Brazilian exploitation king, Jose Mojica Marins returned to the big screen in his most personal film, AWAKENING OF THE BEAST. This 1969 film never got a legitimate theatrical release, however, because it so full of debauchery, drug use, and anti-religious imagery that it was banned by the Brazilian government for twenty years. AWAKENING OF THE BEAST officially got it’s premiere at a 1986 film festival in Rio De Janero. Until Fantoma released these Coffin Joe films on DVD (through Image), the only way to view these films is by gray market VHS releases.

AWAKENING OF THE BEAST opens with a series of vignettes that display the sexual perversion and drug use of a decaying culture. These sequences are all detailed by psychiatrist Dr. Sergio on the set of a live TV talk show. Dr. Sergio concludes that there is a connection between perversion and evil, and that drugs merely act as a conduit for the users’ dark side to emerge. To prove his hypothesis, Dr. Sergio assigns a reporter the task of locating four subjects (from different social classes) to undergo LSD experimentation. When the four subjects are found (drug addicts showcased earlier from the vignettes), Dr. Sergio meets them and explains the parameters of the experiment. They are to receive an injection of LSD and must sit through a screening of a Coffin Joe film! The LSD provides the gateway for each of these individuals to enter the hellish world of Coffin Joe, who forces them to face that which they fear most. When the experiment is over, the subjects perceptions are altered for the better. That’s when Dr. Sergio reveals his results on national TV show--the LSD he used was fake!

After watching AWAKENING OF THE BEAST, frankly it’s easy to see why it was banned--it has something to offend everyone. Except for full frontal female nudity, there is no graphic sex. And this is clearly Jose Mojica Marins’ least violent movie. There are no real deaths, and only one bloody hallucinogenic scene in the entire movie. What Jose Mojica Marin does use quite effectively is the power of suggestion. Sexual acts are merely teased, but the way Marin films them is suggestive to the extreme; the audience completes the imagery in their mind and the sexual aspects become more perverted than a porno film. Marins allows the camera to focus on the arms of the drug users injecting long syringes very slowly into their own arms. Then he candidly shows a woman crapping into a pot, a socialite watch as her daughter is molested by the butler, an absurd casting couch meeting between a foxy virgin and a fat cat executive, and a bit about a woman who willingly takes a wooden tree branch inside her (if you know what I mean). Though nothing explicit is shown in all these sequences, the effect is unsettling.

While many might claim that Jose Mojica Marins just tries to use shock value to drive his films, in AWAKENING OF THE BEAST he proves his artistic merit. The first half of the film is comprised of hallucinogenic vignettes filmed in such a surreal manner that conjures images of David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD. Plot and narrative structure go out the window to make room for artistic excess. Marins shows his knowledge of filmmaking with many carefully composed black & white images. In true artistic fashion, the director injects color to the picture during the Coffin Joe trip-out conclusion. These color scenes are perfectly rendered with psychedelic vivid color tones and art deco production design, even more outrageous than the opening of THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES.

Another reason why AWAKENING OF THE BEAST was so reviled by the Brazilian government is because Jose Mojica Marins makes several subtle statements about contemporary society and even religion. He takes cheap shots at the drug scene and sexual revolution, and makes the authorities look pretty helpless to stop all the shenanigans. In the big anti-Christian moment of the movie, a hippie dressed as Jesus does something really nasty with a staff to a drug-addled, sex crazed woman. AWAKENING OF THE BEAST is less about Coffin Joe and more about what is wrong in society. Marins appears in the film as himself, defending his position in a court room--the charms of Jose Mojica Marins win over those on the jury, who then vote to acquit him. Later Marins returns in the tripped-out finale as Coffin Joe. But the whole idea about Marins playing himself in AWAKENING OF THE BEAST is sheer genius. In the final moments of the film, Marin gets to mug for the camera Jackie Chan-style and make his final political statement.

-  Victor Bryant