Delírios de um Anormal

The psychologist Dr. Hamilton (Jorge Peres) is fascinated by the supernatural and adores his wife Tânia (Magna Miller). Out of the blue, Dr. Hamilton has daydreams and nightmares with Zé do Caixão that wants to take Tânia to deliver his perfect offspring. His colleagues at the Psychiatric Clinic Dr. Adolfo Hansen invite José Mojica Marins, who is the creator of Zé do Caixão, to convince Dr. Hamilton that the character is not real but fruit of his imagination.

"Delírios de um Anormal" is a boring collection of footages from other movies from Zé do Caixão a.k.a. Coffin Joe. However, it is interesting to see that this 1978 film has many points in common with Wes Craven's "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984) and the idea of an evil supernatural being that attacks in nightmares might have been the source of inspiration for the creation of Freddie Kruger. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Delírios de um Anormal" ("Delirium of an Abnormal")

This film, from what I have read, is the censored material that was cut from Marins' older films. It looks to me like this material was thrown together to form something close to a movie, but very short of a plot or anything else for that matter. The movie is impossible to follow and had I not paid my own money to see it, I would not have finished watching it. I would not advise anyone to watch this film unless they wanted to see what, in my opinion, is one of the worst films ever.

Coffin Joe is largely well known worldwide character, made great movies in the past, this weird offer differs from the others, this early movies were substantial, this one made on late seventies is purely bizarre, the plot is minimal about a man who has terrible dreams losing your wife to Coffin Joe, then the real one José Mojica Marins himself is invited to help this odd psychiatric case, Coffin Joe made an excessive visual picture from hell, the continuous use of an imaginary world where nothing make sense, a massive sexploitations scenes as well, psychedelic in several forms and shapes, aimlessly just wander of to nowhere, in fact the movie was made under separate old footages which were refused by brazilian censorship, it explains so many difuse colors between the takes, then Coffin Joe assembled a new picture, the main proposal is display oddity to make money, the name of the movie spoke itself from a deranged mind, that all!!

Resume:

First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 5.5

While showing lots of nightmarish scenes, this is far from the best of José Mojica Marins, and brings nothing new. Indeed, previous issues came back: Coffin Joe wants to find the perfect woman, there is a discussion about the existence of Coffin Joe, and Mojica works together with psychiatrists. More remarkable than that is the fact that only a little more than one third of the film is composed by original footage; all the rest was copied from four previous movies which had suffered with censorship: This night I'll possess yout corpse, The strange world of Coffin Joe, Awakening of the beast, and The bloody exorcism of Coffin Joe. Therefore, for a public nowadays, when it is much less difficult to have access to those former films, I do not think the present one worth watching, although it is not bad.

During the opening credits for Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind, a hunchback plays the bongos while circling a semi-naked woman. It's an extremely bizarre image, but pretty standard fare for cult Brazilian director José Mojica Marins, who has carved a whole career from such surreality.

For this particular film, Marins has gathered together numerous scenes from his body of work so far and cobbled them together with a little new footage to tell the story of scientist Dr. Hamilton (Jorge Peres), who suffers from terrible nightmares in which he sees cult horror icon Coffin Joe (played by Marins) trying to make off with his wife Tânia (Magna Miller). In a 'meta moment', the doctor treating Hamilton calls Marins for help, believing that the creator of Coffin Joe might hold the key to curing the nightmares, which in turn gives Marins an idea for his next film.

With the majority of the running time taken up by Hamilton's nightmares, which are essentially a compilation of random freaky imagery taken out of context (not that they had much context to begin with), Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind is an incredibly tedious, meaningless experience and a colossal waste of time, especially for anyone who has already seen most of Marins better known films.