The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974)

 

Director: José Mojica Marins

Screenplay: José Mojica Marins, Adriano Stuart and Rubens Francisco Luchetti

Cast: José Mojica Marins as himself/Coffin Joe, Alcione Mazzeo as Luciana, Ariane Arantes as Wilma, Geórgia Gomide as Lúcia, Joffre Soares as Júlio, Marcelo Picchi as Carlos, Marisol Marins as Betinha, Walter Stuart as Álvaro, Wanda Kosmo as Malvina

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

José Mojica Marins and his creation Coffin Joe, who came to be in cinema with At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964), has been appreciated and preserved, both when Marins was still with us and after his 2020 passing. We are still missing one or two films however in his filmography, and one of the most prominent absentees is The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe, which you would naturally presume would be a part of the Coffin Joe catalogue with all the others as, even if appearing in the end only, that character is central to its biggest selling point. If you are a fan of this character, then the set up for this is a tantalising one of Marins and Coffin Joe crossing paths. Marins as himself is first shown directing on a film set a home invasion going amiss for the robbers when they did not expect the young couple their targeted to become elderly ghouls, and calmly taking an interview in a nice green jumper and with even his trademark long fingers nails on display. This is his other film metatextuality poking at his legendary creation, if a pulpier crossover between creator and creation, less dealing with the character in the real world but imagining himself being terrorised by his own creation.

The first film which tackled this, Awakening of the Beast (1970), was a really metatextual production because Marins was tackling the growing notoriety around the Coffin Joe character in terms of backlash. That film is arguably more difficult to appreciate if you have not seen another film of his, as it is a commentary on the controversy over his morbid character and the success he was having in popular culture in Brazil. However, especially when it turns into a full colour wig-out with buttock faced creatures in Hell, it became more readily available outside his homeland and paradoxically a more sellable film for how bizarre it is even with context. Bloody Exorcism does get to the risqué content by the time of the Satanist cult torturing people in Hell in the final act, but this is a straightforward genre film. A lashing of haunted house/witch's curse premise is fleshed into this, all in setting up the meeting between Marins as himself and Coffin Joe as the ultimate antagonist against his own creation. There is moments where he gets to portray himself as a very intelligent man, who gets to comment with other characters about his beliefs on how horror works and is liked as it is, but he himself is not going to dissect his evil creation as a construction as Awakening of the Beast did, but have Coffin Joe scaring him instead.

José Mojica Marins is the director-creator going to an island where a friend lives with his family, all with the intention to plan his next script only to become embroiled with an evil aura terrorising the family. To his credit, the opening has an appropriately sombre opening of him travelling to the location by boat, set to haunting chanting in the score. This is also set at Christmas, with adds an amusing touch as things will start to turn amiss as soon as he gets there. First it seems merely mischievous, like a chair moving by its own will, then starts to become more an issue when the grandfather becomes the first person to get possessed, and it is established everything is (literally) going to Hell. It is cool to see Marins, whose films have been as much sold for their transgressive and blasphemous content over the years play with more traditional horror tropes. As much of the reason that he became as controversial as he was as a horror creator was that Coffin Joe the character is an atheist who thumbed his nose at religion and morality, and believed in finding the perfect women to breed the perfect offspring by any means necessary, even murder. This has Coffin Joe as a literal evil near the end that our protagonist, and has the director/co-writer take a shot for the first half of Bloody Exorcism at the classic horror tropes of haunted houses and curses, where even a toy piano being played by itself is ominous as is Marins himself being assaulted by flying books. Not even the Christmas tree is safe from snakes briefly materialising from it.

Though that side will appear later on, it may disappoint some expecting him to have the extremes that made him a controversial figure at this time do not really appear as prominently here, where there is the cute moppet daughter and Marins' film is entirely on the side on the good nuclear family, but it is interesting to see him go through this plot thread. Connected to an angry witch terrorising the family who he has wandered into the drama of, all because the wife requested her help to be able to conceive a daughter on condition the witch choose who she would marry as an adult, each member of the family becomes possessed, and sadly even the family dog is not safe, all whilst Jose is trying to rationalise the scenario. I wonder if The Exorcist (1973) came to influence this or not, or even got to Brazil at that specific time to even be able to do so, its slower pace and gleefully eerie tone suggesting this as initially a "safer" if still fun Marins film. The score certainly helps, and eventually the tone shifts into more extreme content.

By that point, there is nude possession with inappropriate self use of a poker and Marins in a lovely pink suit being a bystander to the horrors he the director would shot throughout his career. As he finds himself in Hell with demonic worships and Coffin Joe leading them, it leads to his trope as a filmmaker of hiring extras of both genders, in general state of undress, with ghoulish carnival haunted house gore effects like a man having his tongue cut out taking place. In what could be best described as theatrical performance hellscape scenes, if you have seen other films of his, like Awakening of the Beast, and how he let these moments stretch out for their ghoulishness for minutes, this is the same thing here to escalate the film closer to his other work from the time. The crossover between character and creators is not as complex as Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), where Wes Craven revisited Freddy Krueger as an entity terrorising the people who made his films, but here you at least have Marins forced to confront his creation. Bemused as a terrified bystander who only intervenes when a child is threatened, this is an example a good few decades earlier, involves the creator in actual debate with the figure he said he created directly. It also emphasises the idiosyncratic, even schism-like, knife-edge too in his work, between revealing in the anti-religious horror but also making sure it always win, which is prevalent even in mind to a politically tumultuous time in Brazil when these films were being made. Like Jose's friend being a Catholic who yet is studying parapsychology without any more issues, his cinema is curious in terms of faith and anti-faith, where he can make Coffin Joe almost a true anti-hero, even if he had to always lose, but also made a film like The End of Man (1970), a film which has Joe's total opposite, a virtuous man of miraculous gifts, even if with satirical edges mocking the world socially and politically around this character. José Mojica Marins certainly hated organised complacency in general, and if there is a sense this films seems a more safer film, it is and is probably one of the reasons it could be seen as a weaker film from the director, as it feels like a pure horror story without an edge to it even with the nastier content coming into it by the end.  He can prod at organised religion in the earlier films, and be more gruesome in Embodiment of Evil (2008) when he would be allowed to get away with it, but still create the kind of film here which have a happy ending to keep the audience happy or a twisted morality play for others, censorship or not. Certainly, as this review started with, it is strange this film is seemingly lost among those available beyond his homeland, especially as it is still a fun production among them.