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Awakening of the Beast

Play trailer Poster for Awakening of the Beast 1969 1h 36m Horror Play Trailer Watchlist
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Tomatometer 0 Reviews 57% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
The third installment in the Coffin Joe Trilogy, "The Awakening of the Beast," follows Coffin Joe's sadistic experiments on four drug addicts who volunteer to take LSD. The experiments are intended to prove that drug use is related to sexual depravity. Director José Mojica Marins once again plays Coffin Joe, who sits with a panel of psychiatrists on a television show, using videos of the addicts as proof of the connection between drugs and lewd sexual behavior.

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Awakening of the Beast

Audience Reviews

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Audience Member Marins shows again that he has a great eye for creating unsettling compositions, but while it isn't hard to see what he wants to do here, his climactic psychedelic sequence in color is more like laughable nonsense and the conclusion it draws doesn't carry the impact intended. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member "O Ritual dos Sádicos" also known under it's english title "Awakening Of The Beast" is one of many entries of José Mojica Marins 'Coffin Joe' series of films. It was banned in it's home country Brazil for almost 20 years before being released. In the movie an experiment with LSD on four volunteers takes place to see how they react to a 'Coffin Joe' movie/poster. This movie was my introduction to the Coffin Joe series and sadly I can't say that I got impressed. This movie is just a bunch of exploitation-styled surrealistic scenes with no structure or characters. "Awakening Of The Beast" is nothing but 1 hour and 30 minutes of boredom. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member I loved this movie I found it very wierd and very interesting in parts and I would love it on DVD, I loved it, it was directed by José Mojica Marins and it starred José Mojica Marins and Ângelo Assunção Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member 4 decades later, and still people are incapable of comprehending Mojica Marins' endless display of genius with this effectively pretentious psychological shockfest of a masterpiece, showing experimental horror in its purest form and with Marins' endless fun playing with self-masturbatory metafilmic tendencies (referencing the supposedly authentic opinions of Glauber Rocha and Anselmo Duarte towards a bold independent cult filmmaker breaking boundaries and being unfairly criticized), which is unarguably one of the smartest and most unique twists ever in a horror franchise! Name a better one! 99/100 Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member I'm tempted to rate this a five just for the sheer perversity of it all. But as much fun as it is to make sport of, it's a really bad movie. One of Coffin Joe's (Brazil's answer to Ed Wood, director Jose Mojica Marins) messterpieces, this one is supposedly a serious study of how LSD affects behavior. Scenes of really bad, not even CLOSE to erotic softcore sexual content involving some really ugly people (WTF? I thought Brazilian people were supposed to be gorgeous!?!), including a gangbang, a rape, bestiality, and nods to various forms of fetishism. In between these scenes are scenes of social scientists, doctors and psychiatrists discussing what all this means to society as a whole. Finally, four of the "perverts" are chosen to be part of an experiment involving LSD and Coffin Joe movies. Following scenes where these folks attend a club with erotic dancers and a porn flick, they take LSD and end up in what appears to be hell, with people being tortured and abused, along with lots of nudity and sexual imagery. I'm guessing this is some sort of lame-ass acid trip. While most of the film is in B&W, this acid trip is in brilliant, nauseous color. Viewers should take particular note of the music. It is so totally inappropriate for the action on screen, that it's hilarious. The whole thing is just ridiculous, all the more so because it seems to take itself so seriously. But then again, maybe the joke's on me. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member ark! quelle insulte! Coffin joe n'apparait que 5 minutes dans le film. Il est là pour dire qu'il contrôle les gens. Ces mêmes gens se défoncent dans la drogue. Minable, aucun sens, Pourri! Ce n'est pas le troisième volet! Le véritable, Embodiment of evil est sorti l'année passé et je dois le voir pour compléter la trilogie! Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/24/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Awakening of the Beast

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis The third installment in the Coffin Joe Trilogy, "The Awakening of the Beast," follows Coffin Joe's sadistic experiments on four drug addicts who volunteer to take LSD. The experiments are intended to prove that drug use is related to sexual depravity. Director José Mojica Marins once again plays Coffin Joe, who sits with a panel of psychiatrists on a television show, using videos of the addicts as proof of the connection between drugs and lewd sexual behavior.
Director
José Mojica Marins
Producer
José Mojica Marins, James H. Nicholson, Louis M. Heyward, Ronald Dunas
Screenwriter
Reubens Francisco Lucchetti, José Mojica Marins
Genre
Horror
Original Language
Brazilian Portuguese
Runtime
1h 36m
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