Jos?ɬ© Mojica Marins, better known to Brazilian audiences as his alter ego, Z?ɬ© do Caix?ɬ£o, or Coffin Joe, is a horror icon on par with Freddy Krueger or Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. He’s also something of an Ed Wood figure as well, as the films he has directed and starred in tend, um, er, not to be so technically polished, let’s just say. Actors look more like friends (or folks plucked right off the streets) than anyone likely to have a SAG card and none of it makes a whole lick of sense. Marins is, however, in the strictly defined sense of the term, a true auteur. I’m not saying that is either a good or bad thing, it’s just crystal clear who was in charge of the proceedings.

Coffin Joe is basically a supernatural undertaker who is both feared and hated by the locals in the village where he lives. He hates them back. He is above them, a rant-prone Nietzschean ?É?ìbermensch with a top hat, cape and excessively long fingernails. He rails a lot against God, the Devil, superstition and conventional morality (which he, Coffin Joe is above, natch). He wants a son to carry on his evil lineage, but his wives are always barren so he, like tortures them with bugs, gouges out their eyes and kills them and stuff, so he can take on another concubine. Then he starts to feel guilty about it and the films normally end with Coffin Joe getting his karmic just deserts. That’s more or less the plot of them. They don’t make any sense, for the most part, but as the series goes on Coffin Joe seems to become more powerful, meaner and scarier.

According to an interview that Jos?ɬ© Mojica Marins did with Vice, his first experience in a cinema was watching a film on venereal diseases and the experience set him on the course for the rest of his life. “I screamed and screamed, and that image never left my head. I think this scarred my childhood. So in all my horror films, I try to recreate, through the hell and purgatory that I filmed, but I never managed to portray the biggest horror of my life, a vagina full of gonorrhea.” You and David Cronenberg have a lot in common, buddy!

I was house-sitting a few years back and my friend had a box set of some Coffin Joe movies housed in a cardboard coffin. In fact it was pretty much all he had to watch lying around and it looked weird and so I gave it a chance. I’d never seen anything like it. Psychedelic, campy and misogynistic are only the first three adjectives that spring to mind. Confusing is another. For me, Coffin Joe films are best watched in 2x fast forward, but some parts are so loopy they demand your attention and don’t disappoint.

You could pretty much chose ANY moment from ANY Coffin Joe film at random and it would freak someone out, but I chose this scene near the final minutes of Awakening of the Beast. Dig his speech about womankind!

And although this is Marins, I’m not so sure this is actually a Coffin Joe movie, still check out his wacky version of Hell!!

The World of Coffin Joe (YouTube channel with many Coffin Joe movies)

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is great, a classic.

And it is Coffin Joe in the second clip, yes. I suppose it’s a scene from This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, the sequel to At Midnight…

Comparing Jose Mojica Marins to Ed Wood is insulting.

Marins is a master of surrealist horror, and shows more creativity in his films than Hollywood asshats like Michael Bay could ever dream of mustering.

And when viewed with the budgetary restraints Marins worked with in mind, his films are rather remarkable achievements.

Just a small correction: Jason was from Friday the 13th, not Halloween.

@VidVicious,

Thanks! Corrected now.

RM

Coop never told me he was a Brazilian film star, WTF?

That cropped image is taken from the poster for the Coffin Joe screening we put on this summer in Toronto, through Rue Morgue magazine (rue-morgue.com).

You can see the entertaining Q&A with him here: http://rue-morgue.com/blog/archives/2009/07/31/gore-met-and-the-coffin-joe-qa/

If you’re a CJ fan and like the poster, it’s available here: http://rue-morgue.com/shoppe_canada_posters.php

An entire issue on him here (scroll down): http://rue-morgue.com/shoppe_canada_issues.php

He also attended the premiere of his new film The Embodiment of Evil in Montreal for the FanTasia film festival. Footage of his wild appearance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhFxWBfaWwo

The man is a unabashed misogynist, although he plays it up to be controversial. Comparisons to Ed Wood are inaccurate; he’s actually a very creative filmmaker given the conditions he worked under, not to mention a political radical who really pissed off the government.

And he’s been very influential in the genre. Embodiment of Evil is a jaw-dropping film. We watch a lot a horror movies at the mag and I’ve never seen anything like it. Definitely a few shades of Jodorowsky surrealism in there. Beautifully shot too.

The trailer will give you a taste of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzW8rO3Iz6k

Thanks for posting about him.