Sexo Erótico na Ilha do Gavião

In Brazil in the mid-80s, the business of hardcore sex features expanded after an era of censorship and repression. A result of that era, Boca do Lixo (Mouth of Garbage) cinema was a film genre associated with the downtown area of São Paulo. From 1980 to 1994, this curious aspect of the Brazilian film industry garnered around 500 films, many of which were explicit sex films.

An example of this phenomenon, SEXO ERÓTICO NA ILHA DO GAVIÃO, which is also known under an English title, EROTIC SEX ON HAWK ISLAND, crazily mixes a dull sex film with a pirate adventure that also loads in a Women-in-Prison (WIP) subplot. This hodgepodge of elements is actually an altered version of a 1981 film, FEBRE DO SEXO, which was more of a straightforward Western without sex scenes. The resulting mash-up includes overlong hardcore inserts that don't really mash well with the earlier production.

The director of both films, Alex Prado (a.k.a., Rubens da Silva Prado), here credited as "Rubens Prado," portrays Gregory, a macho rural worker living on a mountainous South American island whose girlfriend is kidnapped by gangsters that work for the movie's villain, Hawk. Other women are kidnapped, beaten and raped. Gregory sets out for revenge and murders the thugs, which have enslaved the island's remaining women to work in a gold mine.

The bizarre juxtaposition of ragged WIP clichés, extreme bloody violence and XXX action is a novelty, and while the story line is fairly strong for such a trashy effort the acting is poor, and there are many human-hunting and fight scenes that become repetitive. Additionally, Prado not only directs and stars but participates in many of the hardcore scenes, including a transsexual interlude that an unfortunate highlight in this dull entry.