Tag: Brazil

O Segredo da Múmia (1982)

Directed by Ivan Cardoso [Other horror films: O Lago Maldito (1980), As Sete Vampiras (1986), Um Lobisomem na Amazônia (2005), A Marca do Terrir (2005), O Sarcófago Macabro (2005)]

Perhaps better known, though not by that much, as The Secret of the Mummy, O Segredo da Múmia is the only Brazilian horror film I’ve seen not directed by José Mojica Marins. To be sure, The Secret of the Mummy is more a comedy/horror mix, but even so, for that one fact alone, it stands out.

And it is a unique movie. It’s not exactly zany, but the comedy here can feel a bit goofy at times. Some of the movie is in black-and-white, and other sequences are in color, and what’s more, there doesn’t seem to be a thematic reason for switching between the two. Some of the plot is ill-explained (why is the mad scientist locking up half-naked women and turning them into werewolf-like things?), and so while I do think the film is different, I can’t say I’ve ever cared for it.

I have seen this once before, some years back. I remember thinking it was a bit wacky, but fundamentally okay. Truth be told, I may have been too generous – not that The Secret of the Mummy is bad, but it’s really not my type of movie, and I probably thought more of it just because I’ve not seen many horror movies from Brazil (the only ones I have save this one would be At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, Awakening of the Beast, and The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures).

Being a mummy movie, I will say I enjoyed seeing the mummy attack people. It didn’t happen near as frequently as I’d have liked but I did enjoy it when the mummy popped up. There’s not that many great mummy movies past the early 1970’s (Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb FTW), and this one certainly isn’t great, but at least there was a mummy, and his sequences were solid. Oh, and the mummy decapitated someone, so that was funny.

As far as performances go, I have to give some credit to Felipe Falcao, who played a servant named Igor. Falcao’s performance was a bit much at times, but he consistently reminded me of Anthony Carrigan from Gotham. I mean, he looked and acted almost exactly like him. It was uncanny. Otherwise, Wilson Grey was decent, but lacked character, and others, such as Evandro Mesquita, just didn’t get enough to work with.

I certainly wish I did enjoy this one more. It’d be cool to have some somewhat obscure Brazilian horror movie in my back pocket to recommend to friends and show that I’m a man of culture. I just don’t dig The Secret of the Mummy that much.

I liked hearing a foreign cover of The Beatles’ ‘I Should Have Known Better’ during a mummy attack, and I’m amazed at how much nudity Brazil was apparently okay with during the 1980’s, but otherwise, this isn’t a movie I’d really recommend unless you wanted a taste of something different.

5/10

Anaconda (1997)

Directed by Luis Llosa [Other horror films: N/A]

I saw Anaconda once before, but I can’t pretend I know exactly how long it’s been. I’d estimate somewhere between ten to 15 years. All I know is that while I knew the plot outline, none of this really rang any bells. And I have to say, in another ten years, I can imagine the same plight falling upon me, as Anaconda doesn’t strike me as being that memorable a film.

Certainly the cast was decently strong. I couldn’t stand Jon Voight here, personally, as it just seemed so obvious from the get-go that he wasn’t exactly trustworthy (and the fact that another individual got stung by a wasp underwater apparently didn’t make anyone any more suspicious of him somehow). I didn’t care for his character, and I just don’t think it worked with the movie (not that the movie works that well on it’s own).

Otherwise, though, the cast is strong. I don’t really know Jennifer Lopez (I recognize the name because it’s a recognizable name, I’m guessing), but I’ve literally not seen her in anything else. She does decent here, but she doesn’t blow me away. A bit better, believe it or not, is Ice Cube, though he’s still not great. I think my favorite performance here was that of Jonathan Hyde, and it’s probably not even because he was exceptionally good, but more due to the fact that I know him from films such as Titanic and Jumanji. I enjoy his character here, no doubt, but I can’t pretend he’s all that important for most of the movie.

Not that it really matters. I was surprised in some ways by just how blah a lot of this movie was. I mean, hell, even the snake looked a lot worse than I ever would have thought it would. Plenty of giant snake films followed this one, such as King Cobra and Python, and I gotta be honest with you guys, I think both of those films had more heart. Sure, the snake here looks better than either of those two films, but this movie had Jennifer Lopez and Jon Voight in it – if the snake didn’t look better, then what the hell are they doing?

Much of the story didn’t really interest me, and while I did like pieces of the setting and some of the musical score throughout the film, more often than not I just wish it were a lot more fun (which is a problem that, as low budget as it was, Python had no problem delivering on). Oh, and Jon Voight’s character winked after being regurgitated by a snake, so that happened. Just an unremarkable experience, and ultimately a shame.

5/10