Saturday, July 27, 2013

A Brazilian Horror Movie?

I don't know if everyone has heard about the violent murder of a player and a referee at a Brazilian soccer game recently, but apparently what happened is that the referee gave a player a red card during a game in Sao Paolo, causing the player to get mad and start a fistfight with the referee, who then produced a knife, stabbing the player to death, which then caused the fans of the player in the crowd to run onto the field, stone the referee to death, after which he was decapitated, and his head was placed on a stake which was then stuck into the middle of the field. (They have stones inside soccer stadiums in Brazil? I'd think that might be kind of dangerous...) And this really happened earlier this month, no exaggeration. It's an absurd, practically cartoonish level of violence, and as such it's the kind of thing you'd expect to be the plot of some movie, isn't it? And that's why I think it ought to be.

So here's the movie this might inspire: a haunted soccer stadium/headless referee slasher movie! Here in America, we have ultra-violent, ultra-gory slasher horror movies about anything and everything, especially things that resonate in our society, like haunted schools, summer camp revenge killings, babysitter murders, real-life waking nightmares, etc. And there's just nothing that resonates in Brazilian society like soccer! And since this event is recent and I'm sure etched into everyone's memory down there, a movie could easily use an event like this as the background set-up for a horror movie. And some time during the movie, we'd see this back-story.

But the main plot of the movie would be about this supposedly haunted soccer field that gets renovated and re-opens for a tournament. Well, they play a bunch of games, and people report seeing a headless referee around the place, but everyone disregards these claims as attention-getting sensationalism, and requests by ghost-hunters and the like are rebuffed with contempt. Oh, but once the tournament reaches a fever-pitch, and the stadium starts selling out, people begin being found beheaded, which is dismissed by the police as simply more drug cartel violence, and covered-up by the venue managers to avoid losing money on the tournament. And when the final rolls around, the place is packed, and the vengeful ghostly headless referee strikes with bloody vengeance, locking all the gates to trap everyone inside, after which he attacks and beheads all the players, playing soccer with their severed heads (dribbling them around, shooting on the goal, etc.), and then moving on to the fans. It would be like Friday the 13th meets Sleepy Hollow meets soccer!

Is it in bad taste? Why, sure it is! But that's never stopped a horror movie before, has it? In fact, I'll bet that if they made a movie like this in Brazil, it would make mega-bucks, and all the controversy surrounding it would just make all the kids want to go and see it, like how all the controversy surrounding movies here make them wildly popular, and how controversy in Brazil made the Coffin Joe movies so successful there. Plus, while many American blockbuster horror films claim to be based on a true story, this one really would be.

Here's the story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/jul/07/brazilian-referee-decapitated-stabs-player