Strange World of Coffin Joe–Series Trailer from Hadrian Belove on Vimeo.

We have two tickets to see tonight’s Coffin Joe series screening at the Silent Movie Theater… for whoever writes us with an answer to this question:

What Brazilian town was “Coffin Joe” creator Jose Marica Marins born in?

Email the answer with the subject COFFIN JOE to fortherecord [at] larecord.com. Read Carol Ramos’ exclusive mind-wrecking interview with Marins here and do not miss tonight’s screening of the first two Coffin Joe classics—At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse! They are absolutely vital documents of the human capacity for insane genius without funding or societal support. Os Mutantes sang songs about him and L.A. RECORD dedicates immeasurable goodwill to him! (He also sent these ultra-rare prints to Cinefamily in a big burlap sack.) The contest closes at 3 pm today!

10/9 @ 8pm / SERIES: the strange world of coffin joe
At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul
shown with
This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse
In a feat of pure will and cinematic street smarts, first-time director Marins took a few scraps of film, a 600 square-foot studio and a miniscule budget pieced together by selling his family’s house and car, and created this dazzling garage Guignol masterpiece that rocked Brazil’s pop culture and psyche with its extreme violence, taboo-smashing scenes, and the creation of an indelible fully-realized character that would go on to capture the imaginations of horror fans around the world — Coffin Joe! God-defying and child-loving, philosophizing and self-aggrandizing, sadistic and ballistic, prone to proclamations and exaggerations (usually delivered via maniacally melodramatic monologues in Marins’ unique acting style), Coffin Joe debuts here as a fearsome undertaker who terrorizes the citizens with his violent, narcissistic behavior. Just for kicks he ties up a woman and lets spiders crawl over her, and, even more horrifyingly, he voraciously eats meat on Good Friday! One of the great debuts in horror in history.
Dir. José Mojica Marins, 1964, 35mm, 84 min.

After the overwhelming success of At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, Marins pulled out all the stops for his second picture, making the Coffin Joe movie that was perhaps his masterpiece — and, oddly enough, a romance of sorts. Focusing on Coffin Joe’s “love life,” the plot is about his attempt to find a single superior woman to be his ideal mate, one that will help him in his quest to continue his bloodline by creating the “perfect” spawn, using his own perverse selection process—a kind of cross between “The Bachelor” and “Fear Factor”. In almost every way, Marins ups the ante from the first film, but without losing At Midnight’s punk filmmaking pleasures (the scratched-on-film title sequence alone is shatteringly cool). You likes the tarantula crawling up a girl’s nightie? Here’s an army of tarantulas! Here’s a roomful of cuties for them to crawl all over! You like the nightmarish ending of the first movie? Here, in a hallucinatory and bravura dream sequence, Coffin Joe is dragged into an incredibly realized carnivelesque hell, with undulating flesh carpets and Cocteau-like body parts sticking out of icy cavernous walls, all exploding onto the screen in full bleeding color! Viva la Coffin Joe!
Dir. José Mojica Marins, 1967, 35mm, 108 min.

Watch the trailer for “At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul”!