INSIDE THE MIND OF COFFIN JOE

Top hat and overgrown nails

- Ian Berriman

BLU-RAY DEBUT Brazilian director José Mojica Marins is a saint of psychotronic cinema, but his output is more known of than it is seen. This eye-opening set of immaculate 4K transfers should help to change that.

His most famous creation was Zé do Caixão, aka Coffin Joe: an undertaker who features in five of these 10 films. An iconic figure, with his stovepipe hat, cloak and talon-like fingernails, he considers himself a Nietszchean superman, and spurns morality, happy to drown his best friend in the bath (At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul), or pour acid on a woman’s face (This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse). He’s a monster – but one whose anti-authoritarianism and total liberation hold some appeal.

Marins’s films share many common attributes. Expect orgiastic abandon and bellicose rants, with our anti-hero mocking faith and denying God. Women fare badly: beaten, tortured and molested. Sets can be crude, tombs made from flats with painted stone patterns. Non-diegetic sound effects blare out: screams, wind, tolling bells; the soundtracks can be so cacophonous that closing your eyes is no escape. Other hallmarks include luridly coloured lighting, tarantulas, whips, suicide and voyeurism – all the good stuff.