Arrow Video would like to take you on a strange journey. A journey Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe. In 1964, Brazil’s first ever horror film was released. Titled À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma or At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul it introduced the world to the character of Zé do Caixão or Coffin Joe, played by the film’s director José Mojica Marins. Joe is an undertaker who always wears a black suit, a black cape, a black top hat, and has fingernails so long that he could use them in place of chopsticks.
This film was followed up in 1967 by the catchily titled This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, but it wouldn’t be until 2008 that the “Coffin Joe Trilogy” would be concluded with the final film Embodiment of Evil which espouses the needfully black and white gothic, giallo stylings of the original films for rather more straight-forward gore. The themes of all three movies are roughly the same, focusing on Joe’s quasi-Nietzschean beliefs in his own will and strength, and his single-minded pursuit of immortality through blood – namely his quest to find the “perfect” woman to bear him a son and ensure that his bloodline will live on.
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As well as the main three Coffin Joe films, there are all sorts of other delights to explore here. The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) is a horror anthology of three really well-done and entertaining short films introduced by the man himself. This was followed up in 1970 by the not quite as good The Awakening of the Beast which follows a psychiatrist with a casual grasp of ethics as he runs quasi-scientific experiments with LSD.
1971’s The End of Man is a genuinely funny black comedy about a man they dub Finis Hominis who wanders naked into a town and ends up gathering this strange messianic cult around him who believe he’s some kind of holy man. 1972’s When the Gods Fall Asleep continues in a similar kind of vein, as our wandering messiah returns to take on the wrongs of society and root out corruption!
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Coffin Joe returns in 1976’s The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures and this time he’s changed jobs from undertaker to humble innkeeper. His guests, however, quickly find that the “Hostel of Pleasures” is more like ‘Hotel California’. They can check out anytime they want, but they can never leave! Marins returns in 1977 to star in Hellish Flesh, playing scientist George Mederios rather than Coffin Joe himself, and is one of the more conventional films in his filmography, being a pretty straight-forward tale of a cheating wife attempting to bump her husband off so she can go marry someone else.
The last film to feature Coffin Joe before his glorious 2008 technicolour return is 1978’s Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind which seems to be something of a clip show movie about another psychiatrist who is driven insane and has terrible visions of Coffin Joe, the movie featuring hell scenes that have shown up in his previous works. This one is definitely the least coherent of the movies on offer but you can’t argue that it didn’t live up to its title!
At the time they were made, these movies were controversial to say the least, delighting in thumbing their nose at both the military government that was in power at the time as well as the hugely powerful Catholic church. Marins had a lot of problems with the censors in Brazil, for perhaps obvious reasons when a running theme throughout his work is the corruption of those of power and the mockery of religion as meaningless superstition.
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There is one other theme that runs throughout most of these films, and that is going to necessitate a trigger warning for those who might be thinking about investigating Coffin Joe: there is a whole lot of graphic, extended violence against women in these films. Women are beaten, tortured, abused and in many cases seen as little more than objects to be won, used or discarded. The men in these films definitely don’t escape unscathed, but there’s a particular focus on women thanks to Joe’s distinctly sexist beliefs, so consider yourself forewarned.
This new release from Arrow Video collects ten films spread over six discs. Each is a brand new restoration, mostly from the original 35mm negatives, or from the film print, with the exception of Embodiment of Evil. There’s no real need to do a restoration job on a movie that came out in 2008 and still looks damn good. One quick thing to note is that for anyone who isn’t a fan of subtitles, you’re going to be out of luck with this set. None of these films have an English dub, all are presented in Portuguese with English subtitles, and the same goes for the commentary tracks.
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In terms of special features they are, as we’ve come to expect from Arrow, extensive. Almost every film has a commentary track with Marins himself as well as others (save for Embodiment of Evil). There are extensive interviews, essays, trailers, and more, with so much on offer it’s not really practical to try and list them in a single review! Suffice to say that if you’re looking for supplemental content to give further insight and context to these films and their place in the horror canon, you won’t be disappointed.
How to sum up this offering? Given the size and scope, it’s unlikely that it’s going to be a purchase for anyone who doesn’t already know who Coffin Joe is, or who isn’t already familiar with the strange, dark, violent and sometimes outright funny works of José Mojica Marins. Unless they happen to be desperate to get into the world of Brazilian horror and guerrilla filmmaking, perhaps! Arrow tops off this solid offering of films with a double-sided poster, 12 art cards and a collector’s book, extras that make this set an easy sell to any Coffin Joe fan.
Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe is out on Limited Edition Blu-ray on 15th January from Arrow Video.
