“With bar hostesses, there's a type who are likely to be murdered.”

“Stand by, there's trouble coming soon.”

– Bob Lawrence

Strategy for Bobby Fischer's birthday (1943).

 

People meticulously plan, move, and countermove in response to an invasion.

Turn on your television on the day* in 1926 John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working TV.

 

An unknown foreign agent manipulates Brazil's radio en television antennas to emit subliminal messages to the oblivious population. Slowly, society descends into violent chaos.

 

O 5º Poder precedes Ray Nelson's story Eight O'Clock in the Morning by one, and John Carpenter's adaptation They Live by 26 years. But what's much more fascinating is this film's place in Brazilian history: right between Professor Baskarán's – hypnotist Carlos Pedregal – televised mass hypnosis experiments from 1958, and the violent coup of 1964.

 

In how far was the population primed for this revolt? And how much, are you?

 

* In reality this was on January 26, 1926.

“So this is the team, ey? A priest, a detective near retirement, and a young moron rookie of a cop… Terrific.”

– Sgt. Ben Engleman

“Matto, caldo, soldi, morto… girotondo…”

“Why bother having money when you can spend other people's?”

– Philippe Greenleaf

“Mr. Cadell got a bad leg in the war for his courage. And you've got your sleeve in the celery, Mr. Phillip.”

– Mrs. Wilson