by I. Alexander Nash
Brazil is a country not typically known for their horror films. They do in fact have a fairly rich history for producing fright films and the like. What people commonly associate with Brazilian horror is the stellar Coffin Joe series. Coffin Joe is a diabolical mortician type character created by director/actor/writer José Mojica Marins. He starred in a few films focusing on the character of Coffin Joe himself and went on to become a horror and media icon for Brazil. He's been in movies, hosted tv shows and I wouldn't be surprised if he starred on a couple of lunch boxes as well. A horror icon that will be remembered for years and years to come. Trouble with all of this is, we aren't here to talk about Coffin Joe. Sadly we are here to talk about a lesser entry in the Brazilian horror market and even a hell of a lot lesser in the world market. God, do I wish we were talking about Joe because...well, there's actually information available on him. We are going to discuss a director who made a very small bloody splash in horror from 1989 to 1990, Fauzi Mansur.
When I went to do research on this guy I quickly discovered there is not much research to be done. As it turns out most any information on Mansur is predominately featured on websites in fucking Portuguese. Since I don't fucking speak Portuguese, and most of the world doesn't either, I will just be giving you the information as I see it, which isn't much. The main reason we're talking about Mansur is because he created two films that have been notorious over the years. Notorious for being incredibly rare and extremely gory. Notice I didn't say "good" in that sentence. From what I can gather from different resources Mansur was primarily a porn director over the years, with such winning entries in that genre as "O Inseto do Amor," "Sexo Animal," as well as "AIDS, Furor do Sexo Explícito." Swell sounding guy. Pretty sure he needs to be involved in Toy Story 5, but don't quote me on that as I don't want to end up on any more websites. I'm thinking Fauzi wanted to open up to a wider audience than something like "Sexo Animal" could bring him, so he took the next logical step into the horror field. He did so with the two films Ritual of Death and Satanic Attraction.
The way my attention was brought to these films was through early VHS bootleg catalog ordering. I was a huge fan of the work of horror author/reviewer/artist Chas. Balun. Balun had made mentioned of these two films several times through the years. His reviews were less than glowing on Mansur's films but he always made mention of the fact that they were gory as hell (or as Chas. would always put it "Certified Chunk Blowers"). Chas and I didn't always see eye to eye on some films, but without question Balun was not wrong about these. For years I tried to track these movies down; even at the point when movies became readily available on the internet, Mansur's cinema genocides were always elusive. Now that everything, and I do stress EVERYTHING, is available on the internet I finally was able to obtain my own copies of these sort of could pass as films. They were so not worth the wait. Kinda like waiting to get married before you plow your wife for the first time. You really should have just got that drunk weeping handjob from her sister at the wedding, cause it was going to happen years later anyway. Enough yacking about me and my crimes. Mansur!
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| Weren't you in The Horror Show with Lance Henriksen? |
The first thing you notice about Ritual of Death are the opening credits where the "Indians" are credited to the BSG company. So, apparently they had to rent some natives to show up in this shit. Ritual Of Death revolves around a local group of way off off off Broadway (considering it's Brazil I would say that's a little further away than the Lower Eastside) actors visiting a history lecture where they learn about how their rented indigenous people were all influenced by the Egyptian's and stole all their magic tricks like 12th century Cris Angels. They learn that there is an evil book containing all of these rituals because Mansur had recently seen Evil Dead. Brad...wait...this Brazilian dude who doesn't speak a lick of English is named Brad? You know how I know he speaks English like Borat? Simple, everyone is fucking dubbed. And dubbed like shit. Although I will say if this thing was subtitle it would be so much harder of a sit. So Brad...ahem...Brad is told by one of the head honchos named Jim...whatever. Jim tells fucking Brad that they need to steal this book so they can use the rituals in their new performance to make it more authentic. Listen, I've seen bits of their play and the only thing that's going to authenticate it might be some acting classes cause these twats act like giraffes fuck, awkwardly. Brad has a hallucination of this ritual performed and is approached by a man right out of a
René Magritte painting, who has melty goo spewing hands. After snapping back into reality, Brad steals the book and shit immediately hits their safety deficient wind machine. Jim and some casting couch bimbo play naked keep away with a severed goats head in a blood filed bathtub. And I'm assuming that has something to do with the ritual(?) It either that or they're both just huge Island of Death fans. Brad gets an intense craving for raw meat like he's Grant Grant from Slither, as well as a bunch of Frogs inhabiting his room obviously mistaking him for Ray Milland. One night Brad wakes from a cold sweat and starts to get an extreme case of pizza face that makes him melt and causes him to look like Brion James in the poster art.
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| Yeah I've seen The Fly too. |
This is where Ritual of Death disposes of a niceties and earns it's 10 on the vomit score board (I don't know how to read the numbers on it myself). During a dress rehearsal, Brad dons the outfit from Bloody Pit of Horror and nearly strangles his mistress. Attempted murder charges not withstanding, Brad runs off to begin his service in the Ritual of Death...which basically amounts to him walking around with a chain like George the Animal Steal and perpetrating several greasy murders. Which never really accounts for the part where he spews green foam like he's Warren from Class of Nuke'em High. See Jim wanted to bring his uncle (the for mentioned apple-less Magritte) and cult leader back from the dead. Apparently he needs a living body to inhabit, which never explains why Brad is turning people into Alpo left and right even doing a Fulci to Jim's face. Question, do eyeballs float? I guess it's best not to question physics in a Mansur film.
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| No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!! |
What we are all here for anyway are the not so elaborate yet visceral killings. The murder count: we have Jim's eyes being turned into bath time buddies; a stabbing where she is inexplicably run over by a train wheel; an attempted and botched knife deep throating; a girl eviscerated by a claw hammer; a bloodless chain choking; a fake out of being ground up by the wind machine but then run over and bisected by it only then to have the next character have acid thrown in his face and then cut in half by the wind machine; and a bevy of zombie type bodies poly-bagged like Spider-Man issue 1. The kills in this movie are where it's at. It certainly isn't craftsmanship or the white goo that pours out of Brad's head at the drop of a severed hand. I just won't pay to see white goo now. I can make my own white goo, there's no need in spending hard earned dollars on it. The kills are the star and the kills alone. This is not cinema as art but cinema as commerce. I don't mind it too much either. It may be uneven and fucked up as a solid piece of film making, but can be entirely enjoyable as an exploitation shit fest. Ignore the story and ignore the acting. It's kinda like watching
Romano Scavolini's Nightmare. You're there to see some blood, tits and the occasional bit of pig guts. This shit delivers hand over fist...but still manages to be a incredibly long watch. Totally lacking in any socially redeeming value.
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| Does this make me look fat? |
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| Fauzi Mansur has to be a huge Venom fan. |
The next movie Fauzi (or Fozzie Bear if you're a Furry) did for the horror genre is a lovely bit of family entertainment named Satanic Attraction. This movie has even less of a distinguishable plot than Ritual of Death. I think maybe somebody's word processor got the first Black Sabbath and Slayer albums spilled on it before finally printing out a mess of a script complete with sprocket holes. We open with a bunch of random shots of people doing blood rituals in goat masks only to reveal little blonde Aryan children locking bloody wrists. We cut to years later where a radio DJ recites the story of a mad slasher killing random people for their blood to resurrect his dead sister that he truly wants to fuck. Wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what's happening in the film. A guy (who must have thought he was in an Argento film due to his black leather gloves and suit) runs around dismantling people in creative ways so that his deceased love may live again, all the while the dumbest blonde (even dumber than Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Billy Zabka combined) DJ improvs the exact same story over the open waves...why isn't she immediately arrested? Sure, the cops eventually interview her, but she has an alibi. Still, alibi or not, if this bitch has all the details without being prompted you arrest that ass. No, they just immediately buy into this bullshit psychic business, plus they're just happy people are listening to the radio again(?) Shit her husband turns up dead halfway through the movie! Why is this bitch not in cuffs? They arrested Chong simply for owning that one bong...making factory.
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| Which came first, the Bava or the egg? |
DJ Dumb Maus tends to have tons of dreams about some lady in rubber corpse makeup stalking her, but that's okay as it actually is a character running around in rubber corpse makeup. So, at least that bit of shittiness pays off for them. The rubber rotter is pretending to be the guy who's doing the killings sister to encourage him...or something. This movie is vague as shit. Questions are never answered. Mysticism is thrown around at the drop of a hat to explain away all these things but is never explained itself. Hell even their big reveal at the end isn't a big reveal as you can't differentiate one person's face from another. But I guess if you need a mastermind fingered here than I'll tell you...Oh Hi it's you again Brad. This one guy is doing the killings cause fucking Brad tricked him into doing it. There that's all I fucking know. I'm not trying to withhold information here, I simply don't have it. I mean why would they have to trick this guy into doing the killings when he's in this murder cult anyway? And why the hell does the murderer disappear at the end when he dies!?! We just watch him dissolve out like he's Teddy Duchamp. Then some pregnant reporter has twins who I assume will grow up to wanna fuck each other like that dark episode of the Suite Life with Zak and Cody. It's not a whodunit as much as it is a whydunit which I've never encountered personally. It just keeps going around in circles pointing the blame and reasons in different directions and at the end of the day the answer is the answer to every question that this sick world produces: Satan.
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| You've got red on you. |
The real satanic attraction here are the copious amounts of blood and entrails that are spilled all in the name of Love, Incest Style shana na na na: we have a girl stabbed and then bled into a bucket (don't forget her hacked of foot which is feed to a lion); the ol' razor blade in your bar of soap gag and then split in the head like Crazy Fat Ethel's sister's boyfriend; taking a page out of Friday the 13th part 2's playbook (which was Mario Bava's playbook to begin with) he gives the couple the two for one spear special; a dead body that gets the Miike foot treatment; eviscerated in a hammock only for her pig guts to get dirty with sand yuck; a fancy decapitation; stabbed through a door; neck harpooned; and my personal favorite pick axe in the My Bloody Valentine. You so get your moneys worth on the kills with this one. They are always bloody and prevalent. Trouble is you have to sit through an nearly 120 minutes of dumb cop/dj/naval officer(?) talk to get there. Fauzi may be shit with actors, although it is hard to direct someone whose talking with a cock not in their mouth, but he sure has a way of really throwing the blood around and making it somewhat interesting.
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| I ain't got no bod...yes I do it's right there. |
These are truthfully bad movies, but they are so much fucking fun. You don't have to pay attention the entire time. Christ I would question your sanity if you did. These are the kinds of movies that made 80's horror great. You could ignore it and pick the gist of it right back up. If you didn't, it didn't matter as there was plenty to view anyway. What spells the death of horror cinema is shaky lost footage found shit with a creepy kid that has a cgi altered giant black mouth and eyes. You watch them once and forget them. With something like the Fazui Mansur movies they do warrant repeat viewing if only to see slaughter house leftovers fly at your face. The definition of a wet horror movie. Fauzi returned to porn and never has made another horror film. Sorry Fauzi I'd prefer seeing blood from you as apposed to semen.
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| Philip Nutman 1963-2013 |
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| Chas. Balun 1948-2009 |
The world will be truly dumber without them.
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