FrightFest review – Privadas de Sua Vidas (Bowels of Hell)

FrightFest review – Privadas de Sua Vidas (Bowels of Hell)

A minor figure in Gucius Gewdner and Gustavo Vinagre’s Brazilian horror farce is a gringa called Miss S Katka who keeps being miscalled ‘Kaka’ though haivng ‘Skat’ in her name is scarcely less shit-related and moreover she’s the disciple of a guru (producer Bruce LaBruce – a key figure in a weird sub-basement of cult cinema) who believes in foretelling the future by looking at droppings the way folk used to peer into chicken entrails.  Katka admits that most new agers seek serene dry places with crystals and good vibes but she’s decided she can do more good by seeking out the shittiest place on earth literally and psychically, which turns out to be downtown Sao Paolo.

This film is pretty much focused on toilets, which means that its 111 minute running time is a bit of an ask even for audiences disposed to sact jokes – the not dissimilar Scared Shitless is a much tighter, more satisfying picture.  Which isn’t to say that Privadas de Sua Vidas – literally ‘Deprived of Their Lives’ but with I suspect a pun in Portuguese about privvies which doesn’t translate – doesn’t have a lot going for it, even if it tackles a range of mostly easy targets – yet again, influencers are in for a merciless ribbing followed by a shitstorm and a big flush … and there are mildly progressive mixed messages via a non-binary character and a one-legged kid who get to be self-righteous terrorists while grown-ups deal with the consequences.  In a way, this is genuinely powerful – capturing, as does Meat Kills, the way that people who are in the right or firmly believe they are in the right feel justified in doing appalling things to a spectrum of people ranging from outright cartoonish villains to well-intentioned folk just trying to do their best for family.

Party planner ‘Malu’ (Martha Nowill) suffers a toilet-related trauma in a prologue – along with Drag, this film warns against standing on slippery bathroom porcelain – which means she uses a chamber pot rather than a flush toilet when she can but is otherwise suffering from a massive blockage and severe constipation all the while she’s organising a gender reveal party for an influencer neighbour.  A problem is that the mother-to-be is having twins, one of each sex, so the whole party is constructed around a damp squib – another is that Malu’s non-binary former daughter who now wants to be called Genesis (Benjamin) believes that gender reveal parties in general are tantamount to a war crime and teams up with an overlooked stepson to spike the punch with laxative.

All the while the toilets in the apartment building are infested with demonic entities and start consuming the residents in Troma-like squelchy shitty gag scenes.  The longtime custodian, who is being fired by the new owners and replaced with face recognition technology, is occasionally prevailed on to be heroic, but these people mostly refuse to be saved or helped in the future if it even slightly inconveniences them in the present – a theme unthinkable before the pandemic and all too believable now.  It’s crass and colourful, but takes a long time to get to the shitnado finale.