Brazil can boast a peerless reputation for producing some of the greatest soccer idols that mankind has ever known. Pele, Ronaldo, Bebeto, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo and the magnificent Romario are just some of the footballing legends that have worn the fluorescent yellow shirt of their five-time world cup winning country. But aside from a few headline-creating carnivals, Brazilians have seemed content to rely only on the quick footed skills of such players to bring notoriety to their South American country. That's why I wasn't really sure what to expect when I learned that they had created their own addition to the slasher cycle. Aside from the five-star City of God, the Brazilian film industry has been virtually non-existent to UK audiences, and I must admit that this would be only the second of their productions that I had ever seen. But France and Italy - two other great footballing nations can boast slasher output that is nearly as good as their World Cup winning squads, which made the initial signs look promising for Satanic Attraction.
It kicks off in traditional satanic fashion in the midst of a crowded ritual. A masked figure makes his way through a pack of African dancers and heads down some underground stairs to host a bizarre black mass in front of a crowd of hooded revellers. The strange cult leader picks up a huge dagger and heads over to a pair of blonde beaming twin children. The mysterious stranger then slices the wrists of the youngsters and pushes their arms together, presumably to link the pair with a bond of blood. The crowd look on in anticipation as the twins grin sadistically.
Some time later we meet Fernanda, a radio announcer who hosts a controversial show on which she tells creepy stories to a captivated nationwide audience. Some listeners believe that her ramblings are dangerous and could result in violent consequences, while others are just happy to see so many people turning to radio for their source of entertainment. Her latest tale concerns a dark figure roaming the town and murdering young women with various gruesome weapons. The killer then uses the victim's blood to reanimate his deceased sister in her beachside grave. After dismembered bodies begin turning up around the local town, Fernanda realises that her stories are somehow connected to identical murderous events that are taking place at exactly the same time as she speaks on air. What connection does she share with the ritualistic psycho and what links the killings to the hapless DJ?
Satanic Attraction looks to have been produced on a fairly decent budget and it's immediately apparent that director Fauzi Mansur didn't scrape the barrel for the effects that he visioned would make his movie a hit. A few of the murders are extremely gory: meat cleaver through the head, dismemberment, gooey throat lashing's and a spear pushed through a love making couple a la Friday the 13th II. The killer is seen mainly from behind and dresses in traditional Giallo-like black psycho-garb. Although part of the plot concerns searching for the maniac's identity, the whodunit aspect is mostly left simmering on the backburner. Even tough things stick closely to the typical Giallo/slasher rulebook, Mansur manages to mix in a share of supernatural elements that are both interesting and utterly confusing in equal measures.
As this is a Brazilian production, the original vocal soundtrack is in Portuguese and the producers didn't opt for subtitles to export the feature to English speaking nations. Instead the movie has been dubbed by a gang of wooden planks, sorry, students from America and the United Kingdom. Obviously it's impossible to tell what these guys were studying, but one thing's for certain, they definitely weren't drama students. This has to rank along with Samurai Reincarnation as the worst dubbing in cinema history. But that's not Satanic Attraction's only problem. The movie is nearly two hours long and a huge majority of this time is spent listening to the aforementioned 'actors' warble their way through a poorly translated script, with characters popping up all over the place without any rhyme or reason. The net result is an overlong dreary feature that takes an hour and a half to finally shift into gear as the killer goes on an excellent maniacal spree. When we reach the film's conclusion, it just gets silly as one twist that was easy to predict gives way to yet another.
Unfortunately, Satanic Attraction is a major let down in every respect. It's hardly worth tracking down for the excessive gore and all that's left is a long corridor of confusion and horrendous acting. Someone should tell these guys to stick to producing great footballers instead of slasher movies
