If you have spent enough time in the darker corners of internet film forums or trawling through vintage VHS rip sites, you may have encountered a specific, elongated search string: "amorestranhoamorlovestrangelove1982vhs+exclusive."
To the uninitiated, it looks like a glitch or a spam bot's fever dream. But to cinephiles and collectors of forbidden cinema, those jumbled letters represent a holy grail of Brazilian cult cinema. It points to Amor Estranho Amor (Love Strange Love), a 1982 film that occupies a unique, controversial, and strangely nostalgic space in film history.
But what exactly is this film, and why does a specific VHS rip of it command such a dedicated, almost mythological status online?
For decades, the primary driver of the film’s notoriety has been the presence of Xuxa. In the early 1980s, before she was a family entertainment mogul hosting variety shows for children, she was an actress and model taking on mature roles.
Her role in Amor Estranho Amor—specifically a scene involving a seduction and the famous "watermelon" sequence—became a point of massive contention later in her career. As Xuxa became a symbol of innocence for a generation of Latin American children in the late 80s and 90s, her past in Amor Estranho Amor was viewed as a liability. amorestranhoamorlovestrangelove1982vhs+exclusive
For years, rumors persisted that Xuxa tried to buy the rights to the film to destroy it, ensuring it would never be screened again. While the extent of these efforts is often debated, the film was effectively buried. It did not receive wide home video releases in the US or Europe, and original Brazilian VHS tapes became incredibly scarce.
This suppression is the catalyst for the legend. In the world of cult cinema, if you try to hide a movie, you only make it more desirable.
The philosophical debate among collectors is fierce. One camp argues that amorestranhoamorlovestrangelove1982vhs+exclusive is a zero-value objet trouvé—a mistake, a copyright infringement, a forgotten rental nobody returned. The other camp argues it is the purest form of cinema: a film so obscure it can only exist in memory and magnetic decay.
Given the keyword's structure (lowercase, no spaces, a mashup of three languages), it is also plausible this was a test listing on a Mercado Livre (the Brazilian eBay) auction in 2005. Someone typed every possible search term into the title field to game the algorithm. That seller likely never sold the tape. It is probably still sitting in a box, next to a Betamax player, waiting. If you have spent enough time in the
In the early 80s, some Brazilian VHS distributors had “Exclusive” or “Clube Exclusivo” labels — essentially mail-order or video club editions not available in regular stores. These often had:
The “Amor Estranho Amor” 1982 VHS Exclusive is a genuine ultra-rare collectible item from Brazilian cult/exploitation cinema, but it sits in a legally and ethically grey area. If you’re a researcher or serious physical media collector with proper context, it’s a holy grail. If you’re just curious, be aware that most digital copies found online are from later DVD releases (2000s), not the original exclusive VHS.
Would you like help identifying a specific copy (e.g., photos, labels) or finding a safe archival source for study?
Here is where the mystery deepens. Try to find "Amor Estranho" or "Strange Love" (1982) on IMDb. You will fail. Check WorldCat. Nothing. Latin American film databases? A ghost. "A lonely telephone operator in Copacabana (Zuleika de
According to oral history shared in Brazilian forums like Fórum Antigo Vinil e Fitas and abandoned GeoCities archives, Amor Estranho was allegedly directed by a man named Sérgio R. Motta (unrelated to the politician). The plot, as reconstructed from three surviving forum posts (now deleted), is pure erotic arthouse delirium:
"A lonely telephone operator in Copacabana (Zuleika de Paula) begins receiving calls from a British spy who has died in the Falklands War. Through the static, they fall in love. Desperate, she steals a military frequency to find 'Strange Love'—a frequency that turns her apartment into a black-and-white noir landscape. The final twenty minutes have no dialogue, only the sound of a rewinding tape and bossa nova played backward."
Sounds insane? That is because it might be a hoax. Or it might be the most important lost film of Brazilian marginal cinema.