The Strange Oeuvre of Coffin Joe, Part 1

Collecting José Mojica Marins movies can be almost as weird and confusing as the films themselves. You'll find yourself encountering unreleased films, double-dips, alternate aspect ratios and untranslated imports. It's as frustrating as it is fun. Marins is a Brazillian exploitation director best known for his iconic horror character Zé do Caixão, or Coffin Joe to us English speakers. His work practically defines the concept "not for everyone," but if you're of the right mindset, there's a lot to be appreciated in his ambitious films, especially the Coffin Joe titles. When you get past those, you're really putting on your "I Am a Curiosity Seeker" hat.

Update 1/30/15 - 2/12/17: It's update time, boys and girls!  Synapse has just released their Coffin Joe Trilogy 3-DVD set.  How are the transfers?  What are the extras?  Is there anything new?  Should we replace our previous editions?  Let's have a look!  Oh, and I have also updated Part 2, but most of the pertinent new Synapse stuff is covered here in Part 1.

Update 2/12/24: Holy cow!  His films are in HD now?  Yes, Arrow has released a massive blu-ray boxed set featuring 4k restorations of his most famous features, which you can read a lot more about in Part 4. But we've done a whole overhaul of Parts 1 and 2, too.  I've been busy!

His films have been primarily available in three main DVD collections. The Coffin Joe Trilogy from Fantoma came out first in 2002, after their success and notoriety via a series of VHS tapes from Something Weird. The titles were all sold separately or available together in a pretty wicked awesome coffin-shaped boxed set. Each DVD also came with a cool, reprint of a Coffin Joe comic book, and you got a bonus fourth if you got the coffin set. It's now long out of print, but was reissued in Australia in 2011 with the same transfers and extras, minus only the coffin box and comic books.

Then, in 2009, in conjunction with the release of his Marins' comeback film, Anchor Bay released another boxed set in the UK called The Coffin Joe Collection, which included a bunch more titles.  And a few years after that, Marins released a huge boxed set of elaborate special editions through Cinemagia in Brazil called Coleção Zé do Caixão. A lot of it was untranslated, including most of the extras (we'll get into all those specifics, don't worry), but the films were.

In 2017, we got Synapse's The Coffin Joe Trilogy, which features the original two Coffin Joe films, plus his 2008 comeback, Embodiment of Evil, as opposed to the Fantoma set, which included Awakening Of the Beast as its third entry.  It also has more extras that the Fantoma set, much of which comes from the Cinemagia box.  Though fan hopes that they'd add subtitles to all the wonderful features there that lacked subtitles are mostly dashed; Synapse did at least do a little something.  But more on all the specifics as we come to them.

And of course, now we have HD versions of all three films in Arrow's 2024 blu-ray set, Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe.  How do those new transfers look compared to what came before?

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is the debut of Coffin Joe from 1963, the first of the trilogy. Here we're introduced to the evil undertaker (played by Marins himself) who keeps a small village under his thumb and is determined to find the perfect mate to give him a heir. He defies God by eating lamb on Good Friday and screaming monologues at the sky, treats people terribly, kidnaps potential concubines and even murders those who oppose him. It's a weird and original story, and Joe is a fantastic character. Opposed to those great elements are a low budget and non-professional filmmaking techniques as Brazil really didn't have a film industry. The flaws will drive most people far away from these films, but those remaining will have a huge grin on their face. This is something wild.

1) 2002 Fantoma DVD; 2) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 3) 2012 Cinemagia DVD;
4) 2017 Synapse DVD; 5) 2024 Arrow BD.

The original Fantoma set boasted of their 1.66:1 widescreen transfer from the 35mm negative and supervised by Marins himself. Unfortunately, the discs are non-anamorphic, but I guess with 1.66 you can just about get away with that; but they're still going to look window-boxed on your widescreen TVs. Especially when, as in this case, it's really 1.53:1.  I'm sure they look heaps better than the old video tapes, but they still look soft and dirty and sound hissy. Anyway, the Cinemagia transfer looks almost identical, but a bit brighter and softer. And as we can see the Anchor Bay set is very different, being both unmatted at about 1.25:1, and... yellow.  The Synapse is fullscreen but at a more traditional 1.33:1 and without the yellow tinting.  It has deeper blacks, like the Fantoma (as opposed to the faded Cinemagia), and it also seems to have been a bit cleaned up - note the absence of most of the dust and dirt in the sky - but possibly at the cost of smoothing some grain.  That may be why Syanpse opted to make these DVD only, where the grain doesn't really bear out no matter what you do, anyway.

The Arrow restoration, a 4k scan of the 35mm interpositive and a print, is sticking with the full frame viewing, at a slightly wider 1.37:1, erring on showing more of the image than less.  It only shaves slivers off the sides compared to the AB and Synapse, and vertically compared to AB.  Grain is still on the soft side, but much more accurate than any of the previous releases.  This is one of the more subtle upgrades - later discs in this set are more distinct improvements - but unquestionably still a solid upgrade.  It has some of the strongest contrast levels yet, with solid blacks but if you look at the clergyman in the second set of shots, the highlights are not blown out for the first time ever.  A naturalism has been restored to this movie, with less dirt distress than ever (that smudge in the upper right-hand sky is finally gone).

The original mono is a bit hissy and noisy on all of these, even Arrow's lossless LPCM.  But the newer track is a better, with dialogue easier to discern.  It's also important to point out that the English subtitles are removable on the Fantoma, Cinemagia, Synapse and Arrow sets, but burned into the print on the AB set.

Extras-wise, the Fantoma disc has an insightful ten minute interview with Marins as its main feature. It's also got trailers for all three films in the set, the comic book (which is a seriously high quality, 35 page reproduction of an original Coffin Joe story - don't underestimate these bad boys), and an insert with notes from his biographer. Anchor Bay has... nothing.

And the Cinemagia disc? Oh man. Well, it starts with a really cool claymation Coffin Joe intro, that appears on all the Cine discs. Then the film opens with a tragically unsubtitled introduction by Marins in character as Coffin Joe. Other untranslated extras include an audio commentary, audio from two Coffin Joe records, a silent short film called Bloody Kingdom (with commentary by Marins) and clips of two other short films, interviews with the editor, composer, two DPs, and the screenwriter, a new (2002) Coffin Joe scene that ties into a scene from this movie, a new interview with Marins, a featurette called Who's Afraid of Coffin Joe where people seem to be asked on the street about their Coffin Joe memories, a short featurette on his website and multiple trailers. There's also the complete, infamous footage of his eye surgery, which has no audio, so English speakers can "enjoy" this feature as much as anybody else, as well as several stills galleries.

Claymation Joe

With all of that said, again, Synapse isn't giving us the definitive boxed set we all hoped they would with all those wonderful extras translated.  But they have given us a pretty sweet package.  First of all, they do have that cool claymation opening.  And next, it has the interview from the Fantoma disc.  Then, it includes the newer interview with Marins from the Brazilian set, finally translated!  It also includes the film intro from that set - finally translated!  It features that new scene - finally translated!  And it features the Bloody Kingdom short with the commentary, you guessed it - finally translated!  And finally, it includes two trailers for the film.  So it's pretty awesome... just try to block all the other, wonderful extras from the Brazillian set, like the interviews with the editor, composer and DPs, that got left behind.

Or you could've just waited for Arrow who... also left most of them behind.  They rescued and translated the audio commentary, though, which is no small thing.  And that Bloody Kingdom clip.  Apart from the trailers, though, none of the other stuff has returned, either from the Cinemagia set or any of the other releases.  We've gone backwards as much as we've gone forwards.  Arrow has included clips from two of Marins' other early works, though, a new visual essay and a bunch of other random stuff on the other discs that I cover in Part 4.  Real quick, though, I'd say the overall summation of the Arrow box is that the commentaries are awesome to finally get, but hang onto your old DVDs.

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1966) is a the direct sequel to At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, and Coffin Joe is back to up the ante. I hope I'm not giving too much away when I say that this is the film where Coffin Joe goes to Hell! I mean, literally, we see him walking around there and interacting; and those scenes are in full color, too. Holy shit, it's amazing! And no, that's not the ending. That just happens midway through; because Joe gets out to wreak more havoc on his quest to sire an heir and defeat God. And this time he has a hunchback assistant, too.

1) 2002 Fantoma DVD; 2) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 3) 2012 Cinemagia DVD;
4) 2017 Synapse DVD; 5) 2024 Arrow BD.

The first thing you'll notice is that This Night looks much better preserved than At Midnight. Probably partially because the negatives were kept in better condition (they were even able to be used for the blu), and partially because he had better equipment and more money this time around. Still, the differences between the transfers in At Midnight still seem to hold true here. The Cinemagia disc is still softer (possibly a compression issue with all the extras), though maybe not any brighter this time. AB is yellow again, full-frame (though a closer to normal 1.31:1 this time) and the subs are still burnt in.  And as with At Midnight, Synapse basically looks like a 1.33:1 version of the Fantoma set, which had at least been the best of the bunch.

Even the color scenes look a little off on the AB disc, with the blacks looking blue. Worse, though, is the fact that Anchor Bay also has this crappy interlacing issue going on, which is possibly the result of a poor NTSC to PAL transfer. Fantoma and Synapse clearly had the superior picture (in this rare color section, we see the colors are a little more natural on the Synapse version), with Cinemagia a reasonably close second, while Anchor Bay's are a mess.  But I say "had," of course, because Arrow has come and blown all past editions out of the water.  It's a 1.37:1 4k from the original 35mm negative and interpositive, even without clicking through to the full-size screenshots, the more natural grayscale speaks for itself.  It's a much more vivid picture, even if the colors are a little more muted than you might expect in the Hell sequence.  It feels like they could've cranked the saturation a bit more, like past DVDs have, just to make the image more gloriously spectacular.  But I suppose this is more accurate.

For extras, Fantoma once again has a Marins interview, plus the trailers, comic (they're all different) and another insert. And Anchor Bay has nothing.

Cinemagia continues to blow the others away, except for the fact that they're untranslated. It starts out with a new Coffin Joe intro to the film. There's another audio commentary. There's two more vintage recordings. There's six interviews, a featurette of Marins giving a tour of his museum, outtakes from a Coffin Joe commercial for Cinema Trash, a special effects make-up demonstration from some Marins project called Bruno (I think), a screaming test with a couple of actresses, another interview with Marins, a bunch of trailers, a website interview which might be the same as the last one and another episode of Who's Afraid of Coffin Joe. For us English speakers, well, there's a bunch of stills galleries... oh and an almost 30 minute documentary called The Universe of Mojica Marins! It has subtitles and it's pretty neat. It's a vintage doc about Coffin Joe from 1978 - if you've got the set and have been skipping the extras because they're not in English, go back and watch this.

And once again, Synapse comes in with a nice set of extras, but still leaving so much awesome Cinemagia stuff behind.  But we do get the Fantoma interview.  And we get one of the few already translated extras from the Brazilian box, the Universe documentary.  But newly translated from the Brazilian box are the new interview with Marins, the museum tour, and the introduction.  All those other interviews and stuff are not carried over, though we do also get the trailer and a photo gallery.  Again, Arrow drops that, and doesn't add much that's specific to this film besides the commentary... which is, of course, a great addition.  Other extras just on this disc could just as well be on any disc, as they relate more to Marins in general; and I cover that stuff in Part 4.

Now, Fantoma calls their set The Coffin Joe Trilogy and the third film they include is Awakening of the Beast (1969). But it's really just an unrelated, totally wacked out Marins film that, like many of his movies, has a strong hint of the Coffin Joe character in it. Marins himself has often said the trilogy was unfinished, and it was only in the late 2000s, when he made Embodiment of Evil (well after the Fantoma set had already come out), that he finally finished it. If you've been enjoying the Coffin Joe horror films so far, prepare for a huge shift and possibly a major disappointment. But if you can get past the fact that this isn't Coffin Joe 3, or even a horror movie at all, it's still pretty good, or at least interesting.

This is a very 60s film, showing the shocking things people might do while on LSD. Lots of dancing to bad music, sleazy sex... mostly those two things. Basically the film is a series of vignettes. Characters come, have their shocking LSD-induced moment, and then disappear, all being narrated by a couple of doctors talking about the effects of LSD. What would've been shocking in the 60s is tame now, making this pretty plodding and dull if you ask me. But the film picks up in the third act when Marins starts to get involved, playing himself. He experiments on some people, showing them his comics and movies (we even watch a clip of This Night), and talks about his work having strong psychological effects on people. It sounds like BS until he injects them with LSD and they hallucinate a crazy, full color sequence of Coffin Joe menacing them. It's trippy, imaginative, and a total blast. Coffin Joe walks across a bridge made of screaming humans, butts talk. Honestly, now that I've seen this film all the way through the first time, I tend to just skip to this part. It's got a great ending, too, which always makes me smile. The first half is just so rough to get through. So, I really don't think it has the broader appeal of the other Coffin Joe movies at all. But it is the most released of his films, not only included in all three sets, but as an individual release by Mondo Macabro. That's right, this next comparison is going to be a four-way.

1) 2002 Fantoma DVD; 2) 2002 Mondo Macabro DVD; 3) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD;
4) 2012 Cinemagia DVD; 5) 2024 Arrow BD.

Things get different here, and not just because we've added an extra disc into the mix. Anchor Bay, you'll notice, isn't full-screen and yellow... well, faintly more yellowish than most of the others, but not like before. Its subtitles are still burnt in, though. Cinemagia still looks very similar to Fantoma but a bit fuzzier. And Mondo Macabro actually looks the softest and fuzziest of all. Online sources sometimes cite MM as being fullscreen (example: filmaf), but all the DVDs are framed exactly the same at 1.66:1. They're all actually pretty close, with Anchor Bay rivaling Cinemagia. But Fantoma still looks the clearest, while Mondo Macabro looks almost VHS sourced.

But they all look like junk compared to Arrow's new 4k scan of a 35mm interpositive (and a print).  The framing has again opened up to 1.37:1, and it's curious how much bluer the color scene is here than it ever was before.  But it's just a whole different work of natural contrast, lossless audio and a genuinely crisp, filmic look.  I'm actually surprised Marin's footage ever looked this good.  And this is one of the films where the negatives didn't survive!

Mondo Macabro gets back into the race in the extras department, though. They've got a nice, little documentary called The Nightmares of Coffin Joe, which runs about 26 minutes and interviews not only Marins, but some of his collaborators, who we normally never get to hear from (they're on the Cinemagia set, sure, but not translated). If you're a big enough Coffin Joe fan, and starved for material like we all are, Nightmares is worth the price of admission alone. It's why I've got. Fantoma, meanwhile, comes slow but steady with another Marins interview, comic book, insert and set of trailers. And Anchor Bay - wait for it... has nothing.

And what has Cinemagia got for us this time? Another untranslated intro, commentary, pair of recordings, a 15 minute doc film on Joe called Fogo-Fatuo, five interviews, some kind of visit to the national archives about Marin's films, a weird orientation where Marins yells at what looks like college students and they squirm in their seats (hey, don't look at me), another Marins interview, another episode of Who's Afraid, more trailers, more stills galleries, and that website thing again (I don't know, maybe they are different on every disc). Nothing in English, though; move along.

And again, yes, Arrow has finally translated that commentary, but little else.  The trailer's back, and there are alternate opening credits in addition to their pair of expert video essays.  One of them is really just a shameless excuse to talk about himself using Marins as a framing device.  Meanwhile, Cinemagia's interviews are left rotting on the vine...

Marins from the Fantoma interviews, say goodbye to these

Well, that gets us through the "Coffin Joe Trilogy" (really two-thirds and a bonus Marins film), but there's still plenty more to go. But this post has started to get unwieldy in length and we've still got a lot of crazy movies to look at, so let's go ahead into Part 2...

The Strange Oeuvre of Coffin Joe, Part 2

 

...Continued from Part 1.

Update 2/12/24: As covered in Part 4, Arrow has just released a boxed set of HD restorations of many of Marins' films called Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe, so I'm updating these comparisons with their new blu-ray versions.

The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) was actually made and released before Awakening Of the Beast, and in some ways feels at least a bit more like a proper Coffin Joe film, so it's a little odd they chose Awakenings over this for the Fantoma set. At least it's another horror film. But I suppose the strongest argument against its inclusion was that, despite the film's title, Coffin Joe the character doesn't really appear in this film at all. Marins is in it, though, as a diabolical villain who does some pretty similar things to his victims; but he's without the signature top hat, and no longer on the same mission to sire an heir.

The Strange World is an anthology film, no doubt inspired by the Amicus anthologies which had already started in the 60s. We have three stories presented here. The first is about a doll maker who's robbed a gang of hooligans, but has a sinister secret that makes them regret their act. Next is a weird story with no dialogue about a balloon dealer who falls for a girl and isn't deterred in making love to her even after seeing her get murdered. And the third and final entry is the one to finally bring Marins on screen, as a professor who kidnaps a fellow professor and his wife, performing experiments on them to prove a twisted theory. All together, it's really not as compelling as the original Coffin Joe films, but horror anthologies are always fun, and it is satisfying to have Marins back delivering his mad monologues for the final act.

1) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2012 Cinemagia DVD; 3) 2024 Arrow BD.

We're down to comparing three discs: Cinemagia, Anchor Bay and Arrow. And in this case, they're all framed as fullscreen, with the BD just shifting to the usual 1.37 from 1.30, revealing more on the right-hand side in particular.  The two DVDs seem to be a dead even match in terms of clarity and detail. Like Awakening, Anchor Bay has a slight yellowish tint, but it's not downright yellow as the first two films were.  But if you're looking at the screenshots, you don't even need me to tell you that Arrow's new 4k scan (taken from the 35mm interpositive and a print) blow the old transfers away.  It's like night and day, the way shading and detail are restored.

Of course, Arrow's audio is lossless and Anchor Bay's subtitles are still burnt in. The latter's a slight drag, although I doubt many of us are going to watch this with the subtitles off anyway.

If you've been reading along since Part 1 of my Coffin Joe coverage, you probably already know what to expect in terms of extras. Absolutely nothing from Anchor Bay, and a whole heap of terrific-sounding but untranslated extras from Cinemagia. And you'd be right. Specially, the list of Cimemagia's extras are: another intro, another commentary, a second commentary this time, four more audio recordings, an extracted fourth segment made for this anthology that runs 31 minutes(!), audio commentary for that fourth segment, 7 interviews, an on-camera radio interview with Marins, a making of doc and outtakes about the Coffin Joe claymation piece, another interview with Marins, another episode of Who's Afraid, five more galleries, the website piece and a bunch of trailers.

Arrow brings over just one of the commentaries for us, but that's still one more than we've ever had before.  Another really interesting extra on this disc is an alternate ending.  Censors pressured Marins to create a happy ending where the villain is punished, which played in theaters in Brazil.  Well, now we get that as an extra, with or without commentary by Marins.  Besides that, there's the trailer and two more expert visual essays, which I discuss in Part 4.

We really leave horror behind now for 1971's End of Man.  We also leave black and white behind as Marins enters the (mostly) full color world as a mysterious, nameless and naked man who walks out of the ocean and might just be the second coming. He basically walks around being completely passive, and everybody's reactions to him wind up drastically changing their lives. And he winds up attracting followers. It's kind of a religious allegory played for broad laughs, with a soundtrack that plays muzack versions of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." It's playful, Marins is in a lighter mood walking around in a red robe and turban, and people looking for sex and nudity will find some; but I still found it to be a heavy-handed slog to sit through.

1) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2012 Cinemagia DVD; 3) 2024 Arrow BD.

I originally wrote that my opinion of this film probably wasn't helped by the fact that the transfers look muddy, soft and desaturated. It looks better now in HD, but I'm not sure I like the movie much better. Both DVDs have certain (but different) interlaced/ ghosting frames, and they're both fullframe at 1.30:1.  Judging by the head room in many shots, I'd guess this was at least supposed to be matted to 1.66:1, but Arrow is sticking with 1.37:1. Anchor Bay again has that slight yellow tint to it, and the subtitles are burnt in as always. Otherwise I can't see either DVD being any better than the other; detail and sharpness seem to be equal. But Arrow's 4k from original 35mm negative is so much more attractive, with strong contrast and bold colors.  It's way sharper and clearer, and of course the audio is lossless.  Grain is a little soft, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a UHD.  Then again, I never would've believed there would be an End Of Man blu-ray either, yet here we are.

How does Cinemagia top Anchor Bay's barren feature collection of nothing this time? Let's look at what hasn't been translated this time. An original Coffin Joe intro, an audio commentary, four more audio recordings, a 50 minute "autobiography" film by Marins, clips from two films Marins didn't make that he appears in, 6 interviews, an interview with his webmaster (I think), a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of their audio commentaries, a music video by Liz Vamp, another Marins interview, another episode of Who's Afraid, their website thing (oh, and I'm certain they're all different now), and a bunch of trailers and stills galleries. Oh, how I wish I could understand what they were saying... Arrow's collection we can understand: another commentary (yay!) and the trailer.

Thank goodness, Coffin Joe returns in Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind (1978). This is kind of a fun "meta" horror, along the lines of Wes Craven's New Nightmare but obviously decades earlier. A doctor is haunted by nightmarish visions of Coffin Joe. His colleagues can't cure him, so they enlist Marins, playing himself, the director of the Coffin Joe movies, to help. This is the first full-length Coffin Joe film since This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, ten years earlier. But it loses a little of its punch by not having Joe as the protagonist this time around. And, like Cat In the Brain, Marins cheats by using clips from his past films as the nightmares the doctor is having. It's definitely a bit of a clip show episode, but at least Joe's back.

1) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2012 Cinemagia DVD; 3) 2024 Arrow BD.

More soft, muddy transfers with the same 1.28:1 framing. Anchor Bay looks yellowish again, and this time noticeably brighter as well. Blacks might be getting a bit crushed, but I still prefer Cinemagia. And again, AB's subtitles are burnt in. But none of that matters now.  Arrow's new 4k scan comes from the original 35mm negative and looks beautiful, worlds away from what we had before.  The colors are strong and corrected to look much more realistic, the framing has been tweaked to 1.37:1 revealing more around the edges, the audio's lossless and we have a clear, genuinely HD image that's just a whole different viewing experience from the fuzzy old DVDs.

Say it with me, gang: Anchor Bay has nothing; Cinemagia has a wealth of un-dubbed or subtitled extras. Specifically, Cinemagia has: a new intro, an audio commentary, 4 more recordings, a 40 minute documentary about Marins from 1978 called Horror Palace Hotel, 3 clips of films Marins presumably worked on, 7 interviews, a clip of Marins appearing at a rock performance, another interview with Marins, another episode of Who's Afraid, another website clip, more trailers and more galleries.  And Arrow has another commentary, the trailer and two more visual essays by experts, including one who puts in the extra effort to dress up as Coffin Joe and dramatically light his room, which I do appreciate.  But they're not film specific, and Arrow puts two films on each disc, so it's hard to even say which films to credit the experts' pieces to.  So really, just refer to Part 4 for a proper break down of those.

The year before Hallucinations, Marins made 1977's Hellish Flesh. This wasn't included in the other set because it was an Anchor Bay exclusive, at least before Arrow came into the picture. I knew I bought AB's box for a reason... Well, Hellish Flesh is not a Coffin Joe movie, but it is a horror film with Marins as the bad guy. He's a scientist who spends too much time at the lab, so his wife cheats on him. She and her lover plot to kill him by burning down the lab (and throwing acid in his face for good measure), but the scientist survives, as a disfigured madman now out for revenge. This is a real, classical-style horror tale; a throwback. That works in its favor compared to some of his weaker, less entertaining films like End of Man, but the fact that its more conventional means it doesn't rise to the heights of his greatest works either.

1) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2024 Arrow BD.

We finally have something to compare this full-frame transfer to.  The DVD already looked a little better than the last couple films we saw (though the subtitles are as burnt in as ever).  Perhaps they had the negatives for this one.  Arrow certainly did.  We go from 1.29:1 to 1.37:1, revealing more picture horizontally and vertically.  Damage is cleaned up, washed colors and shadows are boldened, the audio is clearer and fine detail is a heap crisper.  Grain is strong and filmic... you really feel the 4k master on this one. 

As ever, Anchor Bay had no extras, and since Cinemagia didn't feature this film, there's nothing for Arrow to port over or not port over.  So no commentary, unfortunately.  We just get the trailer and the visual essays if we're counting those.

Hellish Flesh wasn't the only Anchor Bay set exclusive. Even before that film, Marins directed 1976's Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures. Despite what you might gather from the title, this is actually a Coffin Joe film, although his character isn't quite as prominent as in the main trilogy. We get a hell of a colorful, wacked out introduction of exotic characters bringing Coffin Joe back from the dead. After the credits, the film is a bit more grounded as a variety of strangers arrive to stay the night at a hostel run by Marins, not quite in Coffin Joe form. Things get weird, time stops, and they each have their own little narrative a la Tales From the Crypt. There are some goofy "naked pleasures" on hand - it does live up to that promise - but it's definitely more of a horror film than anything else.

1) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2024 Arrow BD.

More fullscreen interlacing frames and burnt in subtitles on the DVD.  And another huge 4k fix from the original 35mm negative on the BD.  We go from 1.29 to 1.37 and the colors are corrected, though they weren't as bad on this DVD as many of their others.  Still, Arrow gives us another strong improvement, from the fundamentals like fixing the interlacing and displaying more picture on the sides, to giving us another sharp, naturally filmic image with actual grain and LPCM audio.

Anchor Bay gave it no extras but Arrow unearthed the trailer and added a bunch of odds and ends I'll save for Part 4.

The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins (2001) is a new (at the time - now it's twenty-three years old. Where does the time go?) documentary about our hero. Not to be confused with The Universe of Mojica Marins, this is a more substantial, 65 minute doc that had been exclusive to the Anchor Bay set. But now it's also available on the Arrow set.  So while you have to hang onto your Fantoma, Cinemagia, Mondo Macabro and Synapse DVDs for their exclusive extras, you can at least safely chuck your Anchor Bay box.  Strange World is a cool overview of his life and career. We see Marins at home, talking about his childhood and his life as a filmmaker. For such an interesting person, this kind of documentary is essential. It's full-frame in both sets (Arrow tweaks it just slightly from 1.31 to 1.34), and doesn't look much improved visually, since a lot of it is pretty rough vintage clips and early digital footage; but the subtitles are only burnt in on the AB, and Arrow did also fix the interlacing, so it is an actual step up.

Finally, we have Embodiment of Evil (2009), Marins' comeback film where he finally completes the Coffin Joe trilogy. He has a surprisingly big budget and great technical look here, and the story is everything you would want it to be. Marins hasn't lost his touch, and Joe hasn't missed a step in his quest for a woman to give him a son. The fact Joe looks older and Brazil looks modern is easily explained by the fact that Joe has been sitting in prison for the last 40 years (which makes sense, given what he did in those past movies). I don't know how young horror fans would feel stumbling upon this film if they'd never seen the original Coffin Joe films; but for longtime fans, it's a real crowd pleaser. If you've seen his past films but avoided this one because you anticipated a big let down, I'd say it's safe, you should check it out.

This was originally released by Anchor Bay in 2009, on DVD and BD. At the time, I was just buying DVDs, so that's the first one I have here.  Then, Synapse released it as a BD/ DVD combo pack in 2011, which they also reissued on DVD as part of their 2017 Coffin Joe Trilogy set.  It's the exact same DVD from 2011. But Arrow's new 2024 has a noticeably different appearance.

1) 2009 Anchor Bay DVD; 2) 2011 Synapse DVD;
3) 2011 Synapse BD; 4) 2024 Arrow BD.

Anchor Bay's DVD is interlaced (I understand their BD is, too, though I haven't seen it to confirm), likely from a hasty NTSC to PAL conversion. It's also worth noting that Synapse's blu-ray is a dual-layer disc, while AB's is single. Synapse went back to the camera negative (it says so right on the back of the box) to strike a new transfer of Embodiment, and it's certainly quite noticeable. The framing's the same, but the colors are more natural on the Synapse disc, and the Anchor Bay is decidedly darker and smudgier. To be fair, though, I think the Syanpse disc could stand to be a shade darker.

And we got maybe two or three shades darker on Arrow's new blu.  Arrow has just sourced the original 2k digital intermediate, not taken a new 4k scan of the neg, but when you get in close, it definitely displays stronger grain.  It's certainly got more contrast.  So some of this boils down to personal taste as to which look is better, but I'd say Arrow's given it a tiny boost at least.  Oh, and every disc preserves the dual 2.0 and 5.1 audio options, both lossless on the blus, with optional English subtitles.

Coffin Joe, as seen in one of his many exclusive Cinemagia intros.

AB and Synapse mostly share the same extras (an enjoyable 30+ minute 'making of' and the trailer), except Synapse one-ups AB with an additional 14 minute featurette on the film's premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival, where Coffin Joe speaks to a very large, enthusiastic crowd. The sound quality makes it a little hard to make out some of the words, but you certainly don't miss the showmanship as Marins is carried out in a large coffin by two burly men surrounded by... creatively dressed women.

Arrow has all of the above, plus plenty more, including another audio commentary by the producer and screenwriter, several deleted scenes with commentary, which include some interesting and graphic excised bits, and an "experimental" making of, which is actually kind of tough to watch... sort of taking the making of stuff and turning it into a music video.  There are also two very brief (as in, like, two minutes each) featurettes on the special effects and storyboards, and two lengthy interviews with the co-writer, one is a long zoom chat with a festival host that runs for almost 90 minutes.  And the other is split into two parts, in much better picture quality, where he talks about how he met Marins and his experiences working with him.  All together, I'd say Embodiment finally has a full-on special edition disc.

There are plenty more Marins films out in the world, even with Coffin Joe in them, but these are most of the biggest.  There's tons of TV work, and apparently porn... but there's more quality stuff, too.  And there's even a bit more on disc.  That's right; the story doesn't end here.  Read on for Part 3.

For more info on Arrow's blu-ray box set specifically, you can jump ahead to Part 4.  And if anybody sees fit to restore and release more of the man's work, best believe I'll be waiting to create a Part 5.