The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)


They were not the first movies that actor and director José Mojica Marins made, but they were the first horror films in Brazil.  Because of that Zé do Caixão, or Coffin Joe as he is known to English speakers, became a nationwide phenomena.  At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul and This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse became hits despite their low budget and the public was hungry for more.  Unfortunately there was a wait of over 40 years for a true sequel, but that didn't keep Coffin Joe from popping up here and there.

In this case it's the first movie after the two in the series.  The Strange World of Coffin Joe is an anthology film, directed by Marins and featuring him in the last segment, with a voiceover at the beginning.  The two previous films owed a lot to British and Italian horror of the time, and during the late 1960s many of the major European studios were releasing anthologies.  With the military junta looking the other way as long as filmmakers stayed out of politics Marins decided to use his anthology to push things further than many of his contemporaries dared at the time. 

After a voiceover from Zé do Caixão himself, followed by a long song about him written by Marins that plays over stills from the previous movies, we are introduced to the first segment, "The Dollmaker".  This is the more predictable one, about a group of robbers who decide to burglarize the home of an elderly dollmaker and then take advantage of his young daughters only to find out that things are not what they expected.  The second, "Tara", is about a lonely hunchbacked balloon vendor (George Michel Serkeis) who grows to love a high society woman (Iris Bruzzi) and continues to love her even after she has died.

The third and final segment is called "Ideology" and features a professor (Marins) aiming to prove to a skeptical reporter (Osvaldo de Souza) that love doesn't really exist and that all humans will revert to base animal instinct when pushed far enough.  To prove it he holds the reporter and his wife (Nidi Reis) hostage with the promise of releasing them if their love survives that long. 

The most interesting, though most revolting segment, is "Tara".  Although it has ambient sound it tells the story as if it were a silent film, mainly through expressions and gestures.  However, in a hint of things to come in many of his movies, this segment does everything except show the actual necrophilia, although it goes further than most movies would even today, save for the Canadian film Kissed.  This was an issue I had with most of this movie.  There is a tendency to linger on scenes, like the rape of the daughters in the first segment or the weird depravity in the last.  

It doesn't feel like Marins is doing this so much for pleasure or exploitation but to actually get a feature film out of this project.  Many of the scenes, whether they are gore scenes or just people talking or walking, go on far too long.  There seems to have been quite the effort to hit the 80-minute mark with this, filling in quite a bit with the opening monologue and song.  

There are parts of this that are quite surreal and remind me of the artsier side of Jesus Franco, but The Strange World of Coffin Joe is so disjointed and has so many drawn-out situations with nothing going on that, instead of being shocking in the way Marins wanted, it just becomes tedious.  

The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)
Time: 80 minutes
Starring: José Mojica Marins, Vany Miller, George Michel Serkeis, Iris Bruzzi, Osvaldo de Souza, Nidi Reis
Director: José Mojica Marins

 

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