THE FILMS OF COFFIN JOE: The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1976)

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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.”

THE FILMS OF COFFIN JOE: The Curse (A Praga) (1967, 2022)

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Coffin Joe may be dead and yet he lives. How else do we have a new film that he hosts? Yes, through the fire and the flames, he comes back to us, warning us about making a joke of the unknown world. Perhaps he would also do well to warn us that if you see a witch in the countryside, there’s really no reason to take her photo.

José Mojica Marins, the human repository for the evil being known as Coffin Joe, originally filmed The Curse for his Brazilian TV show in 1967, but it was lost when a fire burned down the station two years later. In 1980, he started a second version, but production was halted due to financial issues. The existing footage went missing until 2007 when producer Eugenio Puppo rediscovered it while preparing a retrospective of the work of Marins.

Years of intensive restoration later — including shooting new scenes and recovering the lost dialogue with the assistance of a lip-reader — The Curse is making its U.S. debut along with a making of documentary The Last Curse of Mojica.

Based on a story in the graphic novel series O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Caixão, this near-hour-long story has Juvenal (Felipe Von Rhine) and his girlfriend Mariana (Silvia Gless) meeting that witch we discussed above (Wanda Kosmo) and deciding that it’s not only a good idea to take that photo but also to be rude to her. He’s soon left with a gaping and festering wound in his side that demands raw meat at all times or it will destroy him. Of course, his lover would make the perfect meal to stop that insatiable hunger, right?

How magical is it that we can find this film as part of our lives? All hail Coffin Joe. You shall never die.

THE FILMS OF COFFIN JOE: The End of Man (1971)

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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.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Parasite 3D (1982)

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You know, I kind of like something in this movie. Like, I know it’s really bad but there’s something in it — and not just a young Demi Moore — that made me enjoy it. I have no idea what that was, but sometimes a movie just makes you feel like you’re taking a relaxing swim.

Sometime after the bombs got dropped, America is run by a criminal organization called the Merchants. To better control the population — and no, I have no idea how this plan is supposed to work — they get Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini, whose roles in movies like this and Cutting Class led him to somehow write the play Jack Goes Boating, which became a movie directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman) to create a parasite. Also, because this movie has no plan for what is about to happen, he infects himself to study the parasite, yet is upset when it infects the gang in the small town he finds himself trapped in.

And Demi plays the young lemon grower who helps him.

Actually, I’ve totally figured out why I like this movie. That’s because it cast Cherie Currie (the ex-Runaway who was on a run of scream queen roles between this, The Alchemist and The Twilight Zone: The Movie) as a post-apocalyptic gang member and Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith as a slave girl. And it was made by Charles Band between Crash! and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn in a time when he wasn’t yet making puppet movies.

A section 3 video nasty, this was in 3D in its original theatrical run. It owes just as big a debt to Alien as it does to Mad Max.

Parasite 3D played in 3D at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Brightwood (2022)

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Dan (Max Woertendyke) and Jen (Dana Berger) are in the type of relationship where you start to wonder what it would be like without the other person. He’s embarrassed her yet again and as she runs to clear her head, he tries to follow her. The only problem? It feels like they keep going around again and again, around the same path, going through the same motions, the paranormal version of what it’s like to be with each other.

They’re not alone, as the trail around the pond has others who are trapped and doomed to wander in circles as well. Can they escape?

Based on director and writer Dane Elcar’s short film The Pond, this is a dark story that progressively gets grimmer. Some couples are like that, endlessly going through the motion, one trying to stay ahead of the other, both realizing that they are locked into this endlessly repeating unreality.

If you think your relationship is bad, imagine being forced to stay within the same time and place as your partner in a never stopping loop.

This film is big on ideas and low on budget, but when is that a problem?

Brightwood was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Trim Season (2023)

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There’s a Trim Season comic book that came out in 2022, which was based on an original concept from Megan Sutherland, Sean E DeMott and Cullen Poythress. They were inspired by the story of several women who went missing in Humboldt County, CA during a marijuana harvest. That turned into a screenplay, written by David Blair and Ariel Vida, and then the comic book by writer Jake Hearns, pencils and inks by Mara Mendez Garcia and colors by Lorenzo Palombo.

Directed by Ariel Vida, Trim Season is about Emma (Bethlehem Million) and Julia (Alex Essoe), who get recruited by James (Marc Senter) to head up into Northern California for trim season and make $5,000 cash. They’re joined by Harriet (Ally Ioannides), Dusty (Bex Taylor-Klaus) and Lex (Juliette Kenn De Balinthazy) and when they get there, things already seem odd. There are guns everywhere carried by masked men. None of those men join them, because the only trimmers are women.

Then they meet their boss, Mona (Jane Badler, still terrifying me ever since she ate a rat in V), who looks like the kind of female villain that would once have battled and bedded James Bond. And as they work 16 hours days, they start to learn that this isn’t the job they were promised, what with Mona having some kind of magical powers thanks to a strain that only he can inhale and survive.

Somehow folk horror meets Suspiria meets body horror, Trim Season exceeded any expectations I had for it. Balder owns every moment she has on screen and man, how many costume changes did she get? As many as she wanted, that’s how many.

Subject was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Eldritch USA (2023)

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Geoff and Rich Brewer (Graham Weldin and Andy Phinney) have always tried to outdo one another, but Geoff always finds himself in second place against his older brother. For example, Rich will always be the anchorman on camera and Geoff will always be the one holding the camera, never seen. Yet after Rich dies in a woodcutting accident, Geoff searches for help from his friend Colin (Cameron Perry) and a mysterious cult. Soon, not only will his life be changed, but so will the lives of everyone in the town of Eldritch.

That’s right. They have the Necronomicon and use it to bring back Rich, who instead of being the one who does everything right is now a flesh-eating zombie.

Also: This is a musical.

Thanks to music by the band Fox Royale, this has some catchy songs and tight directions — with near dayglo colors at times — from Ryan Smith (who also wrote the script) and Tyler Foreman. Geoff and Colin struggle to get Rich to remember human morality as his need to consume blood and brains begins to overwhelm him.

It’s a cute idea done well and also done on a small budget. There’s a ton of heart — and other organs — in this movie and I think it definitely has the potential to be loved on a big scale.

Eldritch USA was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

POPCORN FRIGHTS 2023: Santastein (2022)

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When Max Causey (Jared Korotkin), he made the biggest mistake a kid can make. He accidentally killed Santa.

Now, 12 years later, Max has fixed that error by resurrecting Father Christmas but soon realizes the creature he created — Santastein (Michael Vitovich) — wants to kill everyone, naught or nice, and is on his way to Max’s friend Paige Byers’ (Makenzie Rivera) Christmas party.

Starting as a short made when the filmmakers — Manuel Camilion and Benjamin Edelman — were studying at the University of Miami, Santastein has become a full-length film.

After a decade without Santa, the world seems dark. And yet, as a result of Max — again — it’s about to get even darker. Christmas horror is a genre all to itself — I mean, I have a holiday Letterboxd list, I get it — and I think those that love the bloodier and more frightening side of the season are really going to enjoy this movie.

Plus, Camilion and Edelman have a great sense of humor, as evidenced by this line from the Kickstarter for this movie: “We only recently learned after making our short film that kills in horror movies aren’t real. So we need a new cast as well.”

Santastein was watched at the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.

THE FILMS OF COFFIN JOE: Awakening of the Beast (1970)

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José Mojica Marins directed movies for six years before making At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, the first appearance of Brazil’s national boogeyman, Zé do Caixão, or Coffin Joe.

Joe is a man with no morals but a devotion to Nietzschian philosophies and absolute hatred for religion with the goal of achieving immortality through the birth of a perfect son. And while he does not believe in the supernatural, he often finds himself walking through visions of the otherworld.

Coffin Joe came to Marins — the man who would often be referred to as the character interchangeably — in a very magic way. “In a dream saw a figure dragging me to a cemetery. Soon he left me in front of a headstone, there were two dates of my birth and my death. People at home were very frightened, called a priest because they thought I was possessed. I woke up screaming, and at that time decided to do a movie unlike anything I had done. He was born at that moment the character would become a legend: Coffin Joe. The character began to take shape in my mind and in my life. The cemetery gave me the name, completed the costume of Joe the cover of voodoo and black hat, which was the symbol of a classic brand of cigarettes. He would be a mortician.”

Awakening of the Beast begins in black and white, as a series of vignettes of the ways that drug users debase themselves are shown in lurid, sweaty detail. A TV panel debates the idea that sexual perversion is caused by the use of illegal drugs, with more stories that illustrate this point. The TV show needs an expert on depravity, so they ask Marins to appear on the show.

Afterward, the doctor who conducted the experiment doses four volunteers and asks for them to stare at a poster of The Strange World of Coffin Joe. Supposedly Marins didn’t know much about using drugs, but he intended this movie to speak against the fact that the uses of drugs are treated worse than the suppliers and that the Brazilian film industry saw him as no better than a long-nailed drug dealer.

The acid trip that follows is highlighted by Coffin Joe, ranting against anyone and everyone. Of course, this film was banned by the very establishment it rails against. So basically, Coffin Joe is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the maniac attacking belief structures created by an artist who only believes in the power of film.

“My world is strange, but it’s worthy to all those who want to accept it, and never corrupt as some want to portray it. Because it’s made up, my friend, of strange people, though none are stranger than you!”

THE FILMS OF COFFIN JOE: The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)

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Sure, Coffin Joe was dragged into a pond by the skeletons of his victims and had accepted God, but now he’s back and seemingly as filled with hate for the human race as ever before. Instead of his search for the perfect woman, he’s here to tell you three stories, as if he’s an EC Comics character. Well, a year after this movie, he would have his own comic book series with the same title. It was also the name of his much later TV talk show.

In “The Doll Maker,” a man and his four gorgeous daughters make the most realistic and sought after dolls. Criminals rob them when they learn that they don’t keep their money in the bank. After the doll maker faints, the robbers assault the daughters, who actually start to accept and encourage their advances after remarking about their eyes. And soon enough, we learn how the dolls have such human-looking eyeballs.

“Obsession” is about a poor balloon seller with a foot fetish and a love for a beautiful woman well above his station. After her wedding, which he watches from afar, he learns that she has been murdered. Too poor to attend her funeral, he comes to her body in the mausoleum where, well, he makes love to her and her feet before returning the shoes he saw her lose when she was still alive.

Finally, “Theory” has Professor Oãxiac Odéz (José Mojica Marins, also Coffin Joe and this film’s creator) bring a rival professor and his wife to his home. Soon, he has imprisoned them and forces them to go through a series of sadistic experiments to prove if instinct can overcome reason and love.

So yes, Coffin Joe is in this for about three minutes. But his fingerprints — and long fingernails — are all over every frame.

You can watch this on YouTube.