What can one say about the work of director, José Mojica Marins? Better known to many as horror caricature, Coffin Joe, in his native Brazil, he is something of a staple. On the back of nasty classics such as ‘At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul’ and ‘This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse’, Marins has often been referred to as a twisted genius… usually by Marins himself. As a personality, he is certainly one of the more interesting individuals in the world of cinema. I first became aware of Marins quite early on in my life thanks to a book borrowed from the local library called ‘The Encyclopedia Of Horror Movies“, which was published in the mid 80s. In an era predating the internet, I looked upon the oddities within this book as a series of enigmas I would only ever know about in theory. While pouring through the aged pages, I came across the following image:

Years later, I would come into possession of the same book, which I have scanned the above image from. It’s interesting to note how many of these films, once theoretical enigmas, are now staples in my film history. Before I talk about the soundtrack to Awakening the Beast, as that is, after all, why I’ve been asked to write for Mondo Exploito, I want to help establish the sense of mythology imbued in me about Marins. Here is the passage from the Horror Enclopedia that grabbed my attention in a way I could never forget. This passage is in relation to his film, Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver or “This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse” from 1967:

The film is barely watchable as its ‘amateur’ actors are subjected to attacks of live poisonous spiders, are thrown into real snakepits, have their heads crushed in a press, and so on. Nonetheless, the shoestring production exudes a genuine sense of madness both in its imaginings and in the treatment of its participants , with the eccentric , seemingly out-of-control staging veering from the pathological to the surreal. The climatic scenes offer bloodcurdling visions of hell: a cave filled with crucified, near-naked men and women, some upside down, others arranged in irregularly angled diagonals, or the ice cave with denuded, frost-covered bodies merging with the crudely fashioned white (plaster) walls and pillars while Zé attacks them with heinous savagery.

When one reads of films such as this, and directors as purportedly demented as Marins, what young boy isn’t going to get excited? So, as the years passed, and access to films grew easier, I was finally able to experience Marins in all his cinematic glory and you know what? His stuff wasn’t bad. It certainly didn’t live up to the years of self-propagated hype, but what could have? And so now, with the brief introduction to José Mojica Marins, I arrive at the purpose for this post.

Listening to Awakening of the Beast

It was only quite recently that I saw (and heard) Awakening of the Beast. It came bundled with a Marins boxset I had purchased and I was looking forward to experiencing it. Truth be told, the first 2 thirds were terrible. It was all I could do not to turn it off. The film itself consists of a storyline so poorly executed that I am compelled to simply copy and paste the Wikipedia synopsis:

In the film’s first portion, filmed in B&W, Dr. Sergio, a psychiatrist, appears on a television program on a panel with three other contemporary psychiatrists after he claims to have conducted experiments on four volunteer drug addicts with LSD in order to investigate his claim that sexual perversion is caused by use of illegal drugs. As evidence, he presents a series documented accounts of drug use leading to lewd and bizarre sexual acts. Marins appears (as himself) on the panel with the psychiatrists as some type of expert on the subject of depravity. During the program, Dr. Sergio recounts the experiment to his colleagues on the panel, who argue with his claims.

Dr. Sergio gathers the four volunteers, and after receiving an injection, the volunteers (four drug users seen in the previous segments) are instructed to stare at a movie poster of Marins’ The Strange World of Coffin Joe. The film changes to color and each patient’s experience is vividly portrayed in a series of surreal scenes.

It is only after slogging your way through the pseudo psychiatry and dubious social commentary established in the film’s first hour that the real treat begins. For nearly 25 minutes, we’re treated to the most gloriously indulgent drug trip in cinematic history. While the visuals become very interesting, I believe the kudos belong to two individuals – Herminio Giménez, who was the composer, and Salatiel Coelho, who was responsible for the sound design.

 

Herminio Giménez (composer)

Salatiel Coelho (sound design)

Herminio Giménez, who died in 1991, had been an active musician from the age of 11 and was forced into exile in Argentina due to the the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. He was a prolific composer and is often regarded as one of Latin America’s best. I can’t find a great deal of information in English about Salatiel Coelho, but he does have several composer credits to his name ranging from the 1950s to early eighties. The magic these two work on the sound design in the last 25 minutes of Awakening of the Beast is astounding. It ranks as one of the most deranged, disturbing and resolutely fucked up I’ve ever heard. We’re hearing elements here that stretch into the furthest recesses of the avant garde. We’re treated to musique concrete, improvisation, electronic experimentation, sheer noise, vocal exorcisms and a complete disregard for standard notions of structure or reason.

Throughout it all, Marins, adopting his Coffin Joe persona, peppers the soundtrack with his unique brand of evil laughter (something he most certainly excels at). The audacity of this piece of sound art is a joy to behold. It destabilises you, and continues to disorient your for 25 minutes, taking no breaks and bombarding your ears. I feel it’s important fot the work of  Giménez and Coelho to receive the acknowledgement it deserves. In another world, as a standalone album, this could have become an avant garde classic of 60s freakery. For this reason, as I will make a habit of doing, I have isolated the full 25 minute audio track from this portion of the film. Films, by their very nature, presuppose a symbiosis of many disperate mediums, and it isn’t often that one can embrace the full power of sound design on it’s own terms. The Sound of Trash exists to help rectify this. Please enjoy (or at the very least, experience) Giménez and Coelho’s soundtrack for Awakening the Beast. Turn out the lights, and feel it creep inside you. Use the embedded audio player below:

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