#Jose Mojica Marins

[brokehorrorfan]

Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe will be released on November 28 via Arrow Video. The five-disc Blu-ray box set collects 10 films from Brazilian horror icon José Mojica Marins, better known as Coffin Joe.

It includes: 1964's At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, 1967's This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, 1968's The Strange World of Coffin Joe, 1970's Awakening of the Beast, 1971's The End of Man, 1972's When the Gods Fall Asleep, 1976's The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, 1977's Hellish Flesh, 1978's Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind, and 2008's Embodiment of Evil.

Each disc has its own Blu-ray case with reversible artwork by Butcher Billy. They're housed together in a slipcase with a book featuring new writing by Tim Lucas, Carlos Primati, Jerome Reuter, Amy Voorhees Searles, Kyle Anderson, and Paula Sacramento, a double-sided poster, and 12 double-sided art cards.

All 10 movies have been newly stored in 4K from the best available elements with original lossless mono audio (except Embodiment of Evil, which has lossless 2.0 and 5.1 audio). Special features are listed below, where you can also see more of the packaging.

Disc 1: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

Audio commentary by José Mojica Marins, filmmaker Paulo Duarte, and film scholar Carlos Primati (Portuguese with English subtitles)

Video essay by Lindsay Hallam (new)

Damned: The Strange World of José Mojica Marins - 2001 documentary

Bloody Kingdom - Marins’ first short film with director’s commentary

Excerpts from early works by Marins

Trailer

Disc 2: This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse / The Strange World of Coffin Joe

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse audio commentary by José Mojica Marins, filmmaker Paulo Duarte, and film scholar Carlos Primati (Portuguese with English subtitles)

The Strange World of Coffin Joe audio commentary by José Mojica Marins, filmmaker Paulo Duarte, and film scholar Carlos Primati (Portuguese with English subtitles)

Interview with film historian Stephen Thrower (new)

Video essay by Miranda Corcoran looking Coffin Joe as horror host (new)

The Strange World of Coffin Joe alternate ending with commentary by Marins

Trailers

Disc 3: Awakening of the Beast / The End of Man

Awakening of the Beast audio commentary by José Mojica Marins, filmmaker Paulo Duarte, and film scholar Carlos Primati (Portuguese with English subtitles)

The End of Man audio commentary by José Mojica Marins, filmmaker Paulo Duarte, and film scholar Carlos Primati (Portuguese with English subtitles)

Interview with Guy Adams on Marins’ esoteric aspects (new)

Video essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on the gender politics of Marins’ films (new)

The Awakening of the Beast alternate opening titles

Trailers

When the Gods Fall Asleep / The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures

Interview with Virginie Sélavy on surrealism in Marins’ work (new)

Interview with Jack Sargeant (new)

Interview with Embodiment of Evil co-writer Dennison Ramalho (new)

Footage of Marins at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival

A Blind Date for Coffin Joe short film

Trailer

Disc 5: Hellish Flesh / Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind

Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind commentary by José Mojica Marins, editor Nilcemar Leyart, Paulo Duarte, and Carlos Primati (Portuguese with English subtitles)

Interview with Andrew Leavold on Marins’ place in '60s & '70s Marginal Cinema (new)

Video essay by Kat Ellinger (new)

Trailers

Disc 6: Embodiment of Evil

Audio commentary by producer Paulo Sacramento and co-writer Dennison Ramalho (Portuguese with English subtitles)

Interview with Dennison Ramalho (new)

Interview in which Ramalho pays tribute to Marins

Footage of Marins at the film’s premiere

Making Of featurette

Experimental Making Of featurettes

Multiple featurettes with commentary by Marins

Trailer

Additional contents:

Collector’s book with new writing by Tim Lucas, Carlos Primati, Jerome Reuter, Amy Voorhees Searles, Kyle Anderson, and Paula Sacramento

Double-sided poster with artwork by Butcher Billy

12 double-sided art cards

Cultural icon, anti-establishment statement, sadistic lord of carnival horror! With his long fingernails, top hat and cape, Coffin Joe was the creation of Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins, who wrote, directed and starred in a series of outrageous movies from 1964 to 2008.

Pre-order Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe.

[roseillith]

Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (1967) dir. Jose Mojica Martins

[mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves]

An underrated scary movie?

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

[patart-illustrations-stuff]

"O que é a vida? É o princípio da morte. O que é a morte? É o fim da vida. O que é a existência? É a continuidade do sangue. O que é o sangue? É a razão da existência"Zé do Caixão- À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma

[fuckyeahfightlock]

Scary movie today was The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968). An anthology of three short exploitation films, nominally hosted by Coffin Joe (Zé do Caixão), a character created by Brazilian filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins, who was featured in some of Brazil's first horror films and later became a horror host on television. With his wolfish unibrow, thick beard, and long, curled fingernails (as well as his anti-Catholic, amoral philosophy), Coffin Joe became a sort of boogeyman in Brazil, sometimes called "Brazil's Freddy Krueger."

The Strange World of Coffin Joe (after a long opening credits sequence playing under a ballad about Coffin Joe, full of horror stills that don't come from this film) comprises first "The Dollmaker," a simple morality play wherein four men overhear that a local dollmaker, whose dolls are known for their beautiful eyes, has four daughters and a lot of cash. They rob the dollmaker, causing him to faint from his heart problems, then rape his daughters, each of whom exclaims that her attacker has such lovely eyes! You guessed it. . .the dolls' eyes are human eyes. Full of gratuitous nudity and simulated sex, ending with a gotcha that reminds the viewer what doing the wrong thing can lead to (your severed, eyeless head lying on a barn floor), this is typical 1960s unrated horror with a heaping side helping of sex.

The second and perhaps most compelling film is "Obsession," in which a vagrant selling toy balloons on the street becomes enamoured of a local woman, whom he watches from a distance, through her windows, following her around, etc. One day she goes shopping and drops one of her many packages, a shoebox. The vagrant tries to return the shoes but fails as the woman drives away. Later he watches from the sidewalk as she and her groom emerge from the church on her wedding day. A woman (presumably the groom's jilted ex?) stabs and kills her, and she is laid out in her coffin in her wedding gown. Once the mourners leave the mausoleum, the vagrant enters, undresses and rapes her corpse (there is one unintentionally hilarious shot from the side of the coffin where all we can see is a single, impossibly upright naked breast above the level of the casket's sidewall), then produces her lost pair of shoes and places them on her bare feet. The film contains no dialogue, only music, and while the subject matter is ultimately as unsettling as it can get, the acting is quite good (though in typical 1960s presentational style) and the obsessed vagrant comes across more as a teary-eyed, lost soul than a mwahaha! villain stalking a pretty girl, which makes the scenario that much more distressing to watch.

The final film in the anthology, "Theory," features "the professor" (Coffin Joe himself, professing all his Nietschian philosophy; I'm not sure why the character is a professor and not just Coffin Joe) inviting a couple to his home to discuss his theories. He shows them a living display of depravity in his cellar--a couple of orgies with and without sado/masochistic whipping and piercing, zombie-like men abusing a chained-up woman, man-on-man cannibalism, all the tropes of exploitation horror--while he drones on about breaking humans' wills to reveal their basest instincts, then takes the couple captive and tortures them for seven days, pitting them against each other in tests of their devotion, removing the civility and religion that prevents them from their true, animal nature. The visuals are repellant--more nudity, simulated sex, sado/masochism, etc, etc--but I'm sure the anti-religious aspect was equally horrifying to largely Catholic audiences in the 1960s.

This interested me as a film buff and horror buff (I also remembered Coffin Joe from mentions of the character in a book my ex owned in the early '90s called Incredibly Strange Films), but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to a casual horror fan as it's a very particular kind of horror film (moral horror, copious gore, sex sex sex where only the women are nude [or wearing huge white underpants and conical bras] and 80% of it is nonconsensual, just pure horror/exploitation) and there are more entertaining films in the genre, as well as better anthology films.

I might try one of the actual Coffin Joe movies (At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul; This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, Embodiment of Evil) someday, but no time soon. This film is a curiosity, firmly of its time and place, predictable and un-frightening, though at times truly unsettling.

[fitsofgloom]

"Oh, and one last favor. If you pass by Heaven, give my regards to the angels. But if you end up in Hell, give my address to the Devil."

[roserosette]

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, 1967, José Mojica Marins

[loyal-to-cinema]

“At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul” (1964) José Mojica Marins

[mater-argento]

[ladyphibes]

[kekwcomics]

COFFIN JOE.

"In person!"

[mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves]

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964, José Mojica Marins, Brazil)

[thanatologia666]

[reallybradjones]

[cosmonautroger]

[fitsofgloom]

The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures