Following his 1964 breakthrough, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, and its ’67 sequel, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, José Mojica Marins tried a different approach with his alter ego of Coffin Joe: hosting his own anthology film. Hey, even international horror icons have their off days.
The Strange World of Coffin Joe is indeed strange, but good? Not at all; it’s black and white and bored all over. For viewers still holding minor interest, precious little point exists venturing past the first story, “The Dollmaker.” Its title character is a kindly old man who crafts lifelike dolls, with the assistance of his four lovely daughters, all “of age” and yet sharing a bedroom. Conveniently, four drunks hungry for money and sex interrupt their night of slumber, until … well, you’re not stupid.
Although the middle segment, “Obsession,” represents a leap up in the grotesque, it also marks a step down in quality. A hunchbacked balloon salesman is smitten with a young woman named Tara; he delights in the time gazing longingly at her from afar. After shopping one day, she fails to realize she has dropped a package on the sidewalk — a fact not unnoticed by him, who can use it as his one-shot ticket into her good graces. Alas, that opportunity never comes, because Tara is stabbed fatally at her own wedding! But death isn’t about to stop the lonely balloon man’s hormones. Points awarded to “Obsession” for artistic touch (it’s wordless) are sacked for a languid, half-speed pace.
In the closing “Ideology,” Marins casts himself — not as Coffin Joe, but Oãxiac Odéz, a professor who posits to his guests that love does not exist. He then backs up his suspect theory with solid evidence: a variety show of torture, sadism and other debaucherous acts, like a guy sticking pins into another guy, all while a girl licks the first guy’s bloody eye. Ah, yes, it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? —Rod Lott