The fisherman Peroá and his assistant Cavalo Cansado are fishing in a boat but they do not find any school of peroá (a Brazilian fish from Espírito Santo state). However they fish a ray and a strange creature that bites the arm of Peroá. They drop the creature into the sea and return to the village in the countryside where they live. They sell the few fishes that they have caught and Peroá goes home. His wife Indiara sews his arm and goes to the local bar tot buy meat for the lunch of her family. The owner of the bar, Otto, is a good man that buys the ray from a dealer and asks his employee Albino to clean the fish. Albino is a weird man that likes the occultism and has a crush on Indiara. He leaves the ray outside the bar to help her and the fish vanishes. Cavalo Cansado also likes Indiara and he disputes her attention with Albino.
Indiara is invited by her neighbor and friend to work in the kitchen of the Sururu's Club, owned by Madame Ursula, in the opening night of the cabaret. She leaves Peroá and her children Paulinho and Clara at home and goes to the cabaret. When Peroá wakes up, he turns into a zombie in the beginning of a gore night.
"Mar Negro" (meaning "Black Sea") is an insane zombie movie by Rodrigo Aragão, who is also the editor, and the goriest movie that I have seen since Peter Jackson's "Braindead". The story is regional in a poor location by the sea in the countryside of the Espírito Santo with fishermen, simple people, corrupt politician, militia, cabaret and prostitutes. Therefore people from overseas may have difficulties to understand the peculiarities of the typical characters. Madame Ursula's reaction with a machine gun seems to be inspired in a movie from Quentin Tarantino or Roberto Rodriguez
The cast has great performances considering that they are amateurs and the special effects are also great with lots of gore. But maybe the most impressive is the extremely low budget of R$ 300,000.00 (three hundred thousand reais) or US$ 123,500.00 (one hundred and twenty three thousand and five hundred dollars) to make this cult movie of the trash genre. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "Mar Negro" ("Black Sea")
