JOURNEY TO AN UNKNOWN WORLD is a highly obscure Brazilian jungle adventure film from 1971 which seems to have been written with kids in mind. In a nutshell, the movie charts the adventures of Tio Maneco, a globe-trotting adventurer who decides to head off into the Amazonian rainforest with his three young nephews (a purely annoying one, a chubby annoying one, and a little annoying one). What follows is, well, difficult to describe...
Part of the film is a realist tale of survival, as the kids attempt to fend off jungle creatures (brought to life with copious stock footage) as well as the perils of dehydration and starvation. At the same time, there's plenty of lame comedy from the mugging actors - Flavio Migliaccio as the uncle in particular - and enough terrible dubbing to annoy even those viewers in possession of a tin ear.
Elsewhere, there's a scatty old grandad, who seems to have been taken captive by a walking robot (think Robbie, but cheaper) with plans for world domination. The two stories eventually collide with the aid of a UFO (!) containing a pair of tiny, animated aliens (!!) who proceed to whisk the characters off for a brief cartoon adventure.
I understand the tight budget meant that an alien world couldn't convincingly be depicted "for real", but swapping to animation is an odd approach, although I suppose Tarantino didn't mind doing so in KILL BILL: VOLUME 1. Nonetheless, despite the novelty value, JOURNEY TO AN UNKNOWN WORLD is a pretty terrible movie and maybe explains why you don't hear much about Brazilian cinema if it's of this calibre.
