Claudiano Filho

A great mystery surrounds Leonora, and it becomes even more mysterious when a stranger arrives from Buenos Aires looking for her, saying he knows her. In love with her, he is desperate when they say she is dead. Not believing what they say, he continues his search. But upon finding her, he is faced with a cruel and unexpected enigma.

Maos Sangrentas translates to Bloody Hands in English, and that's just what this gruesome Brazilian melodrama delivers. The story begins when a gang of dangerous convicts escape from a penal colony. With the police in hot pursuit, the escapees cut a gory swath through the countryside. As his comrades are killed off one by one, the leader of the group descends into gibbering madness. In contrast to this, a subplot develops involving the least dangerous of the escapees, who murdered his wife in a peak of self-righteous rage and is now seriously in doubt about the wisdom of his deed. Principal scenes reworked in 1962 to make the film The Violent and the Damned (q.v.).