O Homem que Desafiou o Diabo (2007)

Synopsis: Zé Araújo is a traveling salesman and a womanizer. He has sex with the store owner's daughter and is obliged to marry her. She is a ballbreaker. One day he gets tired and gets away, forging himself a new identity as Ojuara. He meets an old man who keeps a chest full of gold coins in his house half of which he says belongs to the devil; the latter appears and Ojuara fights him. The old man dies and Ojuara buries the chest intending to come back for it. He then meets a prostitute who is being harassed by a strong man. Ojuara fights him too. Ojuara goes to the circus, where he falls in love with the ballerina. Ojuara leaves for a castle in which a witch and her hunchback servant live. The witch says Ojuara may conjure up anyone he pleases, so he chooses the ballerina; they have sex. The second night belongs to the witch; she is said to have a 'vagina dentata', so Ojuara inserts a rapadura (a kind of Brazilian candy bar) in her and flees. Ojuara tames a bull for a local farmer and is offered her daughter to marry; she loves another guy so Ojuara declines. He meets a violent outlaw who has been spreading terror in the region with his killings; he turns out to be a kid from the town where he got married several years before so the two don't fight; instead they go to a brothel where they meet the farmer's daughter -- her beloved turned out to be impotent so she fled to be a prostitute; they also meet the other prostitute who was being bullied in the other brothel. Ojuara marries the latter and they head to a mythical land where the rivers are said to be made of milk and the mountains of sugar. The devil catches up with them and kills his pregnant wife. He claims his gold, Ojuara fights him and wins.

Appraisal: Awful. Nothing against the text per se, which is inspired in the novel "As Pelejas de Ojuara" (Ojuara's Fights), by Nei Leandro de Castro (1st ed. 1986). It's just that the actual realization in filmic form is unsavorily incompetent.

Rating: 15