Alternate title: O Ritual dos Sádicos.
English title: Awakening of the Beast.
One or more gangs are kidnapping young women and administering drugs to them in order to make them perform sex acts for perverted men. Concurrently, an assembly of intellectuals debate the effects of drugs.
A blend of Reefer Madness and Corman's The Trip, this fits neatly in the exploitation category, wherein a theme is exploited for its shock appeal rather than being legitimately explored into its causes and consequences. Well, anyway, it was voted one of the best 100 Brazilian films, go figure. And, God knows, it might actually be, Brazilian films being so bad in their majority... This film marks a contrast with the earlier work of its diretor. The taste for shocking imagery is still present, and here there is the extra bonus of some impressive color cinematography in the hallucination sequences, but the raw power of those earlier works, which, perhaps unwittingly, dissected the very core of Brazilian machismo ideology, is gone, and the Coffin Joe character is replaced by its maker-as-character, now a celebrity of sorts.
Rating: 31
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