"I'm Coffin Joe, and I'm about to eat your amygdala!"2001 documentary
Rating: 14/20
Plot: Director and actor Marins discusses the ups and downs of his life and career.
This opens with some amazing footage of what I guess was a mass hypnosis. It looks like something straight out of a documentary about a Pentecostal church though. Coffin Joe tells a congregation that they are on a plane, a plane which begins to shake and eventually go down. The people scream and weep uncontrollably. Then, Joe tells them that they're all going to hell and grins madly and deviously. I'm not sure what exactly it adds to the Jose Mojica Marins story, but it sure was interesting to watch. Flash-forward to '99, and Coffin Joe's let himself go a bit. He looks like an ordinary out-of-shape Brazilian guy, balding and pot-bellied, and I'm not sure if I was surprised or disappointed that he isn't completely insane. I did learn some interesting tidbits about the guy:
1) He was born, of course, on Friday the 13th.
2) He loved and was inspired by comics, but surprisingly, to me at least, not Batman. He didn't care for Robin apparently.
3) As a boy, he actually lived in a movie theater.
4) His "studio" was an old chicken barn.
5) The first shocking film that he saw was an educational film about venereal disease.
6) He had a bodyguard named Satan.
7) As a kid, he knew a guy who sold potatoes on the street. He and the other children loved the guy. But as all potato men must eventually do, he passed away. Then, at his funeral, he came back to life again and freaked everybody out. This would have an impact on young Marins' life.
8) When working, Marins rarely slept or ate, sometimes working for 96 straight hours without stopping. He had to be hospitalized after taking 20 amphetamine pills.
9) While filming a movie called God's Sentence, he decided he was cursed due to all kinds of problems. Two actresses died, another actress lost a leg, the producer died. An assistant camera man asked Marins, "Who's next?" Marins answered, "You are." Of course, four hours later, the assistant camera man died.
10) Marins used snakes, spiders, and vivisepulture to test his actors and make sure they had the courage to appear in his movies.
11) The banning of Awakening of the Beast (this one will be on my blog soon enough) ruined him. He funded his next movies with the earnings from the previous movie. Since Awakening of the Beast wasn't allowed to be released, no next movie. Marins had to turn to an Ed Woodish pornography career.
12) Unlike Ed Wood's work, Marins' often involved bestiality. At least one had a talking dog, played by a non-talking dog that Marins said was the best actor he worked with.
For those of you who are bored with my write-ups of Coffin Joe movies, be glad to know that I've only got one to go. For the rest of you, here's a picture of Marins at work:
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