Dr. Hamílton (Jorge Peres) is a psychiatrist who is having nightmares in which Coffin Joe is taking his wife. He seeks help from filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins, who assures him that he created Coffin Joe, who doesn’t really exist.
There are only 35 minutes of new footage in this movie with the rest coming from censored scenes from past films including Awakening of the Beast, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe and The Strange World of Coffin Joe.
By this point, even though it’s mentioned several times in this movie that Coffin Joe was not real, he has become real. He has become more than an idea and is Brazil’s national boogeyman. He exists in our imagination as real as an actual living being. Kind of like, oh you know, Freddy Kreuger, who took a similar path 16 years later.
It’s also a great way to get out all the strangest stuff that couldn’t be seen in the past. Sure, it’s barely connected, but if you’re looking for a Coffin Joe mixtape to put on with some fuzzed out music for a party, well, this is it.
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of the movies of Coffin Joe stares into your eyes. Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind has commentary from Marins, editor Nilcemar Leyart, Paulo Duarte and Carlos Primati in Portuguese with English subtitles, You can get this set from MVD.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. His idea this time was for a series on movies that started as one film and were dubbed into something else.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
The Naked Monster started in 1984 when director Ted Newsom was bet that he couldn’t make a movie for $2,500. He released the original version, Attack of the B-Movie Monster, on VHS a year later. To make it, he “hauled out the old scripts, took gags and lines and did a 25-page script which condensed things to manageable size. That version of the project was designed as a half-hour short that could be shot in about four weekends (plus the time for effects). On that basis, I asked Wayne Berwick to direct Attack of the B-Movie Monster, since I was producing and had drawn the storyboards for both the live action and effects shots.”
In 2005, a new version was made for DVD. If you watched a lot of old 1950s monster movies, you will understand so many of the references. A sheriff (R.G. Wilson), his scientist girlfriend (Brinke Stevens) and a visiting government agent (John Goodwin) discover that the Creaturesaurus erectus is back and destroying California. To help, they call upon Colonel Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey, playing the same role from the original The Thing From Another World), as well as monster experts that include Clete Ferguson (John Agar from Revenge of the Creature), Major Allison (Robert Clarke from Beyond the Time Barrier), Dr. Carrington (Robert O. Cornthwaite, also reprising his The Thing from Another World part), Professor Bradshaw (Robert Shayne from Indestructible Man) and Officer Kelton (Paul Marco from Plan 9 from Outer Space). There are also appearances by Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer and Forrest J. Ackerman.
I would advise just understanding that this is a ZAZ Brothers style send-up of 50s monster movies and allow yourself to enjoy the rapid fire jokes and silliness. Not every one lands, but those that do are pretty good.
Directed and co-written (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) by Jose Mojica Marins — the alter ego of Coffin Joe — Hellish Flesh is the tale of Dr. George Medeiros (Marins) and his wife Rachel (Luely Figueiró). He’s quite the scientist. But he’s neglecting his gorgeous bride over the need for science, so she hooks up with his best friend Oliver (Oswaldo De Souza). Together, they come up with a plan to kill him and take his money. Step one is throwing acid in his face. Step two is spending all his money. Yet he didn’t die during step one, so you better believe that he will come for revenge. Except that when he does come home, he doesn’t seem upset at all. As for Oliver, well, after spending most of his friend’s money, he got stabbed by another lover, leaving Rachel alone.
This is a movie filled with screaming and while strange, it doesn’t enter into the world of the Coffin Joe films. He doesn’t descend a staircase of naked women or go to Hell and learn that he is Satan. But still, it’s a movie where an acid-deformed scientist works on his revenge and even when making a morality story, Marins still can’t make a normal movie.
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of the movies of Coffin Joe should be owned by every child. Hellish Flesh has extras including an interview with Andrew Leavold on Marins’ place in 60s and 70s Marginal Cinema and a new video essay by Kat Ellinger. You can get this set from MVD.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. His idea this time was for a series on movies that started as one film and were dubbed into something else.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
The Lightning Bug — voice by DJ Machine Gun Kelly, not the Cleveland waste of time rapper but the host of seven weekly programs who also shows up in The Fifth Floor, Roller Boogie and Voyage of the Rock Aliens — is taking over the world with sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and five different costumes. Five costumes? That’s because this movie uses footage from Undersea Kingdom, The Fighting Devil Dogs, Mysterious Doctor Satan, Adventures of Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Captain America, The Masked Marvel, The Crimson Ghost — someone alert Glenn — as well as The Black Widow and Zombies of the Stratosphere.
Also known as The Day the Earth Got Stoned and The Second World War, this has Firesign Theater members Peter Bergman as The Chief and Philip Proctor as Agent Barton. They explain what’s going on as the J-Men battle evil. Yes, thrill to the adventures of Yank Smellfinger, James Armhole, Buzz Cufflink, Agents Spike, Claire and Lance, Rocket Jock (Commando Cody from Radar Men from the Moon), the Lone Star (Captain America), the Caped Madman (Captain Marvel), Spy Swatter (Spy Smasher), Sleeve Coat, Juicy Withers and Admiral Balzy, who work with the FCC (Federal Culture Control) to battle the evil army of MUSAC (Military Underground Sugared Airwaves Command).
Even if it seems like the J-Men have died, don’t worry. They get out of everything by the end of the movie.
Using music by Budgie, The Tubes, Head East, Billy Preston and Badazz, this movie became a cult favorite thanks to how many times it was shown on USA’s Night Flight. It was directed by Richard Patterson, who made a Western film like this in 1976 titled Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch. He also made documentaries on Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. It was written by Bergman and Proctor.
Dr. Valerie Cross (Louise Linton, who was in the 2015 remake of Cabin Fever) is one of those people who seemingly does it all. She’s a professor of literature and psychology at Berkeley. The author of two children’s books and two novels about an antihero serial killer named Jason Manson with a third — and a $3 million offer just to write it — on the way. She used to be the lover of her agent Leonard (William Baldwin, once the villain of an American giallo in Sliver, now just content to be the big name in the credits) but after disappearing for two months took up with David (Pierson Fode), the owner of a gym where everyone — Hannah (Christy St. John), Thomas (Quinton Guyton), Tori (Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez) and Angela (Jackie Moore) — are all investigating the Harbinger serial killer.
David seems creepy — he claims he doesn’t have to breathe — and Valerie seems fragile, but things get even stranger when Angela hangs herself after claiming she knows who the killer is. It seems like she suspects David, who she’s also sleeping with — David and Valerie don’t believe in the archaic institution of marriage — and she also has a boyfriend Matthew (David Wachs) who was planning on scamming her to pay back Ian (William McNamara).
As Valerie goes to a cabin in Tahoe — and everyone else at Mixtape Fitness, their gym, quits due to their fear of the killer — she nearly dies when the brakes fail. This brings her into the orbit of Sophia (Joana Metrass), a restaurant owner whose husband died in his sleep. And now Matthew has moved in next door to start scamming them.
Everyone is beautiful but everyone is crazy. If this were the 90s, we’d call this an erotic thriller. If it was the 70s, it would be a giallo. In 2023, it’s a Tubi original.
Directed by Brian Skiba and written by Sean Crayne, this finds Valerie and David being the suspects in the murder of Angela while more girls go missing. Matthew believes that everything that Valerie is writing about in her books is actually the true things that David tells her, proving that he’s the Harbinger. Matthew starts blackmailing them, asking for Bitcoin.
David starts wiping out everyone while they swim and rock climb all while Valerie sighs and hangs out with Sophia at ladies night. She nearly warned Thomas in time, but then David shows up when he starts his car and it blows up real good.
Man, Sophia has a lot of questions, getting out that Vanessa and David met on the Isle of Bondi when she was writing a children’s book. She was kidnapped and nearly murdered and then David saved her, which became the premise for her first Jason Manson book. Let’s take a break for a second here. She’s a best-selling writer and no one was like, “You named your serial killer character Jason Manson. A little on the nose?”
While our female protagonist is flirting with Sophia at the bar and dealing with the blackmailer, David is busy, knifing women. When she gets home, David accuses her of being the person blackmailing them. They argue, she shoves him and he hits his head, bleeding all over the kitchen. As she cleans up, the cops call to tell her that all of her gym team are dead.
Cut to Leo as Valerie calls him for advice on David’s injury. He brings his own doctor (James Moses Black) instead of dealing with a girl who just wrote a book, Confessions of a Cult. David gets stitched up and has a concussion. Also: David is such a sociopath that he chews he pills instead of swallowing them.
David then relates the story of how he had a dog named Luna as a child and instead of giving it back to its rightful owner, he set it on fire and watched it burn. He then tells Valerie that he will never hurt her and kisses her in a way that says, “I am going to set you on fire.”
While all this is happening, Valerie gets with Sophia as Leo comes with the contract for the book deal. Slicing limes for tequila turns into David stabbing Matthew but missing and killing Leo. He’s such a great serial killer that he leaves blood all over the place, then someone knocks out Valerie and duct tapes her arms behind her back. And oh yeah, Sophia did kill her husband.
Nobody in this seems human. Where is the Gregory Dark of today that can make these erotic thrillers and have tension, heat and an actual story? People just arrive, drop exposition or more mystery, and then either have PG-rated makeout scenes or get killed.
Anyhow…
Valerie finds Sophia being hung, just like how Angela got killed. Matt is behind it all and David is poisoned by the tequila that knocked everyone out. Meanwhile, Matt is getting his bitcoin and then Valeria reveals that she and David killed Angela. Somehow, David is able to throw everyone into a rowboat and take them all out onto Lake Tahoe, then toss them overboard with cinderblocks tied to them. How strong is this guy?
David wakes up and everyone goes into the water and we get the closed captioned description “muffled bubbles” which makes me laugh out loud. Val is saved at the last minute by Sophia as David and Matt go down together. Of course, David lives, Jason Manson is dead and the Harbinger is gone as well. There will be a new Jason Manson novel and Sophia is her new inspiration. Val is going to Rome and she invites David to win her back.
Oh man, what a goofy movie. Pretty people doing dumb things and having unsexy sex is a better genre when it has fog, neon and sax solos, as the 90s proved to us all.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. His idea this time was for a series on movies that started as one film and were dubbed into something else.
Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!
Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?
The Firesign Theatre was an American surreal comedy group that first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on Radio Free Oz on station KPFK FM in Los Angeles. In their career, they produced fifteen record albums and one single and had three nationally syndicated radio programs, The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour, Dear Friends and Let’s Eat!
Created by Peter Bergman, all of their material was conceived, written and performed by Bergman, Philip Proctor, Phil Austin and David Ossman. They have the name as all four were born under the three fire signs of astrology, with Austin being an Aries, Proctor a Leo and Bergman and Ossman both Sagittarius.
The comedy of the group was based on fooling people. Proctor said, “We each independently created our own material and characters and brought them together, not knowing what the others were going to pull. And it was all based on put-ons; that is, we were assuming characters that were assumed to be real by the listeners. No matter how far out we would carry a premise, if we were tied to the phones we discovered the audience would go far ahead of us. We could be as outrageous as we wanted to be and they believed us—which was astonishingly funny and interesting and terrifying to us, because it showed the power of the medium and the gullibility and vulnerability of most people.”
With titles like How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All and Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, their concept albums could be about nothing. Or also about people growing old as they watched TV. They were unlike anything else at the time or since, to be perfectly truthful.
After a break in 1973, the group reformed and went after new targets. Everything You Know Is Wrong attacked the New Age before some people even knew what it was. Ossman referred to it as a “complicated and cinematic record, we were trying to write a radio movie.” Working with Allen Daviau, who would later be the cinematographer of so many Spielberg movies, they used the album as a soundtrack for a film that was released in 1993.
For most of the 70s, the Firesigns were quiet. Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin’s Tandem Productions bought the rights to their character Nick Danger for a TV series that would star George Hamilton and New Line wanted to make a movie from the same stories with Chevy Chase. The group did make five episodes of a show called Nick Danger: The Case of the Missing Shoe for radio, which was pretty much a dying format, and when it wasn’t sold, they released it on an EP.
Proctor and Bergman made J-Men Forever and then Austin and Bergman finally reunited to start performing again. However, when Reagan was in office, the political waters were not safe for the group. They faded, only to reappear later in the 80s. As Bergman said, “I dreamed it back. Sure enough, when we kicked the fascists out of office it was time for the Firesign Theatre to come back.” They lasted until the 2010s and claimed to be the longest surviving group from the classic rock era to still be intact with the original members. Sadly, Bergman would die in 2012 and his memorial would be their last performance. Austin died in 2015.
As for the movies that they worked on, the Western musical Zachariah is one. They were also involved with Tunnel Vision, Americathon and Nick Danger in The Case of the Missing Yolk, which was an interactive video game that became a movie and was shown — just like J-Men Forever — on USA’s Night Flight.
Just like the aforementioned — twice — J-Men Forever, this is a series of old movie serials redubbed into entirely new stories by the Firesigns. Daughters of the Canadian Mounties becomes The Mounties Catch Herpes. Panther Girls of the Congo transforms into Claws II. Spy Smasher presents a world where no one lights up anymore in Revenge of the Non-Smokers. Sperm Bank Hold-Up is The BlackWidow. Nazi Diet Doctors is Darkest Africa. Toy Wars has turned into Manhunt of MysteryIsland. Olympic Confidential transforms into Undersea Kingdom. The Last Handgun On Earth is Radar Men from the Moon. Heaven Is Hell is dubbed and turned into She Demons.
Luckily, we live in a world where you can find this on the internet. The humor is silly but you can see that Mystery Science Theater 3000 was influenced by how the Firesigns dubbed these movies. As someone who loves both serials and stupidity, I loved every moment of this.
This film begins with dancing women, native Brazilian drummers and an old man who chants over a coffin which opens to reveal…begins chanting over a closed coffin. The coffin opens and a man rises. Zé do Caixão! Coffin Joe!
At an isolated inn — “Hospedaria dos Prazeres” (Hostel of Pleasures) — the owner (Jose Mojica Marins, who is also Coffin Joe) turns away some and allows others already in the guest book to stay. Those without a place to stay are enraged, as after all, there’s a storm outside. Yet he has room for hedonistic Hell’s Angels, a couple sneaking out on their respective partners, a man ready to kill himself, gamblers out to bankrupt someone and criminals escaping their last robbery.
When they wake up in the morning, all of the clocks and their watches are set to midnight. That’s because they’re all in Hell and the absence of time is one of the many things they must deal with, as well as having to watch their deaths again and again. The owner warns them all that they don’t want to see his evil side — Coffin Joe.
One of the rich men who argued about getting to stay the night before leads the police to the hotel. In its place is a graveyard, where we eventually see the owner. As the camera zooms in, his face is replaced by a skull with bleeding eye sockets.
This is a Cinema da Boca do Lixo (Mouth of Garbage films), called that because they were made in that downtown neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil. These films — Killed the Family and Went to the Movies, The Red Light Bandit, Awakening of the Beast — are down and dirty exploitation films that are close to American exploitation of the 70s with sex and violence often in equal measure.
This is worth watching just for the opening speech from Coffin Joe: “Live to die or die to live? Is there an answer? No! Only doubts! Only deductions… Only the conviction of emptiness… of loneliness… the desperate search for the whole and the nothing in the vastness of the dark. The unveiling of this enigma would be the end of the mystery. The end of the secret of eternity. The apogee of happiness. The mission is accomplished! Men would be facing his biggest conquest… the awakening of his own origin.”
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection of Coffin Joe walks with you when it is night. The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures has a new interview with Dennison Ramalho (co-writer of Embodiment of Evil), footage of Marins at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and A Blind Date for Coffin Joe, a short film by Raymond “Coffin Ray” Castile.
Here’s the review for that movie.
On Raymond Castile’s website, he posted some photos dressed up like Coffin Joe. They looked incredible.
In April of 2006, he learned that the real Coffin Joe — Jose Mojica Marins — had visited this page and loved it. Even better, in October of that year, Mojica and Dennison Ramalho, assistant director of the upcoming Encarnacao do Demonio asked Castile to be in the movie, playing the younger Ze do Caixao in a scene that would connect the final film in the trilogy with This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse.
Check out Diary do Demonio, his diary about traveling to Sao Paulo, Brazil to play Coffin Joe.
After this, he made The Blind Date of Coffin Joe in which Coffin Joe moves to America and starts his own reality dating show. If you’ve never seen a Coffin Joe movie, you probably won’t get the jokes. If you have, it’s absolutely hilarious with Castile looking, sounding and acting exactly like Ze do Caixao as he faces modern dating, all in the hopes of finding a superior woman to give birth to his child.
From Fly Girl on In Living Color to being a diva whose name got shortened because it is so iconic, J. Lo has been a major force in entertainment since the 90s. Her first starring roles in Selena, Anaconda, Out of Sight and The Cell showed that she had a good eye for picking movies and yes, perhaps her career suffered after Gigli, but she’s always found a way to come back, whether its in music, television or films, as 2019’s Hustlers showed that she still was a solid actress.
If you’re a fan, you’ll know all this TMZ show has to tell you about her. But that’s what these Tubi TMZ shows are for, an overview on a star and their life. J. Lo has so much to get into, from her career to her many loves and how she’s owned herself throughout every twist. Even someone like me who barely watches popular movies can point several of her movies that I’ve seen. I mean, I have watched Enough so many times alone. If I even mention her to my wife, that means that I will have to watch it again. Some say she’s the Elizabeth Taylor of our era. Watch this and decide for yourself.
Embracing the socially conscious — yet still exploitative — black humor and tongue in cheek style of the Brazilian Mouth of Garbage Cinema (Boca do Lixo), the man known as Coffin Joe — José Mojica Marins — directed co-wrote (with Rubens Francisco Luchetti) and stars in this story of a man named Finis Hominis who rises naked from the ocean and walks through the streets of the city, changing the world.
After helping a woman in a wheelchair to walk, protecting a woman and her child from a gang and then being given the finest in clothing, he walks to a church where he drinks Holy Water and is proclaimed Finis Hominis, the end of man. He brings the dead back to life, gathers followers and upsets the leaders of the world until he announces that he must return home. And that is an insane asylum. And this has happened before.
A messiah and an insane person may be the same. That seems like what Marins is saying in a film that avoids his traditional horror look, feel and main character and instead, trips out.
Arrow Video’s limited edition collection for Coffin Joe is perfect. The End of Man has commentary with Marins, Paulo Duarte and Carlos Primati in Portuguese with English subtitles. You can get this set from MVD.
In the middle of a fire, the online world of the Citizen App spills into Los Angeles, which has been ignited in more ways than one as the calls on the app turn into a vigilante mob looking for someone who may not even be a suspect.
Directed by Paula Neudorf, who worked on the series Cyberwar, this VICE News show has someone who worked at the company saying, “If your app protects the world, you know, and you hurt one person, maybe it’s not the biggest deal.”
Using leaked Slack chats, company information and interviews with sources, this is all about how Citizen’s CEO Andrew Frame put a $30,000 bounty on information that would lead to the capture of an arsonist who started a fire in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood. While police were looking for the same individual, they were innocent. Another person was arrested. A Citizen spokesperson called the incident “a mistake we are taking very seriously.”
Founded in 2016, Citizen is the first app to combine location information with 911 intelligence to keep you and your loved ones safe. The app was originally Vigilante and released in New York City. The ads for the app encouraged user vigilantism, as well as racial profiling and harassment. It was pulled from the Apple App Store within 2 days.
Citizen also released the subscription security feature Protect, the first paid feature. USA Today says that this feature “lets users contact virtual agents for help if they feel they’re in danger.” As of January 26, 2022, Protect had over 100,000 subscribers.
The idea of America becoming even more of a police state where people gain money because of turning each other in is yet another nightmare in this rapidly declining state that we live in. If this doesn’t scare you, you aren’t paying attention.
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