THE STRANGE WORLD OF COFFIN JOE (1968)

 This is a Coffin Joe horror-compilation flick made in Brazil. Coffin Joe himself doesn't actually appear except to give a spooky voice-over speech before the credits and act like a ghost. He was the producer and director though which he would have to be since, as far as I know, no one else in Brazil at this time was making movies like this. It starts of with a story about a doll-maker and his sexy daughters who get molested and then get revenge by pulling their attackers eyes out and shoving them in some dolls. Then a tale of a necrophiliac stumble-bum who undresses and fondles(or possibly has sex with? it's not very explicit) a freshly murdered young bride. These are basic enough and nothing special but when we get to the third story all hell breaks loose as this creepy professor tries to prove that love doesn't exist by inviting some guests over and showing them some piercing, cannibalism, a gal getting acid thrown in her face, general sadism and masochism and other vile unsavory acts. While I'm not entirely sure how this disproves the emotion of love it does make for quite a visual and a great way to end your film freaking and grossing people out. Ya gotta love Coffin Joe for his balls out approach!




                        There was also a Coffin Joe comic book series with this same title:

AWAKENING OF THE BEAST (1970)

While HG Lewis was grossing people out in the early sixties with stuff like BLOOD FEAST at the same time way down south in Brazil the man who would become known in America as Coffin Joe was cranking out some gore flicks of his own.  These had a more serious edge to them and a decidedly anti-religious message that seems pretty ballsy for the time and country in which they were made.  This one came along in 70 and is a sorta behind the persona look at the man behind the character, Jose Mojica Marins.  It's a unique structure because you get Marins playing himself being questioned by psychiatrists for being a bad bad man and then you get LSD experiments where Coffin Joe shows up to brutalize folks(mostly women) and things get weirder and weirder until you end up with a spaghetti slurping fat man, gratuitous ass-kicking, blatant sexism and a bunch of asses with faces painted on them.  It is quite the disjointed mess yet I still found it totally enjoyable.  In the end there's even a pro-drug message about how people's minds are way more fucked up naturally than any artificial drug is capable of doing.  Brilliantly cheesy stuff!