The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures

While watching this movie, my doorbell rang. I ran to the door, hoping it was Coffin Joe there to show me MY death, thereby saving me from watching the rest of this awful movie. Alas, it was the pizza guy, and he didn't have a gun that shot sparkles. I gave him a twenty and told him to keep the change, but he didn't say anything profound like "the change shall be kept, but the change kept within your soul will be your change", or anything. He just said, "thanks." What a bummer. Last time I order from that place.

Anyway, I wanted to watch until the end, but that orgy scene - the LEAST erotic scene ever shown on film (unless skinny, pale, hairy Brazilian guys in bikini briefs swilling vodka and saying sexy things like "let's make love" turns you on) - caused me to switch off. Honestly, this movie is a LITTLE bit funny...but it drags on for so long that the camp/humor is drained. And it's only 80 minutes! Just awful.

Decided to revisit this one and update my review since I was in the mood for something weird and it's still currently free on youtube. It worked better for me this time, there's some nice terrifying moments and creepy camera work and effects, even though the whole middle portion of this is just a repeat of the same three or so scenes while José Mojica Marins looks on creepily. I'm sure it's probably not the best of the unofficial Coffin Joe flicks, but It's still a fun weird surreal ride.

José Mojica Marins (a.k.a. Coffin Joe) is something of a hit and miss director for me. Sometimes his brand of low budget horror surrealism works pretty well but on other occasions the results are somewhat tedious. Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures falls into this latter category sadly. It begins brightly enough though with an extended scene of a strange ceremony where Marins character is resurrected from the dead. There are dancing women, drumming men, weird imagery and avant-garde music throughout. The whole segment has a real demented rhythm to it. It turns out, however, that this opening sequence is the best part in the entire movie. After it, the action shifts to a hostel run by Marin's character. More specifically to events surrounding one stormy night. The hostel takes in several guests, including a group of hippies, corrupt gambling businessmen and an adulterous couple. It seems that uncle Joe is some kind of extreme supernatural moralist and he sets about killing his amoral guests.

This sounds all well and good but the problem is that it's all a bit tiresome in reality. Sure it's weird and surreal but it's also dull. It's the latter factor that's the big problem here. The pacing's not too great, which is admittedly a Marins trait in general but there is a lot of unnecessary repetition such as the silly hippy orgy where the same shots are seen over and over and the chant 'Everybody naked! Great!' is repeatedly seemingly endlessly. Otherwise, scenes drag out and the constant atonal music makes it even more unbearable. It's got its moments but overall it's hard work getting through this one.

The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures opens with a bizarre ritual: a coffin, some bongo players, topless men in a mosh pit, several women in their underwear performing crap dance moves, and deformed creatures (men in unconvincing rubber masks) wailing like banshees while lightning strikes. After what seems like an eternity, the coffin opens and out pops Zé do Caixão (José Mojica Marins), who stands there while his cape and hat (a natty bowler, rather than a top hat) appear out of thin air. Then Zé begins to spout his usual line of dreary philosophy while balls of black modelling clay on wires pass by, and the viewer asks themselves 'Why did they have to bring him back?' and 'What am I doing wasting my life watching this rubbish?'.

So what does Zé do next? Why, he enters the hospitality industry of course, setting up an inn for passing strangers, of which there seems to be plenty: before long, his rooms are full of gamblers, hippies, corrupt businessmen, jewel thieves and lovers, none of whom are put off by their creepy host. The gamblers gamble, the lovers get smoochy, the businessmen make dodgy deals, the jewel thieves check out their haul, and the hippies conduct an orgy just like the one in Marins' earlier surreal oddity End of Man, repeatedly chanting 'Everybody naked, great!' while they strip off—all of which proves tedious in the extreme.

After much surreal strangeness (animals and insects dying, a clock with a beating heart, a burning veil over the camera lens), the not-entirely-unexpected twist ending reveals that all of the guests are actually ghosts, having met with violent deaths before they arrived, that the inn is, in reality, a cemetery, and that the innkeeper is Death (Zé's face transforming into a skull with blood dripping from the eye sockets). Yawn!

3/10 for Marins' hilarious pearls of wisdom, which include: 'There is no redemption for those who want to be blinder than the blind one having his sight to see' and 'The one who searches for the beginning of the end will find an end with no beginning'. Right you are!

Probably the worst of José Mojica Marins's horror films, in spite of the good general idea. There is much more noise (what a noisy film! Lots of screams and a very unfortunate music score that mostly does not fit the movie) and no good connections for a chaotic sequence of not very well shot footage (differently from Mojica's best films, despite their low budget). The film also lacks the innovative editing of other movies by Mojica. Here, his famous character Coffin Joe has some different traits, what is by far the most interesting element: his psychic powers are impressive, being able to charm, kill, cause accidents... In the very beginning, he is ressurrected in a ritual (which mixes interesting trance dark scenes of drummers with an amateur performance of beautiful girls in bikini). Then, he recruits employers and guests for his lodge, under a heavy storm. His selection clearly indicated that those who were accepted were destined to. Among them, there were gamblers (one of them being the victim of the other three), a gigolo and his women, an adulterous couple, a man wishing to commit suicide, other characters I could not understand who they were (robbers?), and the worst of them all: a numerous "party hard" group of drunk people who enjoyed to shout "todo mundo nu, oba!" ("everybody nude! Oh yeah!") while dancing naked (they only shut up when make sex!). Perhaps a new cut, shortening it a lot, could have saved the film. However, in the wat it was released, it is hard to understand (not the general trend, which is predictable, but the specific fates of each character) and to keep interested on it.