Do You Like Movies About Goblins?

When I first saw Hiruko the Goblin, I was delighted by how wild and outrageous it was.  This was long before anime became a major cultural touchstone in the states.  I mean, we had Speed Racer and Voltron in our Saturday morning TV runs, and Akira was a thing.  But these were exceptions.  I first read about it in Fangoria or Gorezone: how the creator of Tetsuo: The Iron Man was back with a full color tale of ancient mythical creatures that ran around with your head on little crab legs, and I was sold.  It was super hard to find in the days of VHS - I had to settle for a traded dub through the mail.  I couldn't believe this movie wasn't blowing up the cult horror market.

So when my brand new Mondo Macabro blu-ray arrived in the mail this week, I was more than a little worried how it would hold up.  I'm now intimately familiar with manga and many of their disappointing live-action adaptations.  I've gone through the novelty phase of X-rated cartoons like Urotsukidoji and and whatever else might've struck me as mind-blowing and over the top before we were saturated with the stuff.  At the time, I had no idea Hiruko was even based on a manga (Yokai Hunter), it felt like this bizarre inspiration that struck out of nowhere.  Could this hold any of that same power, or would I be kicking myself for buying the equivalent of the Netflix Death Note?

Well, no, it couldn't quite bring back the surprise of my original 1991 viewing.  And to be honest, I had revisited once before already, through Shriek Show's 2005 DVD (surprisingly under the Fangoria banner), though even that was over fifteen years ago.  But I'm happy to report, unfair expectations aside, it actually does hold up as a thoroughly entertaining little flick.  The silly humor, the gore, the imaginative story and even the special effects stand the test of time even better than I was hoping.  Hiruko is a truly great movie monster, and Shinya Tsukamoto's storytelling is fast-paced and masterful, with lush steady photography only occasionally broken up by his trademark frantic shakey-cam.  The acting isn't naturalistic, but it isn't trying to be; and it's better than I remembered.  It doesn't feel as boldly original anymore, but it's still better than most of the films that followed in its footsteps.

2005 Shriek Show DVD top; 2022 Mondo Macabro BD bottom.

Another surprise for me now: Shriek Show's DVD looks pretty good.  I've done so many comparisons where their editions were heavily interlaced, I was starting to assume they all were (at least their DVDs).  But not this bad boy.  Mondo's blu gives us a brand new 2k restoration of the original negative, and it looks brilliant, but Shriek Show's DVD still impresses, especially for SD.  The framing is pretty similar, though a little off... the back of their case claimed 1.85:1, but it's really a very slightly pillar-boxed 1.76:1.  Mondo's actually is 1.85, which essentially just means they matted it a little tighter (though there is a smidgen more on the right).  It also has stronger black levels, richer colors and a more naturally, filmic look with its higher def capture of grain, which is mostly strong, if a little inconsistent.

Both releases provide the original Japanese track with optional English subtitles, but it's in LPCM on the blu.

Shriek Show also had some decent, if brief, extras.  There's an interview with Tsukamoto where he lays out the story of how he came to make this film and all the basic info behind it.  There's also an interview with the effects artist, where he shows us some of the mechanical goblins he made.  And there's an additional clip of footage of the effects, which is nice but really didn't need to be a separate thing. The trailers also on here, as well as a couple bonus trailers.

Happily, Mondo has retained all of that, apart from the bonus trailers (though they've added plenty of their own).  They've also put together some new stuff, including an introduction and all new interview with Tsukamoto, which covers a little more ground and looks nicer in HD.  But as you can imagine, they repeat a lot of the same facts and anecdotes.  There's also an expert audio commentary by Tom Mes, which is slow moving but contains some good info, including more about the original manga, and how surprisingly faithful the story is to authentic Japanese legend, taking a lot out of The Kojiki, written in 712 AD.  Maybe some of that authenticity bleeding through is what keeps this film hopping in 2022.

I should point out, too, that my copy is the limited, numbered edition (mine is #1320 of 1500), which was sold out long before it started shipping.  But don't despair, the regular, retail edition is coming out this February, and it's the exact same disc.  The only difference is that the limited edition includes a full color 20-page booklet and comes in a red case.  So yes, I recommend this one even if this sort of thing isn't usually your bag.

Who Can Kill a Child? Huzzah!

Oh yes, I have been waiting for this one!  Today we have Mondo Macabro's new blu-ray release of Who Can Kill a Child?, pretty much the greatest killer children film of all time.  And this blu marks the film's near debut in HD (more on that later) and the first proper special edition of this 1976 Spanish horror classic.  The Dark Sky DVD did have a couple decent extras, too, which we'll also look at.  But really, this is a long awaited blu-ray that fills a big deficit.  I'm excited.  😁

I have a pet theory about this movie, that Stephen King basically lifted it for his much more famous Children Of the Corn.  Now, please don't make too much of this - I don't claim to have any great inside angle or deep-seated conviction - but it feels right to me.  This movie came out in 1976, and was, you know, about as popular as a small foreign horror flick is going to get in the USA, meaning still pretty obscure.  But I did read where King spoke positively about this film back then.  And then, at least according to Wikipedia, he published his short story in Penthouse in 1977.  And certainly, there are completely original elements to King's story, i.e. the whole thing about a monsterish creature in the cornrows that the kids worship as a god.  And you know, neither story invented the killer kids subgenre... obviously there are some major precedents like The Bad Seed, Village Of the Damned and sort of The Omen (it also came out in '76).  But everything about the young, idealistic couple on a trip wandering around a small, seemingly abandoned village only to find out that the children are lurking, and ultimately murderous... as well as key elements like the pregnancy, stumbling on the kids in the church and the ultimate resolution (no spoilers, I'll leave it at that) all feel like the same story being told twice.  And we know King likes to import awesome foreign horror ideas into the US, like his Kingdom Hospital of Lars von Trier's original masterpiece.  So... that's my pet theory.

This movie's better than Children Of the Corn, though.  That movie's fun, though it gives Who a strong advantage by softening up King's original story, with the couple adopting two of the kids from the corn, and there's still the issue of that film's missing footage.  But any way you cut it, this is a better made, more dramatic film.  The performances are better - including a neat appearance by the Demon Witch Child herself! - the moral questions raised are more thoughtful and compelling, and the horror is more genuinely disturbing.  We're not let off the hook by a big plot point where a dude just has to drive a tractor into a monster to save the day.  Here, there are no pat explanations or plot devices; we don't even learn why the kids have gone homicidal apart from some brief philosophical suggestions of why they might be in some ways justified.  Apparently the book (yes, Who was also based on a book) actually did go into some pseudo-scientific clarifications, but the film wisely steers clear.

And wasn't this film remade?  Yes, in fact the special features on Mondo's new release even talk about it a bit.  From 2012, it's called Come Out and Play, and it isn't just a remake; it's practically shot-for-shot. It's such a faithful copy that there's really no reason for it. It doesn't add or alter anything. Well, it does one thing. It cuts about 30 minutes out of it, mostly from the beginning. And it doesn't duplicate every single camera angle, like Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake. However, like that remake, it just feels like a completely pointless exercise because, really, every moment plays out the same. And, frankly, the scenes were played a little better in the original (for instance, when the guy tries to open the kid's tackle box and gets a surprising response - it's more effective in the original). On the other hand, because it's such a faithful remake, they manage to not screw things up completely like so many remakes do. There's no arbitrary changes that unwittingly detract from the drama, ruin characters carefully constructed motives or make plot points illogical. It's just... the same things over again. And most of the performances are fairly comparable - only the wife stands out as having been much better acted in the original. Everybody else at least comes close enough. As such, if you just jump into this movie blind (i.e. having not read the book or seen the original), you'll probably think it's a fine, surprisingly derided horror movie with a compelling storyline. And it is out there on DVD and blu, too.  But you're doing yourself a real favor if you watch the original instead. And once you have seen the original, all the value of Come Out and Play is lost.

So, Who's history on disc is a little complicated.  Here in the US, Dark Sky gave us a nice little DVD in 2007, and in the subsequent couple years, different companies put it out across the various countries in Europe with a new transfer and sometimes an additional featurette.  But naturally Spain got to this film first, putting out a basic edition way back in 2001.  That version was non-anamorphic, though, and completely barebones.  And I called Mondo's release nearly Who's debut in HD, because there was a Spanish blu-ray put out first in 2016.  But that edition was disappointingly barebones, reportedly DNR'd and more critically, not English friendly.  So yeah, unless you're fluent in Spanish, this is your first real HD option.

2007 US Dark Sky DVD on top; 2018 US Mondo Macabro blu-ray bottom.

Mondo's new blu boasts a "Brand new 4k transfer from the film negative" and looks terrific.  And Dark Sky's DVD only serves to make it look better by comparison.  The DVD is ostensibly 1.85:1, but as you can see, there's a bit of dead air in the overscans, particularly on the left, so it's really closer to 1.83:1.  Still, getting an anamorphic widescreen transfer of this film with the correct language options (more on that in a minute) was pretty exciting in 2007.  But after seeing Mondo's transfer, you can just throw your old discs out.  Framed at 1.85:1, it doesn't really reveal any more picture - it might even lose a sliver, shifting slightly from shot to shot - but it is so much cleaner in HD.  I mean, where to even start?  Going 4k rather than 2k really helps sure that the grain is very naturally captured, and detail is definitely stronger here.  It doesn't help the DVD's case that it has a waxy look, like they tried to to wipe away grain compression.  Obviously, a DVD is never going to be able to resolve grain like a blu, but they over-compensated on the Dark Sky.  Also, the DVD colors have a heavy green push to them, like there's a tint laid over the whole film.  Look at the black and white comparisons a little further down the page.  Mondo has fully color corrected the film, making it look very attractive and authentic, also restoring some information in the shadows that the DVD had crushed into solid black.

2007 US Dark Sky DVD on top; 2018 US Mondo Macabro blu-ray bottom.

I mentioned correct language options with this film, and that's important.  This is a multi-lingual film, with tourist characters speaking to each other in different languages.  So ideally, the way to view this film is with the mixed audio track and subtitles for all the non-English parts.  Fortunately, both Dark Sky and Mondo included those audio tracks: the original mono, in 2.0, upgraded to lossless DTS-HD on the blu.  They also included fully Spanish tracks, which dub over all the other languages to Spanish, and the blu adds a third track, dubbing everything into English.  But the mixed track is the most authentic one, demonstrating the language barrier between characters.

Mondo's disc also boasts "newly created English subtitles," where they've fine-tuned the translations.  So, for example, in the scene shown above, the news report starts out by saying, "[i]n spite of their suicidal sacrifice, the demonstrators' protests have been futile" on the DVD.  But the blu-ray now writes, "[t]he sacrifice of the priests as a protest against the war... have been in vain," which I assume is more accurate.  Mondo also gives you more subtitle options, so you can have it translate all the dialogue, or just the parts that aren't already spoken in English.

2007 US Dark Sky DVD on top; 2018 US Mondo Macabro blu-ray bottom.

And speaking of Mondo laying on the options, the blu-ray also makes the extended, documentary-style intro optional.  If you're not familiar, the film starts with an eight-minute documentary prologue, setting the tone for the film that's about to take place.  This intro is often cut from various international cuts of the film, which is honestly understandable.  It only connects to the story in a subtextual/ thematic way, and features some very graphic, 100% real imagery from the holocaust and other tragedies.  So you can imagine marketers trying to sell you a little light, scary entertainment would be keen to just lop it off.  Now, the DVD did include the intro, as does this new Mondo blu-ray (I'd be pretty bummed if they didn't).  But Mondo's blu makes it optional, so you can watch the film with or without it.  They call it the Island of Death version, because it also features that alternate title card and alternate opening credits that play over the first scene of the movie.

Finally delving into special features, the DVD featured two key interviews: a nine one with director Narciso Ibanez Serrador and a sixteen minute one with the DP, Jose Luis Alcaine.  Both feature forced English subtitles and are pretty good, but could've definitely stood to go a little further in depth.  But apart from a stills gallery, that was all the DVD gave us.

Happily, the blu-ray goes further.  And to start with, yes it includes those two interviews from the DVD.  We hear a lot more from them now, however, with the inclusion of a roughly 45-minute Spanish television documentary on the film, that pairs the two of them up with a genre expert and their host to reminisce on the film.  One really cool aspect is that, we know the director spent a lot of his time doing Spanish television, but this actually explores that work, showing clips, etc.  Then there's a fun interview with British critic Kim Newman, who talks about the film and even its place in the killer kids subgenre.  He also compares it to Children Of the Corn, but if he shares my pet theory, he doesn't mention it.  😉

But that ain't all.  There's also a brand new audio commentary by Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan, who do a podcast called Daughters of Darkness.  I've never listened to it, but I'm going to check it out now, because they do a great, informative job here, filling us in on differences between the book and film, etc.  There's also a fun trailer for a double bill with Lucifer's Curse, where they mix the footage up so it looks like some of the film from that movie was in Who Can Kill a Child.  Then there's some radio spots and a montage of clips from other Mondo Macabro releases. 

And the edition I'm reviewing is the limited edition that was only available direct from Mondo's site.  It's limited to 1,000 numbered copies (mine's #771), and is essentially out of print, though I think I read somewhere that Mondo held onto a few copies for an upcoming holiday sale.  So if you really want it, you should still have a shot.  But a regular, non-limited edition should be coming out sometime in July.  That version comes in a blue case instead of a red one, has different artwork, and is missing the following exclusives, pictured above: eight cardstock lobby cards, reversible Island Of the Damned artwork and a twelve-page booklet with notes by Lee Gambin.  My understanding is that the actual on-disc content, including all the special features, will be identical.

So this is a pretty terrific release of the film, whichever edition you get.  And it's a really under-appreciated horror flick.  I'll put this at the very top of the killer kids list, but even as just one of the all-time great horror films of the 70s, period.  I'm honestly giddy.

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...