Karma – Enigma do Medo (1984)

... aka: Karma: Enigma of Fear

Directed by:

Custódio Gomes (uncredited)

"F. Faez" (Fauzi Mansur)

Some kind of supernatural evil is let loose at a secluded farmhouse. Elaina (Tatiana Mogambo) hears distorted moans and has visions of a knife spinning on a table and a dagger falling from the ceiling. The handyman stabs a tied-up pig to death with a sword (for real) and then Elaina's husband, Fausto (played by co-director Gomes), miraculously dies in the exact same manner. His ghost exits his body and meets up with a blonde spirit guide (Alan Fontaine) and then the two travel back to the 19th Century so he can bear witness to why the farm is being haunted. A hundred years earlier, a quartet of bandits invaded the farm and started slaughtering everyone in sight. However, it backfired when one of the injured men got his hands on a gun and shot and killed them, too. The mastermind behind that attack was a jealous, bitter ex-lover of one of the women.

Fausto and the guide return to modern times and to the farm, which seems to also double as some kind of hotel retreat / bed-and-breakfast. A varied bunch of other characters start showing up. There's a professor (Heitor Gaiotti) in thick glasses who's also an expert in the paranormal, an obnoxious drunk (Walter Gabarron), his unsatisfied and unfaithful wife (Eliane Gabarron), a nun, a young student and others. Everyone is the reincarnation of those slain a hundred years earlier at the same location and are played by the same actors. The student, Samuel (Tony Paez), also happens to be the reincarnation of Felipe, who was Elaina's lover in her past life, and the two quickly pick up right where they left off. Ya know, despite the whole "My husband just died a few days ago under mysterious circumstances" thing.

The guests soon start dying one-by-one and lots of other weird (and frequently nonsensical) things happen. A woman and her husband try to flee after she sees a levitating body but the ghost of the 19th Century jealous traitor guy (Mauro Pinto) shows up, shakes their car and sends them running back inside screaming. The drunk passes out on the floor, wakes up the next morning to find his wife hanging above the bed by a sheet and then just crawls into bed and goes to sleep (!) The dead wife then returns as a ghost and goes to a lake where two men are fishing. She leaps out of the water, grabs one, pulls him under, drowns him and then that man's ghost emerges from the lake to strangle his friend.

Another woman finds her own dead body draped over a tree limb and then gets attacked by a ghost-vampire that drinks her blood. Gates and doors move by themselves. Beds shake. One of the characters is possessed. Corpses return to life and start killing others. And there's a lot of death by a lot of different means, including pitchfork, sickle and sword. Though IMDb and some other websites currently have this title listed as either a "thriller" or a "drama," the genre is never really in question: This is a straight-up horror flick.

While not a "good" film by any means (the acting is mostly poor, the editing is frequently terrible, it seldom makes any sense and it steals all of its music from other films, most notably FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III), it's an entertaining one. The supernatural stuff is extremely fuzzy throughout, but in a unique way that adds some additional interest. Aside from the unusual touch of having the first victim return as a ghost to helplessly witness the current goings-on, the main bad ghost lures his victims by impersonating whomever was the last person he killed. Many of the supernatural events are seen in negative image, which seems to signify what's going on in a ghost world parallel to our own as well as revealing which body the evil ghost is inhabiting at any given time.

This ticks the right boxes when it comes to body count and blood for slasher fans and there's also some full frontal nudity provided by the leading lady in a couple of scenes. However, the nudity isn't nearly as excessive as you'd expect given that nearly the entire cast is comprised of Brazilian adult film performers!

Speaking of adult films, both directors started out as pretty mainstream filmmakers before descending into hardcore themselves. While Mansur would continue to make regular movies in between the sex flicks, culminating with the late-decade gore films SATANIC ATTRACTION and THE RITUAL OF DEATH, both of which received U. S. video distribution (incredibly rare at the time), Gomes descended right into the gutter after this with a handful of, shall we say, interesting-sounding films. One of them - the excellently-titled Alucinações Sexuais de um Macaco / "Sexual Hallucinations of a Monkey" (1986) - involves a bored porn actress fantasizing about having sex with a dwarf in a monkey suit. And then there's the PETA-nightmare double feature of Meu Cachorro, Meu Amante / "My Dog, My Lover" (1986) and Aberrações Sexuais de Um Cachorro / "Sexual Aberrations of a Dog," whose content you may be able to guess given the titles. If not, here's a hint: The latter stars a bunch of porno actresses and a Saint Bernard.

After its domestic theatrical release, Karma was given a video release in Brazil on the Alfa Cinema E Video label but was never officially released anywhere else. There are English fansubs available for this, but they actually fail to make it any more coherent for English-speakers than just watching it in Portuguese! A DVD-R release I've seen being sold by several bootleg outlets also contains the subs but save your money. The quality is no better than the copy that's currently on Youtube.

★★

Leyendas macabras de la colonia (1974)

... aka: Macabre Legends of the Colony

Directed by:

Arturo Martínez

Masked wrestler Tinieblas (real name: Manuel Leal) shows up at an antique store, where a creepy painting featuring a half-skeleton woman lounging on a bed catches his eye. I suppose morbid taste is in line with his character name (Tinieblas means "Darkness" in Spanish) but I'm not sure why someone who insists on calling themselves that is running around wearing a tan suit and bright yellow mask. And going by his later black-and-yellow wrestling outfit, he probably should have called himself "Abejorro" instead. The elderly dealer initially refuses to sell the painting to him because he's already sold it three times and the owners keep bringing it back. Each unsatisfied customer has commented that the painting is cursed and that at midnight on full moons the figures in the painting seem to come to life. So knowing all that and acting like a grouch when someone asks to buy it, I'm not sure why the dealer even has this painting on display in his shop in the first place. Tinieblas laughs off the story and ends up convincing the man to sell it to him.

We're next at the gym where Tinieblas and his partner, top-billed Mil Máscaras (real name: Aaron Rodríguez Arellano), are about to start a match. So I've seen a lot of time padding in my day but this one actually caught me off guard. Long wrestling matches wedged into older Mexican films are the norm so I'm kind of used to that. And I'm used to these being poorly filmed and edited. The camera is almost always positioned outside the ring and the takes are always overly-long. It's usually pretty boring but it's what the people wanted back then so we gotta roll with it. These matches usually go on for 3 to 5 minutes. I think the worst I've seen up till now was 8 minutes. I kept checking the clock as this particular match played out. Five minutes passed. Then it hit 10 minutes and I was thinking, well this may be the new record holder. But then it hit 15 minutes and, before I knew it, 20 minutes had passed! Seeing how this runs 80 minutes, that's 25% of the running time spent showing just this one match. Insane!

The most amusing thing about this is that our heroes are both very physically fit while their opponents are, well, not. One, wearing what basically amounts to a one-piece female swimsuit held up by a single spaghetti strap, is downright obese. You know what's scarier than a cursed painting? Seeing a 300-pound man's leotard ride up his crack while his ass is thrust at the camera, that's what! And because I had to see this, so do you. I believe in sharing my pain through my screen caps if need be. By the way, this scene was clearly filmed at an actual wrestling match and wasn't something staged just for the movie. The stars get mobbed by little kids wanting autographs when they enter, there's a huge crowd in attendance, etc. etc. After winning the match, Tinieblas walks up to one of his opponents and punches him right in the face!

Afterward, Tinieblas, Mil, their wrestler friend El Fantasma Blanco / "The White Ghost" (real name: Freddy Pecherelly) and two miniskirted, go-go-booted female wrestling groupies (Dinorah Judith and Nancy Vega) who are never given a name go back to Tinieblas' place to party. The clock strikes midnight. The painting, which is revealed to be 400-years-old and once the property of a New Spain viceroy, starts putting off smoke. When it clears they discover they've been transported back to the 16th Century where everyone dresses like they're in some stage production of The Three Musketeers and say "doth," "hath," "thy," "thee" and "thou" a lot.

It's the middle of the Spanish Inquisition. The mysterious Lady Luisa Miasoxgl (Lorena Velázquez), whom authorities keep referring to as "mestiza" (mixed race), is accused of being a witch and "defying the power of God." As was not always the case in these films, that actually happens to be true. She is indeed a witch but a bizarre one with Aztec lineage who regularly makes human sacrifices to her mummified mother, who's kept propped up in a secret room. Luckily for her, men just seems to randomly start swordfights outside her home so she's never short random injured men to invite in to kill. Luisa is really out for revenge because "white man" killed her mother and now she's determined to bring her back to life. She has a dungeon (just a plain white room) to keep prisoners in and a slew of helpers, including a faithful servant woman and a large army of Aztec warriors dressed in long black wigs, loincloths and headbands and carrying either huge axes or tomahawk-like weapons.

Because his soldiers keep disappearing, a priest (played by the director) sends Captain Antonio de Talamantes (Rogelio Guerra) to find out what's going on. He has a rivalry going with another swordsman named Diego, who fancies himself "the best blade in Spain." The two decide to fight it out in front of Luisa's house, which ends with Diego dead and Antonio being brought in, where things go about as well as expected for him. Luisa and her men eventually capture the wrestlers, throw them into the dungeon and plot to sacrifice them.

While this contains many of the elements we want in one of these things, the pacing is horrendous, the wrestlers end up getting pushed to the side far too often in favor of pointless side characters, attempts at atmosphere are nearly nonexistent, the sets are cheap and unconvincing and the plot is so thin that it needs padded beyond that super-long grappling match I already mentioned. Every once in awhile the action cuts to an old church where a Crypt Keeper-like zombie tunelessly bangs on organ keys, cackles, looks directly at the camera and tries to explain the story to us! While the resolution of the time travel plot is incredibly lame, there's a very amusing and clever twist at the very end but it's not enough to save things.

Filmed on location in Antigua, Guatemala (shot back-to-back with The Mummies of San Angel by the same director, cast and crew), this is available on DVD-R with English subs from Trash Palace. BCI/Eclipse also released it on DVD (Spanish language only) and paired it with Tito Novaro's El robo de las momias de Guanajuato / "Robbery of the Mummies of Guanajuato" (1972).

★1/2