the leader of the hidden cult. The actor who portrayed the possessed priest in trance has a quite impressive body work and performance! However, the film becomes increasingly bizarre and even nonsense, changing a lot the mood and never following a precise plot or proceeding to a proper ending. The pact with the "lord of the deepness" happens in a cave where several minions of him appearing or disappearing and, just like him, having an androginous or not gender-normative appearance or behaviour. Then, the film moves to Western genre (striking in the events, cinematography and soundtrack), but the gunslingers have choreographed team moves as if it were a cartoon. The film would alternate continuously every narrative style or the characters involved. There are Jesus, a mad woman who laughs, a hunt for sex and kidnappings, a confusing relationship between mother, daughter, her suitor and the hired gunslingers. What the hell was that dance? The short film by Candeias started as promising but turns out to be frustrating and, besides that, was never a horror movie. It had the chance to be a nice fantasy Western but in the end was just a not satisfying nonsense experimental exercise. For the cinematic merits which existed among the crazyness, I would give it 6.

The second segment, "Procession of the dead", directed by Person and starred by Lima Duarte, is by far the best of the three. It mixes interestingly different genres: psychological or supernatural thriller, police flick, political movie (under military dictatorship, it is important to highlight), and even musical. I would give it 8.

The last segment, "Macabre nightmare", by Mojica, brings in the beginning an experiment on footage and on edition, in a very typical trait of his filmography. Then, there is a frentic scene of what would be a possession cult to Exu orisha in order to shock the spectators. Soon it is mixed with Sadistic sexploitation. Further in the short film, there is a disgusting vicious violent misogynous exploitation scene, seasoned with extras' ugliness. Everything is very flat, with dubious taste and not great artistic worth. Acting is also much worse than in the previous segments. To resume, it is a minor piece in Mojica's filmography and the worst of this anthology motion picture. I would give it 5.