Burl reviews Finis Hominis! (1971)

HA HA HA, it’s Burl! Sorry for the booming laugh: it’s intended as a tribute to the king of booming laughter, the recently-deceased José Mojica Marins! Marins of course was the Brazilian wünderkind behind the stovetop-behatted proto-Freddy character Coffin Joe, whose long nails, big beard, and yes, booming laughter, graced a series of patched-together horror movies in the 1960s and 70s! I hope you’ve seen at least a few of them - they’re really something! Ha ha, especially Awakening of the Beast! That one’s a doozy!

But we’re not talking Coffin Joe today! In fact we’re discussing his complete opposite, a figure Marins created when he got tired of trying to affright people with his roaring, murdering, remorselessly anticlerical Joe! Yes, we’re talking about Finis Hominis, who was the main character of only one Marins film, an utterly unique oddity appropriately entitled Finis Hominis!

The picture begins with beefy Finis rising from the sea as though he were some primal creature of prehistory! He’s completely buck naked, and after frightening an old lady right out of the wheelchair she’d expected to stay in for life, he makes his way to São Paulo and wanders up and down the streets, flapping in the breeze! He scares away kidnappers, startles lovers kissing, and thrills crowds of children! Finally he enters a house where a lady, who seems to have been expecting him, presents him with a glorious outfit, including mood beads, a ceinture flechée and a bright red turban! Ha ha!

From here we are treated to a series of dramatic vignettes, into which Finis inserts himself to solve problems, protect innocents, and expose hypocrisy! Meanwhile he becomes increasingly famous, spoken of on radio and television! Of course he becomes beloved of the hippies, and when he visits their pad they speak of peace and love; but the second he begins to fling coins into the air they grovel for the money like hens in the dirt! Then it’s time to put the gears to the bourgeoisie across town: a millionaire cataleptic’s wife and family, a greedy bunch, plots to kill him! Ha ha, they think they’ve succeeded when, after a sad trip to Rio, he returns home to find her apparently dead! She’s not, but she seems to be, and at her funeral, for reasons far to complicated to go into, her illicit lover must perform an act of bummery on her, right in front of the mourners! Finally Finis arrives and the cataleptic awakens, and there is a panic!

I’m not telling half of what happens in this incredible movie, but it’s all pretty great! Ha ha, there’s a surprise ending, too, involving a Sanitarium for Nervous Disorders, a freeze frame and the superimposed epigram “If it exists, it must have a reason to exist!” Ha ha! And the astonishingly eclectic soundtrack bears mentioning too! We hear moans and groans; a tinkly piano rendition of the theme from Goldfinger; a sad clarinet version of ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head;’ wild funk-trap beats; more moans and groans; and a tune that sounds like The Four Seasons mixed with the ignition sounds of a car that won’t start! And visually the movie is all over the place, with colour and black and white randomly shifting from scene to scene! Ha ha, it’s a real ride!

I’m sad that this singular filmmaker has passed on, and I hope that someone reading this who hasn’t seen the film is encouraged to look it up, or any of Marins’ work! Ha ha, it’s a whole world of new entertainment you’ll never see anywhere else! Finis Hominis in particular stands alone, with the only point of comparison I can think of being something like The Human Mule, or maybe Luis Luis, Folger of Men! Anyway, I give Finis Hominis three actors named BIG - BOY!