'Strange World Of Coffin Joe' is my third Coffin Joe experience. For those not in the know "Coffin Joe" is the name Brazil's horror icon Jose Mojica Marins is known as in the English speaking world. Separating Marins the man from Coffin Joe the IDEA is extremely difficult, if not impossible. I can't think of any real equivalent of Coffin Joe in America or Britain. It's a bit like if Alfred Hitchcock was also Norman Bates... or something. Oh look, I can't even begin to explain what Coffin Joe is all about! Try watching 'At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul' and its sequel 'Tonight I'll Possess Your Corpse' first. Both are full of creepy low budget weirdness. Even then you might not be prepared for 'Strange World Of Coffin Joe'. For one thing it's an anthology with three separate stories (ala Bava's 'Black Sabbath'). On top of that Marins doesn't act in the first two segments (one about four baddies who invade a mysterious doll makers home to steal his loot and molest his daughters, the other about lyrical tale about obsessive desire and necrophilia told without dialogue), and when he appears in the final story he's not exactly the Coffin Joe we know and love(to hate) from the previous movies. He's no longer a bullying grave digger but a Doctor who is respected enough to get interviewed on a TV show called "The Men Who Make The News". One of the panellists who rejects Joe's philosophy on air accepts his invitation to visit his home, and he and his wife are put through an bizarre series of events to prove Joe's belief that love is dead and instinct conquers morality. Or something like that. Anyone who has seen other Coffin Joe movies knows the kind of stuff he spouts. This segment features some truly extraordinary images involving torture, perversion, cannibalism, and even in one did-I-really-see-that? bit, a terrified girl being taunted with a foot long hoagie. No, I'm not making that up. If you like weird low budget horror movies then you MUST check out Coffin Joe! Imagine the love child of Herschell Gordon Lewis and Jean Cocteau and you're getting there, but really Jose Mojica Marins is a true original. The more I see by him the more fascinated I am.
