A Massacre By Ritual: Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá (2020)

Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá (AKA Skull: The Mask) (Brazil, 2020)
Rating: ***

Starring: David Wendefilm, Tristan Aronovich, Thiago Carvalho

From tame strangle-a-thons like Shock: Diversao Diabolica (1984) to gory splatterfests like The Ritual of Death (1990) and Satanic Attraction (1990), Brazil has its fair and fun share of slasher flicks throughout the years and it appears we're given the good grace of another worthy modern entry going by Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá (2020), a supernatural slasher neo-noir!

Splitting its focus throughout many plot threads including a cop drama, a prophecy thriller and a gory monster/slasher hybrid, Skull opens with a prayer that summons Anhangá, a being depicted here as the murderous servant of the pre-Columbian god Tahawantinsupay. We then shift our attention to a prologue set in the 1940s Amazon, where a dude in a supervillain get-up beats and murders his way to retrieve a dangerous artifact known as the Mask of Anhangá, which his Nazi clients proceed to use in a military experiment involving a religious ritual. Something went wrong and the scene ends up with one guy on fire, another gutted, and another having his head explode.

Flashforward to the present and an archeological dig uncovers the Mask of Anhangá once again, now brought to São Paulo, Brazil where Tack Waelder, the shady head of a foreign company, plans on secretly using its powers for his own gains. However, before he could get his hands on the item, the mask somehow finds a way to murder a few people before eventually possessing a worthy body, unleashing Anhangá and its insatiable bloodlust under the guide of its god.

Caught in this trail of murder and mayhem is one Manco Ramirez, a simple laborer whose family happens to belong in a long line of protectors who battled and stopped Anhangá from unleashing his god to our world. With the help of his own father's mummified severed hand that directs the demon's whereabouts and the Femur of Tahawantinsupay, a blunt weapon that can harm the god's servant, he prepares himself to honor his family's duty and fight a good fight against Anhangá, even if it means his own demise.

In the midst of this, Beatriz Obdias, a detective working on a missing children’s case, sees herself looking into the increasingly bizarre and gruesome murder spree now plaguing São Paulo. Complicating this matter, unfortunately, is Waelder forcing her to join him in getting the mask back and eliminate some troublesome individuals in the way, blackmailing her with a few skeletons in her closet and promises of keeping quiet about them should she accept his proposition. With the killings getting more visceral by the day, she may have no choice but to agree with the offer, but at what cost?

A tad overambitious with the number of story lines intertwining, Skull occasionally feels like two to three different kinds of movies playing all at once, thinly interconnected through varying plot points that do little to help with the overall hodge-podged tone and pacing. One moment we're looking into a cop's dark past involving framing children for murder, the next has us watching a masked slasher raid a drug house to slice its occupants into pieces. That said, the film is still worth its while by being chaotically fun with its slasher/monster attacks, cheesy badassery and misplaced seriousness, all the working traits of a good B-grade horror and a noir crime drama that aren't far off from the ones you would encounter in old pulp fictions and EC horror comics given they have the chance to be written this exploitative and messy.

Delivering greatly a barrage of awesome practical and visual effects on screen despite its limited budget, Skull has the blessing to be full of splatter in its purest form whenever it dives into the slasher segments; with a hulking man-monster that looks like a blood-soaked Hatchet (2006)'s Victor Crowley in a skull mask, armed with wriggling tentacles that wields its bladed weapon and unleashed at an unsuspecting city, you can bet that blood flows like rivers and chest cavities are pried open in pure carnal display in what are perhaps this movie's strongest and most macabre scenes. Highlights would include a dance bar getting the nasty case of a spree killing and a priest, drawing a hidden sword from a crucifix, dueling our masked slasher to the death.

Clashing urban decay with gore-filled mysticism, Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá (2020) earned its title from the Chattanooga Film Festival as an "insane midnighter" for just how manically enjoyable it is, so long as you don't mind limping through a conjoined serving of evil businessmen being shallowly evil and tidbits of action drama, slow cooked for an attempt for originality. It doesn't always work, but the final product has heart. One that's ripped out of a fresh body just for our grim sense of entertainment which I wholly appreciate!

Bodycount:

1 male decapitated with a crescent blade

1 male had his throat cut with a crescent blade

1 male caught on fire

1 male knifed on the gut, disemboweled

1 male had his dead explode

1 female had her chest cavity pried open

1 female murdered offscreen

1 male had his chest cavity pried open

1 female had her chest sliced open with a window shard

1 male strangled with a victim's innards

1 male had his throat ripped open

1 male gets a machete hacked and repeatedly pounded into his side

1 male had his face sliced with a machete

1 girl seen shot dead

1 male hacked on the head with a machete, face peeled

1 female gets a machete to the neck

1 female gutted with a machete

1 male hacked on the head with a machete, spine torn out

1 female gets a spine stabbed into her forehead

1 male hacked on the gut with a machete

2 males and 1 female seen murdered

1 male crushed with a statue, bled to death

1 male had his head stomped on

1 male stabbed through with a wooden plank, heart torn out

1 male shot on the face with a shotgun

1 male shot on the head

Total: 28

A House of Mildew and Monsters: The Flaying (2012)

The Flaying (El Bosque De Los Sometidos) (Argentina, 2012)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Olivia Tykocki, Juan Sebastian Alvarez Windey, Celeste Subatin

My first Argentinian horror outing! This ought to be fun! (Hopefully.)

Taking place in the 70s, four teens were driving across rural Argentina on their way to an illegal car race when, after camping out for the night, they wander off one morning to explore the backwoods and discover an abandoned castle. Curiosity draws them inside the derelict, only to find living in there is a strange group of misshapen men who tortures and murders anyone unfortunate enough to enter their ruined home.

Clocking for only 76 minutes, The Flaying is an odd and trippy love letter to psychedelic 70s horror, preferably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Bava/Argento Italian gialli. It isn't much of a movie with a strong plot per se but I find it more of a practice of nightmare horror as the further the story goes, the more it shifts away from the mundane to something bat-shit insane and confusingly fantastical.

This said, there's minimal dialogue to go around, most of it taking place at the first 50 minutes where the movie tries to build itself up like your usual countryside slasher flick. Relationships were established, characters get somewhat developed, and a choking and impending tone starts to linger about, though the repetitive interjection of nature shots and "walking scenes" for padding made the lack of scripting and budget a bit more obvious and distracting. Thankfully, after the discovery of the castle and one of the cast was found wheezing from something (a strong emphasis on "something"), The Flaying found a way to use these limitations to the story's advantage and the result is near effective.

The last act is where the film finally got to the horror elements and it is unsettling; everything by this point are mostly done through body language and The Flaying sort of becomes this small yet strongly expressive piece of Hell. Nothing makes sense apart from pain and torment, and the lack of explanation to where the castle's freaky inhabitants came from and why they are doing this just works in a nightmare logic sense. The make-up used for these demented residents are wonderfully done, more or less showing where most of the budget probably went to. The way they are portrayed, sickly thin and grimy, near-naked and flinching in movement, somehow makes up for the small and offcamera kill count in favor of creating it's "inescapable dream" atmosphere, and the very fact they live in a crumbling castle just heighten the grimness of this act, invoking claustrophobic uneasiness further triggered by the use of low-glow colored lights and a creepy animalistic score.

Top it with a strange last shot that most likely spells nothing but more trouble for our survivor and we get this flawed yet sinister looking indie foreign horror of our time. The Flaying may not do much as a solidly structured and well-paced story, but it delivers scares and creeps so, in its simplistic slow-burning way, it does the job quite alright. Not a bad 70s horror throwback from a country that isn't well known for producing horror flicks, so should you ever get a chance to see this, I say give it a go, especially if you're one who prefers a bit of psychedelia with your dead teenagers!

Bodycount:
1 male found covered in cuts, left for dead
1 female had her fingers cut off with a knife, drowned in a tub
1 male found dead, covered in cuts and seemingly preserved

Total: 3

Radio Plays of The Devil: Satanic Attraction (1990)

Satanic Attraction (Atração Satânica) (Brazil, 1990)
Rating: ***
Starring: Ênio Gonçalves, Gabriela Toscano, André Loureiro

(A special shout out to luigihotpit, agradecimentos para os filmes raros!)

In a sunny coast in Brazil, hot young DJ Fernanda is hosting her own horror story about a killer terrorizing the streets for girls to hunt down. With each chapter written and aired daily, Fernanda's listeners are divided between captivated fans and those who are horrified by the tale's graphic nature, but little do they know the story's about to get frighteningly real; coincidentally, whenever Fernanda tells her tale of dismemberment and blood draining, a real killer follows the plot so eerily close that local cops begin to suspect something is out of the ordinary and they're keeping a real close eye on our radio hostess.

However, Fernanda's just as frightened and disturbed about this fact, even more when she begins to see visions of a reanimated corpse, the supposed sibling of the killer from her stories. Nevertheless, she continues with the story under the demands of her boss and the bloodbath continues, followed by a chain of possible suspects not limited to Fernanda's sailor friend, an antique shop owner (who keeps a pet panther!), and a random girl who appears to be in a trance.

All of this is just the first half of this near 100 minute long slasher whodunit, director Fauzi Mansur envisioned a serious tone to this story only to have an end product that's gorily good but a tad confusing at times.

For the record, I enjoyed this Brazilian hack-a-thon a lot more than the last title I covered from this country; with an exotic ethnic look at the classic Satanist cult sub-genre that's thrown in the mix, Satanic Attraction could have done more with its supernatural elements as plenty of questions surrounding how our DJ heroine was able to envision the killer's every move were failed to be answered. In fact, considering the twist reveal on killer's identity was done halfway in its lengthy running time, the film raised more head-scratchers than answers then as more twists came about and motivations got blurred, cleared, and then blurred again.

Nevertheless, Satanic Attraction is still pretty entertaining; to market this film to English-speaking viewers, the producers hired amateur voice actors to dub this film, resulting to wooden performances that some will find mind-shattering, while others funny. (I am among those that find it slightly funny) The pacing is never boring and it moves along quite tolerably despite the lack of any action in its middle portions and I can see that some money was spent to ensure this film has quality.

And of course, let's not forget the very heart and blood of a slasher movie, the gore; seeing Mansur also directed another Brazilian slasher in 1989 titled The Ritual of Death, it's observable that he has an eye on good, gooey and exploitative gore. When not chasing girls across the sandy beach in broad daylight or sneaking into their hot tubs to put razors in bath soaps, our killer boasts some crazy kills like an effectively messy double impaling, pickaxing, and a visceral killing spree that might also be the best scene from the entire film.

Everything ends predictably and never bothered answering any of the important details. Still, I'm not saying I didn't have fun with this. To be frank, I'm going to check out Mansur's apparently gorier Ritual as soon as I get my hands on it. As of this movie, I'm gonna say Satanic Attraction deserves a look. Not for the story or the scares, but more of something to mindlessly entertain yourself given you're the kind of person who can tolerate B-Grade cheapness.

Bodycount:
1 female stabbed on the back with swords, dismembered
1 female hacked on the head with a cleaver
1 male and 1 female skewered with a spear
1 male found murdered, feet cut off
1 male and 1 female poisoned
1 male slashed by the eyes with a sword
1 female disemboweled with a scimitar
1 female beheaded with a scimitar
1 male ran through with a scimitar
1 female stabbed with a harpoon
1 female strangled
1 male hacked with a pickaxe
1 male shot to death
Total: 15

Strangle This and Strangle That: Shock- Diversao Diabolica (1984)

Shock: Diversao Diabolica (Brazil, 1984)
Rating: **
Starring: Jurandir Abreu, Claudia Alencar, Elias Andreato

It's often said that some things are best left alone; take Night of the Dribbler (1990) for example, a supposed sports-themed spoof on the slasher sub-genre that tries too much to be funny and forgets the slasher part almost through-out the movie. It wasn't clever. It wasn't exciting. It was not even so effin' bad it was good, and some (if not most) of those slasher fanatics who begged for the film to be released were quick to wash their hands and hoped that sonovabitch-of-a-movie will be shelved again.

Now am I saying Shock should fall into a similar fate? Perhaps, perhaps...

Shock-Diversao Diabolica follows a rock band who decided to haul up one night inside a house while waiting for their instruments, apparently delayed due to some issues with whoever's transporting them. As any hot and young teenager/young adult couples would do in this predicament, we spend a good near-20 minutes watching them (graphically) make love while the scene jumps back and forth to some people in a club. And seeing this is a slasher movie, the band soon realizes that they are not alone and someone donning heavy black boots is strangling and garroting them dead, one by one.

With six victims and sixty minutes to spare after the first murder, Shock is quick to show that it isn't only influenced by American slashers; normally in a movie of this kind, these characters would be running out doing dumb things that will get them killed but, instead, these would-be murder victims decided to confine themselves in a room while one of them goes out to get the cops. They then spend most of their time discussing who could be out killing band members, among plenty other things to pass the time.

Interestingly, its not just the victims that broke the slasher cliches; the sex=death formulation gets tweaked with as one female character rejects her boyfriend's sex-is-natural talk and would have been our virginal final girl, only to unsuccessfully seduce him back and, of course, gets killed off as an early victim. In turn, the villain does not act like quite a crazed maniac but instead, he is methodic and patient enough to make himself a sandwich, smoke a joint he found on the floor (eww) and play the drums tunelessly in hopes of driving the kids out. (And it worked!) We never get to see his face, just his hands and boots, so the enigmatic nature of the killer is always a plus in my book.

Sadly, there is one thing that prevents me from rating this any higher and it's that the kills aren't too exciting. With the later slasher parts taking place inside an single room, we have no chase scenes and each of the murders (save for a real rat getting pinned to the floor with a knife) are nothing but strangulations. Sure you can try to spice it up with slow-mo shots or an epilepsy-inducing strobe light effect, but in the end a slasher movie needs blood. Or at least a creative variation to the killings, like the automated noose from Argento's Trauma (1993)!

Watching Shock isn't a bad experience as a whole, just a little odd. The ending of the film is quite nice and I can say that the film's director, Jair Correia, was aiming for something more intellectual than your average hack-a-thon, but with a lack of thrills comes a lack of attention and intrigue from me. It's not worth loosing any good night's sleep being tracked down but when you do have the opportunity to watch it, see it out of curiosity.

Bodycount:
1 female strangled to death
1 female hoisted by the neck, strangled
1 male garroted with a rope
1 male garroted with a rope
1 female strangled to death
1 male found murdered, body tied to a column
Total: 6