Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema we're going to be talking about This Night I'll
Speaker 3: Possess Your Corpse, a movie that the title might lead
Speaker 3: you to believe is a Shallo film, but no, this
Speaker 3: is not a not an Italian film. This is a
Speaker 3: Brazilian horror movie from nineteen sixty seven, and one that
Speaker 3: has been tenaciously requested by listeners, at least one listener
Speaker 3: in particular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one should make Susan happy, but we as
Speaker 2: some other listeners reach out as well. So today mark's
Speaker 2: our first entry into the world of Brazilian cinema. Is
Speaker 2: also going to be another one of these situations where
Speaker 2: we skip the first film in a series and go
Speaker 2: straight to the sequel, you know, because you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: a sequel is a Solos cash grab, but other times
Speaker 2: it gives filmmakers the chance to run with the concepts
Speaker 2: from the first film in a different and grander direction.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what you see in This Night
Speaker 2: I'll Possess Your Corpse, which you can also think of
Speaker 2: I guess it is coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: Too, The Revenge. Now, I haven't seen the first coffin
Speaker 3: Joe movie, but I think the beginning of this movie
Speaker 3: sort of sets up. It's like, Hey, what happened at
Speaker 3: the previous At the end of the previous film was
Speaker 3: this our wicked protagonist got his face chopped to pieces
Speaker 3: by ghosts. But it turns out he was not dead.
Speaker 3: You may have been led to believe he died in
Speaker 3: the last movie, do Over, Do Over. He's not dead.
Speaker 3: He's fine.
Speaker 2: Yes, the comeupp has been canceled at the beginning of
Speaker 2: this film, and we kind of get a do over
Speaker 2: on the whole thing. So yeah, this is a sixty
Speaker 2: seven film, a sequel to nineteen sixty threes at Midnight.
Speaker 2: I'll take your soul. I've seen it. Alleged this was
Speaker 2: the first Brazilian produced horror film and the movie that
Speaker 2: introduced the world to the murderous, preachy weirdo z Ducai Show,
Speaker 2: better known among English speaking filmgoers as coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: Now, as I said, I was totally unfamiliar with Coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: This is my first coffin Joe movie. We're doing it
Speaker 3: because of persistent listener requests. But apparently this is not
Speaker 3: an obscurer character. Coffin Joe is like an icon of
Speaker 3: Brazilian horror cinema. He's like a well recognized character that
Speaker 3: I have seen, compared to characters like Freddy Krueger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's a big deal I'm to understand in
Speaker 2: Brazilian horror cinema, and also achieved kind of a status
Speaker 2: as a Brazilian pop culture figure for a long time
Speaker 2: as well. Now we'll get into his characteristics more in
Speaker 2: a bit, but just the key visual attributes of Coffin Joe.
Speaker 2: This might ring a bell with people out there. Maybe
Speaker 2: you haven't seen these movies, but you've seen poster artors stills.
Speaker 2: But you have a top hat cape. You have long
Speaker 2: twisty fingernails, now not like you know Freddy Krueger nails,
Speaker 2: but like Guinness Book of World Record nails, Blackbeard and
Speaker 2: a monobrow.
Speaker 3: I suppose this is coincidence. But apart from the monobrow,
Speaker 3: I found a picture of the young James Randy where
Speaker 3: he looks almost exactly like Coffin Joe.
Speaker 2: Now, to be clear, the fingernails are not present in this.
Speaker 3: Photograph, that's true, and the fingernails are a key part
Speaker 3: of his look. In fact, in many of his I
Speaker 3: think there are moments in the film that are trying
Speaker 3: to frame him for a kind of iconic close up
Speaker 3: that his face is right in the middle of the picture,
Speaker 3: but you can see he's just like working his fingers
Speaker 3: in on the side of the frame just so you
Speaker 3: can see that he does still have the long nails.
Speaker 2: Yes, So who is Coffin Joe. Well, we're going to
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time talking about this, because he
Speaker 2: certainly spends a lot of time talking about this in
Speaker 2: the picture. But you could say, what he's a rebellious
Speaker 2: atheist and sadistic narcissist presented as a gleefully horrific dericature.
Speaker 2: That's part TV horror host, part old timey villain. But
Speaker 2: there are also some shades of some of some latter
Speaker 2: day horror villains in there as well. Like you could
Speaker 2: compare him to what would come much later and say
Speaker 2: the Saw franchise or in the Hannibal Lecter movies.
Speaker 3: I would say Coffin Joe is a combination of Ivan Karmazov,
Speaker 3: Dracula Hannibal Lecter and the Joker, but also with a
Speaker 3: little bit of like Facebook Atheist from the year two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, except with less liberal politics and more
Speaker 3: kind of like a real fondness for superiority. So you
Speaker 3: got to get an inn Ran d Angle in there too,
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's a good comparison.
Speaker 2: But of course a lot of these are sort of
Speaker 2: outside in these are like international influences on a Brazilian character,
Speaker 2: but apparently also there's some like uniquely Brazilian elements to
Speaker 2: the character as well. I was reading a chapter in
Speaker 2: the book Star and Stardom in Brazilian Cinema. This particular
Speaker 2: chapter dealing with Coffin Joe was by Laura Lo Garcio Canepa,
Speaker 2: and this author points out that the character also incorporates
Speaker 2: aspects of Brazilian folklore into the role, and we'll touch
Speaker 2: on a specific example of that in a minute. So
Speaker 2: you end up with something that yes, is drawing from
Speaker 2: films that are coming from international markets into Brazil, but
Speaker 2: also there is something distinctly Brazilian about the character, and
Speaker 2: I think that that's something that added to its popularity.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Kanepa points out that, in addition to strong
Speaker 2: vibes of Dracula, Satyrs, and the Great God Pan, that
Speaker 2: also becomes obvious because he does have kind of a
Speaker 2: goatish look to him, to him, to his to himself.
Speaker 2: You know, he is kind of a malicious trickster.
Speaker 3: Yes. In fact, there is one scene that seems intentionally
Speaker 3: to highlight his sort of goat like appearing, and the
Speaker 3: actor who created and plays this character does naturally have
Speaker 3: a little bit of a little bit of a goaty face,
Speaker 3: but they really play into it in a scene where
Speaker 3: he has later given visions of Hell and sees himself
Speaker 3: as the devil, and the devil version of him is
Speaker 3: way goadier than he is normally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where Kneppa points out something that
Speaker 2: it seems key that the character also channels a recurrent
Speaker 2: Hafro Brazilian religious figure known as ex Su, a kind
Speaker 2: of narcissistic, hedonistic Bacchus type figure.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I can see that element, but that might
Speaker 3: lead you to believe that Coffin Joe is more about
Speaker 3: fun than he is, that he's like, you know, just
Speaker 3: into the pleasures of the flesh and pure you know, hedonistic,
Speaker 3: amoral desires and all that. That's not really Coffin Joe's vibe.
Speaker 3: In fact, Coffin Joe is in some cases extremely tedious
Speaker 3: and preaching. He is almost the mirror opposite of like
Speaker 3: the preacher whose sermon goes on way too long in
Speaker 3: the church, except he's outside the church talking about how
Speaker 3: everybody inside is stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he clearly sees himself not only as an intellectual,
Speaker 2: but the intellectual, certainly at least in this town that
Speaker 2: we see all the action take place in. Okay, But
Speaker 2: before we go any further here, previously on a Coffin Joe.
Speaker 2: In the first film, Local Undertaker. Coffin Joe spends his
Speaker 2: time lambasting people for how stupid they are for existing
Speaker 2: and believing in God and stuff. So he maims and
Speaker 2: kills people. He expounds a kind of Eugenics flavored philosophy
Speaker 2: in which he can achieve immortality by having a perfect son,
Speaker 2: and therefore well he needs the perfect woman. He runs
Speaker 2: a foul of the local villager, supernatural powers end up
Speaker 2: getting involved, and he winds up dead and possibly blind.
Speaker 2: It's a black and white film, and as Michael Weldon
Speaker 2: pointed out in the Psychotronic Video guide to film. Outside
Speaker 2: of seeing like an automobile in the background, at some point,
Speaker 2: the whole picture could have been set in a prior century,
Speaker 2: and you still get a strong sense of that in
Speaker 2: this film as well.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yeah, there are a couple of things,
Speaker 3: like you see motorized vehicles, but for the most part
Speaker 3: the movie could be set entirely in like the nineteenth century.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this movie picks up right where the last one
Speaker 2: left off and even includes scenes from that finale and
Speaker 2: throws you right back into Coffin Joe's quest to find
Speaker 2: the perfect woman so he can have a perfect son
Speaker 2: and live forever through that sun or something. The great
Speaker 2: thing about it is, if you have any questions, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Z is going to tell you all about it during
Speaker 2: the movie's one hundred and nine minute runtime.
Speaker 3: Now, what I'm about to say might sound counterintuitive, but
Speaker 3: one of my favorite things about this movie was how
Speaker 3: tedious it was. That Like, there are parts where I
Speaker 3: was unable to contain laughter at his just sermonizing going
Speaker 3: on and on. Another way I'll put it is that
Speaker 3: this night I'll possess your corpse displays a filmmaking sensibility
Speaker 3: of thoroughness and abundance. So first of all, it's like,
Speaker 3: why express an idea once when you could say the
Speaker 3: same thing about twelve different ways and all in a row.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing is why show something just
Speaker 3: once when you could show it twenty seven times?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, they clearly shot a lot of footage
Speaker 2: of Tarantula's crawling around on ladies and laningerie, so why
Speaker 2: not just use absolutely all of the footage?
Speaker 3: You know, Coffin Joe clearly sees himself as a Nietzchean superman.
Speaker 3: And there are lots of different ways of interpreting the
Speaker 3: idea of the Nietzschean superman. One is that it is
Speaker 3: the ultimate personal embodiment of affirmation and excess. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just like the never ending everything and yes always,
Speaker 3: And that's kind of what the filmmaking sensibility is here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, all right, Later pitch for
Speaker 2: the movie as simple. Coffin Joe is back and he's
Speaker 2: ready to become a dad, nay world's best dad.
Speaker 3: Now I haven't watched the trailer here, I'm to understand
Speaker 3: that there's not much good audio content. It's just like
Speaker 3: really excessive screaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're only going to play just a very
Speaker 2: brief clip of it because it is mostly screaming. And
Speaker 2: i'd also i'd also suggest not watching the trailer if
Speaker 2: you think you're gonna watch the film, just because this
Speaker 2: film does have some surprises in it, and I feel
Speaker 2: like you're better off going into it a little cold,
Speaker 2: all right. That again, I'm sure that gives you no
Speaker 2: real indication of what's in store except that there will
Speaker 2: be things to be screamed about. Now, if you want
Speaker 2: to watch this film, Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't
Speaker 2: think it's currently streaming anywhere so far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: We rented it from Atlanta's own videodrome Phantoma, and more recently,
Speaker 2: Synapse Films has put the first three Coffin Joe films
Speaker 2: out on DVD. I think the third one, which occurs
Speaker 2: much later, is also available on Blu Ray, and you
Speaker 2: can get them all, or at least you could get
Speaker 2: them all in a DVD set that was shaped like
Speaker 2: a coffin, but this seems to be your only way
Speaker 2: to watch them. This is the sort of film though,
Speaker 2: you can definitely watch it on DVD. I don't think
Speaker 2: you're missing out on much in terms of quality here.
Speaker 2: Oh but wait, I have a post production note to
Speaker 2: add here. We recorded this episode earlier in the week,
Speaker 2: but today this morning, the morning of our publication date Friday,
Speaker 2: August twenty fifth Airro Video has announced that they're putting
Speaker 2: out a gigantic box set Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe.
Speaker 2: This is like a limited edition Blu ray box set,
Speaker 2: and it is going to contain let's see, at midnight,
Speaker 2: I'll take your soul this night, I'll possess your corpse.
Speaker 2: The movie we're talking about here today, the Awakening of
Speaker 2: the Beast, the end of Man, the strange world of
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe when the Gods fall asleep, the strange hostel
Speaker 2: of naked pleasures, hellish flesh and hallucinations of a deranged mind.
Speaker 2: So oh wait, and embodiment of evil. Six discs, all
Speaker 2: the Coffin Joe, all the z you could possibly ask for.
Speaker 2: So go look that up. I think you can. A
Speaker 2: little availability will be different for pre orders depending on
Speaker 2: where you're listening.
Speaker 3: To the show. Now, Rob, I think you went much
Speaker 3: deeper into the context here than I did. But from
Speaker 3: what I understand, there are like there are three main
Speaker 3: chronology Coffin Joe films, and this is the second one
Speaker 3: of those. But also Coffin Joe just appears as a
Speaker 3: free floating recurring character in lots of other movies, Am
Speaker 3: I right?
Speaker 2: Yes, mostly films by the same director, writer and actor here,
Speaker 2: and that's Jose Mojica Marens, who again here plays Coffin Joe,
Speaker 2: plays this character that is known in the original Portuguese
Speaker 2: Ze Ducai show. But he also was the director, the writer,
Speaker 2: and the producer. Who lived nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: He was the son of a cinema manager on the
Speaker 2: outskirts of Salpaalu, and he grew up with a passion
Speaker 2: for film and began making his own short films at
Speaker 2: a young age with a nine point five millimeter camera
Speaker 2: that his parents had given him. You know, we see
Speaker 2: this similar story with a lot of film fans turned filmmakers.
Speaker 2: He created his own film studio at age eighteen, and
Speaker 2: his first film was a violent western called Adventurer's Fate,
Speaker 2: which did pretty well apparently in the big city, but
Speaker 2: it really it garnered some criticism because it was pretty violent,
Speaker 2: But then it did quite well as a traveling special
Speaker 2: screening in the outlying districts, with its female star Tonya
Speaker 2: Elektra performing a strip tease as part of the show
Speaker 2: and Maren serving as master of ceremonies.
Speaker 3: Oh, I can totally see him as a master of ceremonies,
Speaker 3: with the top had on the microphone being like, then
Speaker 3: our next act will be yes.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 2: They followed this up with a melodrama in I Believe
Speaker 2: sixty three, and it didn't perform well. So inspired by
Speaker 2: a nightmare, the story goes, he scraped together what money
Speaker 2: he could manage to make the film that would become
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four's at Midnight, I'll Take Your Soul. I
Speaker 2: might have said earlier that it was sixty three, but
Speaker 2: sixty four is generally the accepted date for this film,
Speaker 2: so they had a shoestring budget. But it was a
Speaker 2: huge hit and ignited a horror boom in Brazil, and
Speaker 2: it had elements of horror exploitation, but also a popular
Speaker 2: genre of Brazilian religious melodrama of the day, which I
Speaker 2: think is important to keep in mind in understanding some
Speaker 2: twists and turns in the plot and all of this
Speaker 2: also laid the groundwork to cement Coffin Joe as a
Speaker 2: Brazilian media icon, so he soon began to appear in
Speaker 2: the media on TV, etc. In character as Coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, but I would guess based on
Speaker 3: other genres I am familiar with that the Brazilian religious
Speaker 3: melodrama would have some kind of common redemption arc, Like
Speaker 3: you'd have a sinful character who does a bunch of
Speaker 3: bad stuff and then at the end of the story
Speaker 3: they come round and repent and accept Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's my understanding, and I think it it
Speaker 2: basically matches up with all sorts of things you see,
Speaker 2: all sorts of artistic presentations and creations created beneath the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church throughout Western history, you know, where it's like
Speaker 2: I'm a painter, I really want to paint all these
Speaker 2: naked bodies. Well, make it be a Bible story and
Speaker 2: you can get away with it, you.
Speaker 4: Know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: As long as it's ultimately serving the message, then will
Speaker 2: allow it.
Speaker 3: And this takes that a lot farther. Because I don't
Speaker 3: know if all of these melodramas are like this. I
Speaker 3: assume not, but at least in the case of Coffin Joe,
Speaker 3: it does have that arc, but you can tell it
Speaker 3: is really relishing showing all of the sin and bad
Speaker 3: stuff along the way. So I think in a way
Speaker 3: that that is a format that is common to what's
Speaker 3: known as exploitation cinema. More broadly, the idea that you
Speaker 3: would take a film that's like, oh, it's about an
Speaker 3: important issue, like it is about the dangers of marijuana.
Speaker 3: But because it's about that, you can show these dangerous
Speaker 3: marijuana parties where people are taking their clothes off and
Speaker 3: engaging in sinful behavior, and so like that's the appeal
Speaker 3: to the audience. So they want to go see the
Speaker 3: racy content, but you can always say, like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I had to show that because it's a message film
Speaker 3: about the dangers of this drug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So Maren's follows this up with the Western,
Speaker 2: but then he returns to the world of Coffin Joe
Speaker 2: with this film that we're dogging by here today this night,
Speaker 2: I'll Possess Your Corpse, a more ambitious swing at the
Speaker 2: same concepts. Joe wants a perfect son, and he'll do
Speaker 2: all sorts of evil to carry this out. And mocks
Speaker 2: the people of the town for their supernatural beliefs, while
Speaker 2: eventually encountering the supernatural himself. And on this point Kneppa
Speaker 2: has the following to say in that chapter quote. It
Speaker 2: is worth stressing here that in Brazil, in which the
Speaker 2: supernatural has been habitually seen by large parts of the
Speaker 2: population not as a deviant element, but rather is one
Speaker 2: of the fundamental elements of existence, it would be difficult
Speaker 2: to create a story of great impact in which the
Speaker 2: supernatural simply represented evil. Achievement of Mochico's creation, therefore, was
Speaker 2: the invention of a character who does not believe in
Speaker 2: the supernatural and who, as a result of this, can
Speaker 2: be terrified by its intervention.
Speaker 3: Ah okay, so he in a context where there is
Speaker 3: widespread belief in magic, you introduce this like weird, dangerous element,
Speaker 3: which is a guy who is aggressively an atheist materialist,
Speaker 3: who's constantly talking about how there is no God, and
Speaker 3: then he can, after introducing all of that kind of
Speaker 3: weirdness and unpleasantness, can be terrified by images of hell
Speaker 3: that might be more commonplace to anybody else in this town. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think also another aspect of it too, is
Speaker 2: something you see in wider horror in general, to have
Speaker 2: like that competent non believer. Yeah, eventually encountered the supernatural.
Speaker 2: Like Coffin Joke. Say what you will about him, he's
Speaker 2: very competent. He can hold up his end of a
Speaker 2: fight and so forth. So it's like when the supernatural
Speaker 2: starts kicking in and we see Coffin Joe frightened, it
Speaker 2: does have impact.
Speaker 3: It's the arc of all three of the original Indiana
Speaker 3: Jones movies at the beginning, and he doesn't believe in
Speaker 3: any of that superstitious nonsense. And then at the end
Speaker 3: of the movie he always has to do a demonstration
Speaker 3: of faith in order to defeat the evil at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you see some similar elements there. So after
Speaker 2: this film, Coffin Joe would go on to appear in
Speaker 2: multiple other films, though not a true sequel until two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight Embodiment of Evil. He appeared as a
Speaker 2: presenter in the anthology film The Strange World of Coffin
Speaker 2: Joe from sixty eight. A handful of other Maren's films
Speaker 2: involve the character in unique metafictional ways. These include nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies Awakening of the beast. This is an LSD film
Speaker 2: where I haven't seen it, but I believe that the
Speaker 2: idea is, like, there's an experiment, the test subjects are
Speaker 2: given LSD and then they watch Coffin Joe films, you know,
Speaker 2: something like that. There's The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe,
Speaker 2: in which Maren's plays himself, and then there's another film,
Speaker 2: The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, which features an implied
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe in the lead role. But I don't think
Speaker 2: it's like officially coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: Mm okay.
Speaker 2: So Coffin Joe remained a staple horror host on Brazilian
Speaker 2: TV at least into the nineties. The eighties and nineties
Speaker 2: I think were hard on him in Brazilian film in general,
Speaker 2: and he had to take on a lot of less
Speaker 2: glamorous work to get by. But he experienced more of
Speaker 2: a resurgence in the two thousands, including getting to return
Speaker 2: to the character of Coffin Joe on his own terms
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eights Embodiment of Evil.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a weird character to end up having
Speaker 3: this more broad cultural footprint, kind of in the way
Speaker 3: that a character like Freddy Krueger. Would you know that
Speaker 3: Freddy Krueger wasn't He started off as this like gross,
Speaker 3: sadistic killer in this first movie, But then the movies
Speaker 3: got sequels and became so popular that he's doing commercials
Speaker 3: for breakfast Cereal.
Speaker 2: Right right, and eventually like nowadays, like children may dress
Speaker 2: as Freddy Grill. Even back in the day, kids were
Speaker 2: dressing up as Freddy Krueger for Halloween. Now you have
Speaker 2: like sexy Freddy Krueger outfits. I wonder if you have
Speaker 2: sexy Coffin Joe outfits. Maybe I got it one done.
Speaker 3: But even so, like given that broader cultural footprint and
Speaker 3: the fact that Freddy Krueger is now just a totally defanged,
Speaker 3: like funny figure. Oh, he's just you recognize what he
Speaker 3: looks like. You know, you remember him from commercials on
Speaker 3: TV when you were a kid. If you go back
Speaker 3: and watch the first movie, it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: it's like shocking, how how like gross and evil and
Speaker 3: nasty he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think you have to go back to
Speaker 2: that original one, to the original Nightmare on Elm Street
Speaker 2: to get that sense of it. Also, the remake, I
Speaker 2: think takes a good swing at trying to recapture that.
Speaker 3: And so anyway, I wonder if there's the same thing
Speaker 3: there's a similar thing with coffin Joe, because I mean,
Speaker 3: he is really like gross and evil in these films,
Speaker 3: or at least in the one we just watched.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another thing that I think is interesting is so he's
Speaker 3: presented as a character who sees himself as the Nietzschean superman,
Speaker 3: Like he transcends petty morality, he transcends the illusions of
Speaker 3: other worldly rewards and punishments in order to forge an
Speaker 3: affirmative humanity on the strength of his unstoppable will you know,
Speaker 3: He's just like I am the new Thing, I Am
Speaker 3: the new Man. But I think he kind of fails
Speaker 3: at the Nietzschean ideal because ultimately he is a really
Speaker 3: resentful whiner. He is complaining all the time about stuff
Speaker 3: he doesn't like, religion, superstition, weakness, morality, dramas. He doesn't
Speaker 3: like dramas, and it creates drama everywhere he goes. He
Speaker 3: walks into a room, it's like instant drama. But he
Speaker 3: hates dramas. He is the pope of dramas. But also
Speaker 3: when other people are having dramas. He hates dramas, but
Speaker 3: it really gets him down. And I think if he
Speaker 3: were truly the uberminch that he imagines himself to be,
Speaker 3: he would not be complaining so much. He would just
Speaker 3: achieve the immortality of blood, kill God already, get it done,
Speaker 3: and reshape the world in the image of his genius.
Speaker 3: He does not do it.
Speaker 2: And the plan really stays in like phase one for
Speaker 2: I think most of both of the first films. I
Speaker 2: presume it probably stays in phase one in the third
Speaker 2: film as well.
Speaker 3: Well. Also, Yeah, so his plan is what he calls
Speaker 3: the immortality of blood, so he has a specialized name
Speaker 3: for it that I guess sounds kind of cool. But
Speaker 3: ultimately his goal is not that outside the box a revolutionary.
Speaker 3: What he wants is to have a son with the
Speaker 3: perfect woman. How outside the box is that? That seems
Speaker 3: like something other characters have tried before, except that he
Speaker 3: is more of a nasty, violent, immoral creep in trying
Speaker 3: to achieve this goal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of what, especially in the latter portions
Speaker 2: of the film, there's a lot of stuff that feels
Speaker 2: like just a hard twist on what a lot of
Speaker 2: fathers feel like at one point he's like, I cannot
Speaker 2: die because my son will need me, and is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I think a lot of people feel that
Speaker 2: way about their responsibilities in life, just without all the
Speaker 2: implied mustache twirling.
Speaker 3: Though. Well, we can explore this dynamic later, but I
Speaker 3: think when he feels that, that's supposed to reveal his hypocrisy,
Speaker 3: because you know, that's that's love, which we know from
Speaker 3: earlier scenes he believes to be a form of weakness.
Speaker 2: You know. It also strikes me that Ze is kind
Speaker 2: of the anti necromonger here. You know, while while both
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe and the Necromongers dig skulls and stuff, the
Speaker 2: necromongers are deep into sci fi occultism and they consider
Speaker 2: procreation the absolute worst, while Coffin Joe despises belief in
Speaker 2: the occult and believes that babies are literally all that matters.
Speaker 3: I actually ended up making a list of Coffin Joe's
Speaker 3: likes and dislikes that we discover throughout the movie.
Speaker 2: Do you want to do that here? Oh yeah, let's
Speaker 2: let's have it. Let's the full dating profile for Coffin
Speaker 2: Joe for any ladies out there, that are interested.
Speaker 3: Okay, what coffin Joe does like a superior people, though
Speaker 3: that's primarily just himself. Superior people, strength, courage, liberation, sex, atheism,
Speaker 3: the innocence of children, procreation, venomous animals, owning, people with logic, grapes,
Speaker 3: quote science. I think his understanding of what that means
Speaker 3: is a little off the mark. And he really likes instinct.
Speaker 3: He talks repeatedly about how instinct is pure compared to
Speaker 3: I think religion. Okay, so that's his likes. His dislikes
Speaker 3: are superstition, god, religion. He's really not into war, hatred,
Speaker 3: and the triumph of lies. He doesn't like the idiots, Catholicism,
Speaker 3: inferior people, oh boy. Multiple times in the movie. You
Speaker 3: can hear it because it's a cognate in the languages.
Speaker 3: He's just going inferior.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Morality, oh disgusting, hates morality, belief in the immortality of
Speaker 3: the soul, really does not like dying without having a
Speaker 3: son with the perfect woman to achieve the immortality of blood.
Speaker 3: He hates dramas, and he really does not like trimming
Speaker 3: his nails or people who love because they are weak.
Speaker 2: I would also add trunk of Door to the list,
Speaker 2: he's really hard on Trunk of Door.
Speaker 3: Doesn't like Trunk of Door. Trunk of Door is a
Speaker 3: character we'll.
Speaker 2: Get to in a minute, but basically a beefy muscle
Speaker 2: man who is just like it clearly is he's here
Speaker 2: in part so that Coffin Joe can just dunk on him.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've got a question I thought was interesting. Wonder
Speaker 3: what you think about this? What do you think is
Speaker 3: the relationship of this film to the philosophy of Coffin Joe, Like,
Speaker 3: what do you think the filmmaker's attitude to that philosophy is?
Speaker 3: Because on one hand, Coffin Joe is obviously full evil,
Speaker 3: hard evil does all all kinds of unforgivable crimes. He
Speaker 3: is a murderer, rapist, kidnapper, does every awful crime. And
Speaker 3: yet there are other ways that the movie seems to
Speaker 3: go out of its way to make him sympathetic, such
Speaker 3: as these kind of treacily scenes of showing his protectiveness
Speaker 3: of children and when he's giving sermons about how like
Speaker 3: God and the church are trash. I don't know, it
Speaker 3: seems like they're giving him a lot of room to
Speaker 3: talk and well, a lot of what he says was
Speaker 3: funny to us, I sense a real desire to make
Speaker 3: his case sound as eloquent as possible. So is there
Speaker 3: a part of the filmmaker that sort of likes or
Speaker 3: agrees with Coffin Joe. There's that on you know, so
Speaker 3: he does the crimes, then there's that on the other hand.
Speaker 3: But then coming back on the other side, that would
Speaker 3: be kind of weird, given that in the end we
Speaker 3: see Coffin Joe, we see his ideology humiliated by supernatural intervention,
Speaker 3: and we see him repudiate his previous existence and beg
Speaker 3: for repentance.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is weird to try and make sense of,
Speaker 2: like the full narrative of the thing. I do think
Speaker 2: there is a sense of Coffin Joe as an expression
Speaker 2: of the soul, and that that Maren's considered him very
Speaker 2: much his alter ego. So I guess some of the
Speaker 2: ideas he's he's preaching about, or perhaps ideas that Maren's
Speaker 2: you know, sympathize with it at least. And I think
Speaker 2: also you could throw in that like this is clearly
Speaker 2: a figure that is supposed to feel counterculture and counter norms.
Speaker 2: You know, he's the the ultimate outsider who inspires fear
Speaker 2: just by walking down the main street in town. So
Speaker 2: he's the enemy, but we're also attracted to him. You know,
Speaker 2: there's this there's this weird kind of push and pull like, yeah,
Speaker 2: how are we ultimately even as the viewer supposed to
Speaker 2: feel about coffin Joe and certainly like, how is the
Speaker 2: intended audience, the initial intended audience of the time supposed
Speaker 2: to to think about him like you're you're kind of
Speaker 2: enjoying his rebellious nature, while also at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, it's like, Okay, the universe is put back
Speaker 2: in its right place at the end of the film,
Speaker 2: but we still got to have the catharsis of seeing it.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a way, I almost wonder if it's
Speaker 3: another form of the exploitation cinema principle that's like, we
Speaker 3: want to show you some things that we think you
Speaker 3: will be interested and titillated by, but framed within a
Speaker 3: context where there's deniability that this is like no, no,
Speaker 3: but we're saying he's bad. He is fully bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you absolutely can't take the exploitation out of
Speaker 2: the equation here.
Speaker 3: But I don't know the thing in the end about
Speaker 3: how Coffin Joe is a friend to all children. It
Speaker 3: just remains deeply hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, rolling through just some of the other
Speaker 2: members of the cast and crew here, most most of
Speaker 2: the people involved here didn't do a lot else outside
Speaker 2: of this film. I've seen interviews from Maren says that
Speaker 2: he worked a lot with with amateur actors and preferred
Speaker 2: to work with amateur actors because more professional actors were
Speaker 2: difficult to could be difficult to control. Let's see, we
Speaker 2: have a writer on this, al Donora di Sapporto. This
Speaker 2: was their only writing credit. We also have an actor
Speaker 2: by the name of Larcio Larelli who does the voice
Speaker 2: of Coffin Joe. So Maren's did not speak perfect Portuguese apparently.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much of this had to do
Speaker 2: with his family being of Spanish descent or not, but
Speaker 2: at any rate, at the end of the day, the
Speaker 2: voice of Coffin Joe, even in Portuguese, is dubbed by
Speaker 2: a different actor.
Speaker 3: So that's somebody else's voice we're hearing say inferior.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And you know this isn't out of the norm.
Speaker 2: I mean, Paul Nashi Films for example, in Spain. Like
Speaker 2: most of the time, we're not hearing.
Speaker 4: Paul Nashi's actual voice.
Speaker 2: I think there are a few films where he does
Speaker 2: his own his own vocals as well, but for the
Speaker 2: most part he's dubbed, even in Spanish. All right. Other
Speaker 2: cast members here, Tina Worls plays Laura, this is their
Speaker 2: only acting credit. Nadia Fritz plays Marcia. This is her
Speaker 2: only acting credit. And then oh, we have Trunkador played
Speaker 2: by Antonio Frakari. This is a beefy actor and makeup
Speaker 2: artist who also was an associate producer on this film.
Speaker 2: He only has three acting and three makeup credits, all
Speaker 2: in Brazilian cinema from nineteen fifty eight through nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2: Great look, though, He is this bald headed muscle man
Speaker 2: with I don't know if this is natural or in
Speaker 2: fact I'm assuming an effect, but one of his eyes
Speaker 2: is black like it's like it's a black false eye
Speaker 2: or it's some sort of contact lens in there.
Speaker 3: But it's a very impressive look. And he's dressed like Sinbad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't figure out the outfit either. He does
Speaker 2: look like he walked out of a sword and sandals picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know why he's dressed like that. It
Speaker 3: looks looks like some kind of wrestling costume or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very physically intimidating, which again, this makes it
Speaker 2: all the more hilarious when Coffin Joe just like beats
Speaker 2: the crap out of him in one scene, you know,
Speaker 2: run circles around him intellectually. In another scene, it's hilarious
Speaker 2: like he's basically Coffin Joe's punching back. All right, we
Speaker 2: have Bruno. We'll talk about Bruno in a bit, played
Speaker 2: by Jose Lobo. This is their only acting credit. And
Speaker 2: then we have the score. Here is by Herminio Gaminez,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh five through nineteen ninety one, responsible
Speaker 2: for a number of scores including At Midnight, I'll Take
Speaker 2: Your Soul, The Strange World of Coffin Joe, and End
Speaker 2: of Man.
Speaker 4: From nineteen seventy one. That's another Maren's film.
Speaker 3: All right, to be talking about the plot now, yes,
Speaker 3: let's get into the plot. So the movie starts with
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe just talking straight into the camera. There's a
Speaker 3: plume of smoke twisting in front of his face, and
Speaker 3: he looks at you, and he says, is life everything
Speaker 3: and death nothing? Or is death everything and life nothing?
Speaker 3: Thing makes you think.
Speaker 4: I think it's the former.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with the former, but I'm getting the
Speaker 2: impression he thinks maybe the latter.
Speaker 3: Maybe he does seem to be into death, though not
Speaker 3: for himself. You know, it's like he loves death, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't love He doesn't want to die. He wants
Speaker 3: to be immortal, but not to believe in the immortality
Speaker 3: of the soul, which is foolish. He wants to have
Speaker 3: the immortality of blood. He'll explain more later. We'll get
Speaker 3: to that. So we get a narration at the beginning.
Speaker 3: I think there's some text displayed on the screen. It
Speaker 3: says Coffin Joe, obsessed with having a son, killed many people,
Speaker 3: but he was haunted by hallucinations. And so it shows
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe ripping open a couple of caskets. I think
Speaker 3: this is the end of At Midnight, I'll take your
Speaker 3: soul or your soul, but whatever the previous movie.
Speaker 2: Was at Midnight, I'll take your soul as a previous
Speaker 2: And then this one is this night I'll possess your corpse.
Speaker 3: Okay, it doesn't specify a time tonight. It could be anytime.
Speaker 3: It could be nine pm to four am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the cable guy come into to fix
Speaker 2: your cable. It's just you have a window for arrival.
Speaker 3: Right sometime between nine pm and four am. I'll possess
Speaker 3: your corpse. And then they don't get there to possess
Speaker 3: it till four thirty. But anyway, Yeah, so Coffin Joe's
Speaker 3: he's pulling the lids off caskets. He reveals a couple
Speaker 3: of mutilated corpses with spiders crawling on him. And then
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe apparently something happens to him. I think he
Speaker 3: gets his face sort of chopped up by ghosts, and
Speaker 3: the townspeople come and they find him lying at the
Speaker 3: entrance to the crypt with his head all bloody and
Speaker 3: one of his eyeballs popped out. So it doesn't really
Speaker 3: look like he could come back from this. But you
Speaker 3: know what, turns out he's totally all right. And then
Speaker 3: we get the credits and I don't know what you
Speaker 3: call the effect here, but the lettering of the credits
Speaker 3: is wildly animated. The letters are jumping and wiggling all
Speaker 3: over the place. And I actually paused it and went
Speaker 3: frame by frame to see what's happening here. What it
Speaker 3: looks like is that every frame of the credit sequel
Speaker 3: and had the words that are being displayed sort of
Speaker 3: painted or handwritten on the frame anew and there was
Speaker 3: no stencil to keep them like lined up in between shots.
Speaker 3: So imagine just writing the same words dozens of times
Speaker 3: on many frames in a row, and every time you're
Speaker 3: just roughly eyeballing it to keep them in the same place,
Speaker 3: so they're wiggling crazily all over the screen.
Speaker 2: It's a very startling effect, especially given the fact that
Speaker 2: even in you know, weirder films, the credits are usually
Speaker 2: not that weird, and sometimes they're mandated that they can't
Speaker 2: be that weird, right, I mean, like they're just there's
Speaker 2: certain norms that are followed with opening credits and closing
Speaker 2: credits within a given timeframe and cinematic tradition, and here
Speaker 2: it's just right off the bat, everything's unhinged.
Speaker 3: It seems they're they prioritize making the credit sequence look
Speaker 3: interesting over making it readable, and I respect that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Also, the credits include shots of hands franticly reaching
Speaker 3: up from the soil. So they're clowing their way out
Speaker 3: of graves. But so Coffin Joe head old bloody, I
Speaker 3: popped out. He's taking to the hospital. Not only is
Speaker 3: he not dead, he heals up perfectly, not a scar
Speaker 3: to be seen. Also, whatever murders and crimes he did
Speaker 3: in the last movie, it's like, no, biggie. There's a
Speaker 3: really fast scene in front of a judge in a
Speaker 3: courtroom where the judge is just like, not enough evidence
Speaker 3: to convict Coffin Joe is now free to kill again.
Speaker 3: So he's lying there in a hospital bed and the
Speaker 3: doctors come and he's got bandages wrapped around his head,
Speaker 3: covering his eyes. They remove the bandages, they take him off.
Speaker 3: His sight is restored. It's perfect now. And then he
Speaker 3: just starts cackling like a maniac at the concept of
Speaker 3: light while the doctors are just standing there looking at him.
Speaker 2: This should be a red flag already that like, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that this guy was necessarily innocent.
Speaker 3: So he's back. He's back, baby, He's in town. We
Speaker 3: see shots of people going about their business, you know,
Speaker 3: children playing in the streets, people are singing and dancing.
Speaker 3: Everybody's having a good time. But then they all see
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe's coming down the road and everyone flees in terror.
Speaker 3: Parents grab their children and take them inside. Old women
Speaker 3: duck behind windows and slam the shutters.
Speaker 2: It's it's good, Yeah, it's it's a little bit hilarious
Speaker 2: because it's it's really hard to nail down the initial
Speaker 2: impact of Coffin Joe, because yes, he's creepy. He doesn't
Speaker 2: look completely ridiculous or anything like that, Like I don't
Speaker 2: want to imply that, Like he does look legitimately creepy,
Speaker 2: and he brings this wonderful, weird energy to every scene
Speaker 2: he's in, and yet there is something ridiculous about here,
Speaker 2: Like here he comes, he's strolling into town and everybody's
Speaker 2: running like a twenty foot monster just strolled into the village.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Coffin Joe struts across the churchyard, he scowls
Speaker 3: at the town center, and he just says, people are
Speaker 3: always the same, ignorant, superstitious, inferior, but they will learn
Speaker 3: the truth, even if I must make their eyes run
Speaker 3: with tears of blood. So he's not like easing into it.
Speaker 3: The moment he sees the town again, he's like, I'm
Speaker 3: going to destroy these people. He checks in at the
Speaker 3: funeral home that he operates. He looks to be very
Speaker 3: proud to be a small business owner. He's just looking
Speaker 3: around at his employees and beaming. And here we also
Speaker 3: meet one of his employees who is basically his egor.
Speaker 3: This is a man named Bruno, who they have a
Speaker 3: not super convincing looking hunchback prosthetic and some stuff on
Speaker 3: his face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like a hunchback lurch character.
Speaker 3: But Coffin Joe looks out the window at a bunch
Speaker 3: of kids playing games in the street, and then he said,
Speaker 3: and this is where it gets weird. He's like, look
Speaker 3: at nature's perfect creation children. Pity they all grow up
Speaker 3: to become idiots. He says that they get lost in
Speaker 3: a labyrinth of egoism and dominated by an imaginary power,
Speaker 3: the faith in the immortality of the spirit. That's what
Speaker 3: he really doesn't like. But I guess that maybe they
Speaker 3: don't have that faith yet, so they're still good, They're
Speaker 3: still awesome in his view. And he says there's only
Speaker 3: one truth in this life that is the immortality of blood.
Speaker 3: He'll explain more about that later, but Bruno is just
Speaker 3: nodding like, yep, the Labyrinth of Egoism. And then there
Speaker 3: is a scene where suddenly Coffin Joe he's like looking
Speaker 3: down the road and he sees a man on a
Speaker 3: motorcycle or it might be a motor scooter, just driving
Speaker 3: straight toward a group of children who are playing in
Speaker 3: the street, and Coffin Joe yells he's crazy, and most
Speaker 3: of the children get out of the way, but one
Speaker 3: boy just stands right there in the vehicle's path, and
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe swoops in like batman and saves the child,
Speaker 3: just like lifts him out of the street. And then
Speaker 3: the kid's crying there. He's like, oh no, and Coffin
Speaker 3: just says, don't cry my boy. Do you like music?
Speaker 3: And then what is with this weird he gets like
Speaker 3: this little Zippo lighter music box out. It's like a
Speaker 3: tiny metal rectangle that plays music out of some weird
Speaker 3: little window.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess this is like the iPod of the day, right,
Speaker 2: you just have this little, you know, wind up musical
Speaker 2: contraption that, yeah, generally you would see in the bottom
Speaker 2: of the music box.
Speaker 3: So once again I think it is so odd and
Speaker 3: interesting that they're giving him these superficially heroic or sympathetic traits.
Speaker 3: It's like, what if Freddy Krueger still murdered you in
Speaker 3: your dreams, but he was also a friend to all
Speaker 3: children like Gamera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean he has a code, right, That's
Speaker 2: that's what we're laying down here.
Speaker 3: Anyway, the driver of the scooter comes over to him
Speaker 3: and says, thank God, it's a miracle that I didn't
Speaker 3: hit that boy. You must have been sent by God
Speaker 3: to save him. And you can just see Coffin Joe's
Speaker 3: eyes start twitching and he's like stupid fanaticism, and he
Speaker 3: tells the guy a child is the most important creature
Speaker 3: in the universe, and he says, protect them, or even
Speaker 3: your God will not be able to save you from hell.
Speaker 3: Oh and then he goes back to his funeral parlor
Speaker 3: and there's a rich heiress named Marcia who comes over.
Speaker 3: She comes over to flirt with Coffin Joe. She's like, wow,
Speaker 3: I saw what you did. You're a hero. There is
Speaker 3: no God. Talk to you later. But here the movie
Speaker 3: makes an abrupt transition. It's like, okay, it is time
Speaker 3: to do heinous crimes. So Coffin Joe says I must
Speaker 3: now immortalize my blood, which means for him, because the
Speaker 3: spiritual afterlife does not exist, he must find the perfect
Speaker 3: heathen superwoman to bear him a son.
Speaker 2: All right, right, So not a situation of trying to
Speaker 2: create the occult power couple, but the heathen power couple.
Speaker 2: That's the quest, and then of course the heathen super baby.
Speaker 3: So it seems like his plan is roughly shaped like this.
Speaker 3: He's gonna kidnap six beautiful women who are all free
Speaker 3: thinking materials. Oh, but there's one who he sends Bruno
Speaker 3: to kidnap, and then when Bruno gets there, she's like,
Speaker 3: no need, no need for violence, no need to kidnap me.
Speaker 3: I'm all in on coffin Joe. And that one that
Speaker 3: is Marcia, who flirted with him at the funeral parlor.
Speaker 3: But once all of the victims are assembled, he's going
Speaker 3: to terrorize them by putting a bunch of tarantulas in
Speaker 3: their beds, and then if any of them get scared
Speaker 3: of the tarantulas, they're not worthy. So he's going to
Speaker 3: give them to Bruno or kill them by making them
Speaker 3: get into a pit of venomous snakes. And then if
Speaker 3: any of them don't get freaked out by the tarantulas.
Speaker 3: That means they are superior and will be appropriate to
Speaker 3: help him achieve the immortality of blood.
Speaker 2: Highly suspect logic here that everything is hinging on whether
Speaker 2: or not these individuals are wigged out by spiders and snakes.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, it's obvious that this plan has moral defects.
Speaker 3: I think it also has logical defects, despite the fact
Speaker 3: that Coffin Joe is constantly delivering sermons about how he
Speaker 3: is superior and logical and God is bad. There's a
Speaker 3: scene at the police station of Trunkador, the wrestler guy,
Speaker 3: being falsely accused of kidnapping the women, and then the
Speaker 3: colonel comes out and he vouches for him. He's like,
Speaker 3: if Trunkador is guilty, you might as well arrest me too,
Speaker 3: And then the detective is like, well that settles it.
Speaker 3: He's innocent.
Speaker 4: Trunk of Door is off the hook.
Speaker 2: I get the impression Trunkador's job is just like professional
Speaker 2: heavy slash bodyguard.
Speaker 4: That seems to be his role here.
Speaker 3: I think so. I think he is maybe the colonel's bodyguard.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: There is another scene where a mob gathers in front
Speaker 3: of a guy outside the church who's saying that Coffin
Speaker 3: Joe did all the kidnappings. And then the mob they
Speaker 3: get whipped up into a frenzy and they say they're
Speaker 3: going to go after him. They're going to go get him.
Speaker 3: But then coffin Joe appears and he disproves the premise
Speaker 3: of their posse with logic, And you can't help but
Speaker 3: notice that, like, there's a similarity of this scene to
Speaker 3: scenes in the Gospels where the Pharisees are getting a
Speaker 3: mob together to accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath or
Speaker 3: blaspheming or something, and then Jesus uses some kind of
Speaker 3: clever word play or argument or like turns their logic
Speaker 3: around on them to shut them up. And so here
Speaker 3: coffin Joe is like, you say, I'm guilty, Well what
Speaker 3: about you? Who can prove that you're not guilty? You know,
Speaker 3: maybe your wife left you because she hates you. And
Speaker 3: also this speech includes a really irrefutable argument. He says,
Speaker 3: how can any of you be innocent of these kidnappings
Speaker 3: when in fact we know that only children are innocent.
Speaker 3: Boom can't argue with that. Yeah, I don't know. Do
Speaker 3: you think the parallel to like the controversy stories of
Speaker 3: Jesus and the Bible, where is intentional here?
Speaker 4: You know, I bet so.
Speaker 2: You know, we talked about like the audience being an
Speaker 2: audience that is either you know, Christian or is come
Speaker 2: up in a Christian dominated kind of culture, and you
Speaker 2: could see the appeal of an Antichrist character, not in
Speaker 2: the sense that the character is supposed to be like
Speaker 2: the actual Antichrist from you know, biblical tradition or from
Speaker 2: cinematic portrayals of the Antichrist, but being like a figure
Speaker 2: that is kind of this reverse altered image of Christ
Speaker 2: where they're like, there's something about this guy. He reminds
Speaker 2: me of somebody else that I hear about every week,
Speaker 2: except you know, through a mirror darkly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Okay, but wait, coffin Joe, It's almost like he
Speaker 3: forgot that he had lady prisoners. So he goes back
Speaker 3: to the prisoners and he lectures them about how there's
Speaker 3: no immortality of the soul, only immortality of the blood.
Speaker 3: And then he's talking to all of them about how
Speaker 3: he selected them because they were without faith. Like he
Speaker 3: goes up to one of the ladies and he says,
Speaker 3: you you were married outside the church? Why no? Faith? Good,
Speaker 3: very good? And then he does the tarantula test. I
Speaker 3: recall this scene goes on a long time where the
Speaker 3: ladies are all just like sleeping, and we get to
Speaker 3: see tarantulas crawling on their legs and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is definitely a case where you could
Speaker 2: have used a little less footage and you could have
Speaker 2: gotten the point across. But they clearly just liked this
Speaker 2: footage of tarantula is crawling across ladies in their lingerie,
Speaker 2: so we see a lot of it.
Speaker 3: Only Marcia passes the test, the one who was all
Speaker 3: in on Coffin Joe. Anyway, all the other ladies they
Speaker 3: start screaming about the tarantulas, so Coffin Joe he takes
Speaker 3: them downstairs to get murdered in the pit of venomous snakes.
Speaker 2: The snake pit looks good, by the way, like all
Speaker 2: these SATs this is. This film is black and white,
Speaker 2: so we have these very grim, gritty, black and white
Speaker 2: set sets in addition to those street scenes. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this it feels claustrophobic. The snakes are definitely real, at
Speaker 2: times alarmingly real, as are the spiders.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's weird. I guess we haven't talked about
Speaker 3: the visual style of this movie much yet. I guess
Speaker 3: just because the subject matter is so ripe for conversation.
Speaker 3: But this is a great looking movie, I think. I
Speaker 3: think most of the sets and the effects and everything
Speaker 3: look really good. It is surprisingly visually striking for a
Speaker 3: black and white film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, especially knowing that you know, they didn't have
Speaker 2: an inexhaustible budget here that you know, I think they
Speaker 2: had more money than they did on the first film,
Speaker 2: but still they didn't have a lot to play with.
Speaker 2: A lot of times the elements they're using you can
Speaker 2: see the limitations, but you also see that well they
Speaker 2: put a lot of effort into lighting it appropriately and
Speaker 2: making sure that, you know, they could lean on the
Speaker 2: shadows as much as possible to give it this this
Speaker 2: air of Gothic intrigue.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of good use of high contrast in
Speaker 3: the set dressings. There are some excellent indoor swamp and
Speaker 3: pond sets later and yeah, just well thought out and
Speaker 3: often high energy imagery. It is designed not to let
Speaker 3: your eyes get bored.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's my understanding that they built all the
Speaker 2: sets in that synagogue and I think they built the
Speaker 2: swamp in the backyard of the synagogue.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. But anyway, so back to the depraved crimes
Speaker 3: of Coffin Joe. So he's murdering all these ladies in
Speaker 3: the snake pit, and then uh oh, Marcia, the lady
Speaker 3: who was going to be worthy because she's not afraid
Speaker 3: of spiders, she proves herself unworthy as well because she
Speaker 3: has compassion. So Coffin Joe is like, He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's get in the mood by watching these ladies get
Speaker 3: bitten by snakes. And Marcia doesn't like it. She has
Speaker 3: pity on them. She's like, please stop. And then Coffin
Speaker 3: Joe just stands there eating grapes while one of the
Speaker 3: ladies in the snakepit curses him in the name of God.
Speaker 2: This is a pretty creepy scene, the curse sequence, as
Speaker 2: it should be, and I think this sense is heightened
Speaker 2: because the snake around her neck is actually like visibly
Speaker 2: tightening around her neck. And according to an interview with
Speaker 2: Maren's The Yeah, this is a situation where they had
Speaker 2: to jump in right after the film cuts and like
Speaker 2: pull the snake off of her neck to keep it
Speaker 2: from strangling her, so, you know, to her credit, she
Speaker 2: you know, she used it in the performance.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she. I mean, she really portrays wrath at
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe and he's not impressed at first, but maybe
Speaker 3: he will be later in the film. So anyway, Marcia
Speaker 3: is like Coffin Joe, you are sadistic. I can't stand
Speaker 3: the sadism. And Coffin Joe says, it's not sadism, it
Speaker 3: is science. It is siensia. These women, he says, these
Speaker 3: women were not a human sacrifice. Their jets will be
Speaker 3: for the creation of the superior race, a race that
Speaker 3: will become immortal through the control of instinct. So I
Speaker 3: think he wants to create a new man. And Marcia
Speaker 3: is standing there looking like that doesn't sound right. Martha Mark,
Speaker 3: your instincts are correct. I don't think coffin Joe understands
Speaker 3: what science means. He also seems to imply that it
Speaker 3: is science because killing the women with the snakes revealed
Speaker 3: their hypocrisy. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2: This does remind me that sometimes you will hear people
Speaker 2: say I don't believe in God, I believe in science,
Speaker 2: And yes, that can be an actual stance, but it
Speaker 2: can also be you know, it can also be just
Speaker 2: kind of like a shallow statement, which I.
Speaker 4: Think is more in line with a Coffin Joe is
Speaker 4: saying here.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know. I have a lot of
Speaker 3: trust in science, but that seems like a weird way
Speaker 3: to phrase things to me. That's kind of like saying
Speaker 3: I don't believe in ghosts, I believe in the law.
Speaker 3: It's like, huh. Anyway, Coffin Joe, he releases a Marcia
Speaker 3: without killing her, but he says, you know, she's not
Speaker 3: worthy to bear him, to bear him a son because
Speaker 3: she loves him and love is weak, and it saddened
Speaker 3: him to see the weakness of love in her eyes.
Speaker 2: All told, though, this is a pretty good breakup for
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: I have to say yeah, oh yeah, because she's like,
Speaker 3: are you going to kill me? And he's like, nope,
Speaker 3: you can go because I know you're not going to
Speaker 3: report me because you love me, which again is weak
Speaker 3: and bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this would be toxic in any other relationship, no doubt,
Speaker 2: But for Coffin Joe, this is I mean, this feels
Speaker 2: like perhaps a step up from just murdering a bunch
Speaker 2: of people.
Speaker 3: And she does not tell on him at first. She
Speaker 3: vouches for Coffin Joe to the police. She says, I
Speaker 3: was on a trip, which is where I was, and
Speaker 3: no idea what happened to the other five non religious
Speaker 3: women in town and he did nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a law of enforcements, like it's rock solid,
Speaker 2: what can we do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So next thing is the movie takes a shift.
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe sees Laura arriving in town in a carriage,
Speaker 3: and Laura is the beautiful daughter of the colonel. She
Speaker 3: is protected by Trunkador. And here's where we get that
Speaker 3: trunk Adoor Coffin Joe fight scene, where Coffin Joe looks
Speaker 3: at him, he's like, yeah, okay, he's pretty muscly, but
Speaker 3: I have an idea. He grabs a cane that somebody
Speaker 3: in the crowd is holding that's got one of those
Speaker 3: what do you call it, like the crook on top,
Speaker 3: the like you know, the U shaped top of the cane,
Speaker 3: and he hooks it around Trunkador's neck and then he
Speaker 3: spins Trunkedor around in circles and throws him in the mud.
Speaker 3: And so I guess he's beating up Trunkador in front
Speaker 3: of Laura, maybe to impress Laura.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, I think so, like I gotta
Speaker 2: make I got to make an example out of this meathead. Again,
Speaker 2: Trunkador is largely there to be made an example of
Speaker 2: bye by Coffin Joe. I also want to point out,
Speaker 2: like I was not prepared well for multiple aspects of
Speaker 2: this film, multiple choices, but I wasn't prepared for how
Speaker 2: many action sequences we get. You know, they're not you know,
Speaker 2: they're not We're not in a Shaw Brothers film or
Speaker 2: anything like that. Here, they're they're they're brief moments of action,
Speaker 2: but they're they're more elaborate than I anticipated.
Speaker 3: I agree, And it does seem like the point of
Speaker 3: these acts scenes is very much that, oh, coffin Joe
Speaker 3: could beat up anybody he wanted to. Yeah, So are
Speaker 3: you supposed to think he's cool? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess on some level he's supposed to be cool,
Speaker 2: Like he's he's a smart fighter.
Speaker 4: I think that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Like, yes, trunk Adoor is stronger, but he's got he's
Speaker 2: got that like seventeen strength. But you know, coffin Joe's
Speaker 2: got that that nineteen decks and that high intelligence he's
Speaker 2: gonna get in there, and he's gonna he's gonna make
Speaker 2: short work of the muscleman trunk.
Speaker 3: Odor is Ajax, but Coffin Joe is Odysseus.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there's a party at the Colonel's house, I guess
Speaker 3: to I don't know, celebrate the arrival of Laura in town.
Speaker 3: And Coffin Joe shows up at the party, and of
Speaker 3: course it's a real buzzkill. When Coffin Joe shows up, everybody,
Speaker 3: like everybody stops talking and laughing and having a good
Speaker 3: time and they just stare at him. Coffin Joe walks
Speaker 3: up to Laura, who again she's playing the piano, and
Speaker 3: he's like, meet me at midnight in the Alley of
Speaker 3: red Flowers, and she does, and an owl is there
Speaker 3: to make the scene cool. So she shows up in
Speaker 3: the alley and he goes, are you afraid of me?
Speaker 3: And she says no, And he says, they say that
Speaker 3: I am cruel and I am a sadist. Don't you
Speaker 3: fear me now? And she says, if you were to
Speaker 3: kill me, that would only bring the one true thing
Speaker 3: in life death, And Coffin Joe. He just goes weak
Speaker 3: in the knees. He has found the perfect woman for him,
Speaker 3: and it gets even better. So she tells him after this,
Speaker 3: she's like, you know, the only true thing between life
Speaker 3: and death is you. So she's all about him, and
Speaker 3: then she says, the only thing that matters is having
Speaker 3: a superior child born of two superior beings. What are
Speaker 3: the odds? So it is a match made in heaven,
Speaker 3: which is stupid and doesn't exist, by the way, And
Speaker 3: she's like, Coffin Joe, all I want is to be
Speaker 3: your godless devil wife and the mother of unholy science.
Speaker 3: And Coffin Joe is just rilled. He's like, okay, we
Speaker 3: will make that happen.
Speaker 2: All right, We're off of the races now, like this
Speaker 2: is this is a perfect match, Like you say, so,
Speaker 2: there's just a few things they got to check off
Speaker 2: the list here, you know, her dad hating him and
Speaker 2: so forth, the various murders around town. Once we smooth
Speaker 2: all of this out, yeah, it's just all about that
Speaker 2: immortal baby blood.
Speaker 3: I think that they were like, oh, we need to
Speaker 3: get Coffin Joe to do some more murders before before
Speaker 3: the immortality of the blood. So first, Laura's brother tries
Speaker 3: to bribe Coffin Joe to leave town. So he comes
Speaker 3: and he says, you know, I'll pay you twice what
Speaker 3: your properties are worth to buy them from you, if
Speaker 3: you'll just leave town and leave Laura alone. But I
Speaker 3: don't know. It seems like Laura would just like find
Speaker 3: another Coffin Joe type to end up with, wouldn't she
Speaker 3: like she's she's got her own priorities.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Plus, you can't you can't stand in the way
Speaker 2: of love or something that closely resembles love. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is clearly meant to be. But often Joe sees some
Speaker 2: possibilities here. The wheels are turning. He doesn't actually want
Speaker 2: that money, but you know, I'm guessing. On one level,
Speaker 2: he realizes this brother is a problem, This brother needs
Speaker 2: to be taken care of. But also perhaps here is
Speaker 2: one more test for my future wife to make sure
Speaker 2: she's truly one devoted to what we've got going on here.
Speaker 3: Right, So there are a couple of prongs to his plan.
Speaker 3: One of them is dealing with a trunk adoor. They're
Speaker 3: going to try to well, they're going to kill the
Speaker 3: brother and frame Trunkador for the murder. So so Coffin
Speaker 3: Joe recruits Marcia to seduce Trunkador and then tell him
Speaker 3: that she needs money, and then Coffin Joe challenges Trunkador
Speaker 3: to a game of poker, and I guess the idea
Speaker 3: is Trunkador agrees to this because he's like, I need
Speaker 3: to win money for my new girlfriend Marcia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Trunkedor claims that he's been playing poker since he
Speaker 2: was in the womb, but it's clear from the get
Speaker 2: go that he's just going to get owned at cards
Speaker 2: by the one true strategic genius, coffin Joe. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's there's no question here. It's just this is doomed
Speaker 2: from the start.
Speaker 3: And there is a poker game that's like a it's
Speaker 3: like a James Bond movie. There's a high stakes and
Speaker 3: gambling scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we cut into it already. Trunkador is losing, like
Speaker 2: he's he's down. However, many games, this whole vision that
Speaker 2: he's gonna somehow make a fortune off of coffin Joe.
Speaker 2: Who I think it is. I think it's maybe more
Speaker 2: presented in the first film, but coffin Joe is also
Speaker 2: supposed to be like a wealthier member of this town,
Speaker 2: like he's he's the undertaker, Like there's there's always business
Speaker 2: for the undertaker. He makes plenty of business for himself,
Speaker 2: that's right, except sometimes, I mean except with like these, uh,
Speaker 2: these murders, these most recent murders. We had the scene
Speaker 2: where he's hiding the bodies in the swamp so that
Speaker 2: they'll you know, get you know, the rod, or be
Speaker 2: eaten by the scavengers. So in cases like that, he
Speaker 2: is kind of depriving himself off business. I guess he's
Speaker 2: still doing the close casket thing. So that's the that's
Speaker 2: what really sucks about having a family member killed by
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe, is he's still gonna handle the funeral.
Speaker 3: So Coffin Joe he kills Laura's brother by crushing him
Speaker 3: with the giant rock. And before that, he before he
Speaker 3: does that, he gives a long speech like he I
Speaker 3: don't even The themes are like will and instinct and
Speaker 3: inferiority and superiority. Guess what, the brother he's inferior. Coffin Joe,
Speaker 3: he's superior. He says, how long would these nails grow
Speaker 3: if I didn't cut them? I don't recall what that
Speaker 3: refers to. He's just like the fingernails are illustrative of
Speaker 3: some kind of point he's making.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole thing with the stone. They crush
Speaker 2: a rat, I mean, not for real, and then he
Speaker 2: like catches the rope on fire. There's it's a whole
Speaker 2: like saw esque situation here where he's like, okay, go ahead,
Speaker 2: call out to God, maybe he'll save you, or you know,
Speaker 2: this crush your head, And of course it ends up
Speaker 2: crushing his head anyway.
Speaker 3: It's a pit in the pendulum kind of trap. But yes,
Speaker 3: he also does the thing from the the Atheist Professor
Speaker 3: chain email where he's like, if God is real, he
Speaker 3: will come and save you. If he's not real, haha,
Speaker 3: improve and correct again. Yes, oh but anyway, then they
Speaker 3: so they crush him with the rock and then they
Speaker 3: frame Trunkador for the murder because they're playing poker in
Speaker 3: this crowded bar. Trunkador leaves the crowded bar. A scream
Speaker 3: is heard from outside, and they go out and they
Speaker 3: find Trunkador lying on the ground next to Laura's brother
Speaker 3: who is squished, and it's like, oh, Trunkador must have
Speaker 3: done it, because Coffin Joe was inside where everybody could
Speaker 3: see him. He couldn't possibly be to blame. It's not
Speaker 3: like he could have had accomplices.
Speaker 2: It's not like he's known to have multiple accomplices across
Speaker 2: town at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think they do have the funeral in
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe's parlor.
Speaker 2: It's the only game in town. You gotta go to
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: So here Laura and Coffin Joe start getting really serious.
Speaker 3: They have another midnight rendezvous and there's a thing any
Speaker 3: scene where coffin Joe is like kissing a woman. We
Speaker 3: get these hilarious close ups of his face where he's
Speaker 3: frowning and scowling. He's making like a yucky face as
Speaker 3: he forms the kissy lips, and it is so funny.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's supposed to be funny. I don't
Speaker 3: know what they're going for there. It's just like he's
Speaker 3: not gonna smile, so he's just like mmm. And then
Speaker 3: I think Laura comes to live at coffin Joe's house
Speaker 3: after this, and coffin Joe's got a cool house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get to see his bedroom at one point.
Speaker 2: I think there's only really one shot where we get
Speaker 2: to see the full stat But yeah, he has this
Speaker 2: nice dark curtain bed and I think there's like a
Speaker 2: like a painting of the devil over the bed. It's splendid.
Speaker 3: But uh oh, we're gonna start getting some of the
Speaker 3: moral melodrama coming in because Coffin Joe's about to develop
Speaker 3: a guilty cor conscience. He's in a bar and he
Speaker 3: overhears some people talking and he finds out that one
Speaker 3: of the women that he killed in his snake pit
Speaker 3: was pregnant, and this causes him to have a crisis
Speaker 3: of conscience. But how could he have a crisis of conscience?
Speaker 3: Isn't conscience weak? Isn't that a display of inferiority? How
Speaker 3: could a superior being like Coffin Joe feel guilty? Well,
Speaker 3: remember his one real moral impulse. He thinks it is
Speaker 3: wrong to harm children, and he thinks that this counts,
Speaker 3: So he has a guilt freak out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Laura, the future Miss Coffin here is hilarious
Speaker 2: in her attempts to make him feel better. She's like, come, Onzie,
Speaker 2: that child was just going to grow up to be
Speaker 2: an inferior adult. He was just going to be an idiot.
Speaker 2: So it's actually a good thing.
Speaker 4: That you did this.
Speaker 2: But coffin Joe's not buying it. He's like, He's like, nope, nope,
Speaker 2: this is against my code. This is wrong. I feel awful.
Speaker 3: It is time to have a nightmare of going to hell,
Speaker 3: and he goes to sleep. He has a nightmare of hell,
Speaker 3: and suddenly the film transitions to technic color. It's like
Speaker 3: The Wizard of Oz. But whereas in the Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 3: Kansas is black and white and Oz is in color,
Speaker 3: here most of the movie in I guess Earth is
Speaker 3: black and white, but Hell is in color.
Speaker 2: This was tremendous, in part for me because I was
Speaker 2: not expecting it. I thought we were going to be
Speaker 2: in the same dreary but effective black and white for
Speaker 2: the full film. I had not seen the trailer, so
Speaker 2: I didn't know that there were going to be color elements,
Speaker 2: and so suddenly we're in this weird technicolor world and
Speaker 2: I'm like, wow, this is this blew my socks off.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of when I watched The Tingler for
Speaker 2: the first time, and I didn't know that there were
Speaker 2: going to be color elements in that. Otherwise black and
Speaker 2: white film.
Speaker 3: Oh I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found it. I found it highly effective. I
Speaker 2: got a big kick out of it.
Speaker 3: So yeah. In this sequence, he gets dragged out of
Speaker 3: bed and taken to a graveyard full of shaky hands.
Speaker 3: There's like a demon who grabs him, pulls him out
Speaker 3: of bed. This like tall, lean figure. He taken into
Speaker 3: the graveyard. Everybody's reaching out of the graves with hands,
Speaker 3: going nuts all over the place. And then once he
Speaker 3: is in Hell, he sees the tortures of the damned,
Speaker 3: which include muscly oiled up hercules, guys just running around
Speaker 3: poking people with pitchforks.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, naked people crawling around on the floor,
Speaker 2: topless women strapped to columns in this kind of cave set.
Speaker 2: And then here come the musclemen with tridents to occasionally
Speaker 2: stab them. And it's worth driving home. This goes on
Speaker 2: for what feels like half an hour. This is another
Speaker 2: situation where they're like, well, we shot a lot of
Speaker 2: Hell footage, and we did it in color. Let's give
Speaker 2: the people what they want. Let's give them all of
Speaker 2: this footage. This actually reminded me a lot of the
Speaker 2: Hell scenes in the nineteen seventy musical Scrooge starring Albert
Speaker 2: Finney and Alec Guinness, except more naked and pokey here.
Speaker 2: But that level of obvious fake Hell set. This set
Speaker 2: here in the Coffin Joe film was apparently built in
Speaker 2: the synagogue, and according to Maren's they had rigged wiring
Speaker 2: in the floor of this set so they could have
Speaker 2: little pyrotechnic explosions, which I don't think I really noticed
Speaker 2: the explosion so much. There's a lot going on in
Speaker 2: these sequences, but the wiring wasn't great, and so as
Speaker 2: all the actors, including Coffin Joe, were moving around, they
Speaker 2: would get periodically shocked by the wiring and the floor.
Speaker 2: So if you rewatch the sequences, you'll see Coffin Joe
Speaker 2: and other people kind of going to that, and you know,
Speaker 2: it adds to the craziness of the sequence.
Speaker 3: So a bunch of things happen in Hell. Coffin Joe
Speaker 3: is he says, I can't be He's at one point
Speaker 3: he yells literally, he says, I don't believe in the laws.
Speaker 3: I think what he means there is that, like there
Speaker 3: aren't actually things people could go to Hell for. There's
Speaker 3: no stings right or wrong.
Speaker 2: It's like, I absolutely reject this notion in its entirety.
Speaker 2: There is no way that I am actually in Hell,
Speaker 2: but clearly like we are in Hell at this point,
Speaker 2: and it's full color. It's like, which is very interesting
Speaker 2: to think about, you know, outside of just sort of
Speaker 2: the obvious gimmickiness of it, Like Hell is another realm
Speaker 2: and it's in color. So it's like, in a sense,
Speaker 2: suddenly Hell is more real than the rest of the film.
Speaker 2: Hell feels more modern than the rest of the film.
Speaker 2: It's it's a very weird vibe. It's hard to like
Speaker 2: really figure out like what aspects of it are intentional
Speaker 2: and which or not.
Speaker 3: But he's obviously frightened. And then he sees the devil,
Speaker 3: which is Joe himself. It's the same actor again. He's
Speaker 3: a very goat like devil. I think he's got laurel
Speaker 3: leaves around his head and a little, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of kind of king of the Forest crown, so there
Speaker 3: are elements of pan in there. And he's dressed in
Speaker 3: like orange and pink and purple robes. So he's this
Speaker 3: devil looks like he's having a great time. But coffin
Speaker 3: Joe is not having a great time. He is things
Speaker 3: are rough, and he's like, uh oh, did I throw
Speaker 3: in everything on an incorrect ideology? Uh oh.
Speaker 2: There's also a big carnival feel to all of this
Speaker 2: as well, Yes, especially with the devil on his throne.
Speaker 2: He seems like he's the grand marshal of a parade.
Speaker 3: And then Coffin Joe sees his murder victims. There is
Speaker 3: the woman who cursed him in the snake pit, and
Speaker 3: she's coming at him saying, this night, I'll possess your corpse.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the title. Now we're in it.
Speaker 3: So Coffin Joe wakes up from his nightmare and then
Speaker 3: he has to talk himself back into atheism and wickedness,
Speaker 3: and Laura is trying to help. She's like, no, don't
Speaker 3: worry about it. There is no God, there is no Hell.
Speaker 3: Everything's fine. Do more murders.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he's clearly shaken at this point.
Speaker 3: Oh and then like in the next scene, Laura and
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe find out they're gonna have a baby, and
Speaker 3: then basically in the next scene after that, she's having
Speaker 3: the baby. So some time passes, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was very confused at this point and is like,
Speaker 2: what has it been months and months? I thought it
Speaker 2: was like the next day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But before that, there's there's another subplot, which is
Speaker 3: the Colonel busts Trunkador out of prison, and then the
Speaker 3: Colonel and Trunkador hire a bunch of I don't know, henchman.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say assassins, but I think they're not
Speaker 3: trying to kill him. They hire some tough guys to
Speaker 3: go capture a coffin Joe and bring him back to
Speaker 3: the colonel.
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: This this is this is where things get really interesting,
Speaker 2: because we definitely get a lot of action at this point,
Speaker 2: and some of it is very convincing and cool. There's
Speaker 2: also the sequence where they initially come for Joe and
Speaker 2: you know, Coffin Joe can hold his own in a
Speaker 2: fight against one, two, three, maybe like four guys tops,
Speaker 2: but five or six is clearly too many, and he
Speaker 2: tries to like Spider Man, up a wall to escape,
Speaker 2: but like falls back down and I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: that was intended at the door not uh, but I
Speaker 2: got to chuckle out of it because yeah, oh there's
Speaker 2: no escape, Joe. You've got to you've got to fight
Speaker 2: or or Flee. Flee's not working, and again he's no
Speaker 2: match for this many hired dunes.
Speaker 3: He says to himself, I can't die. I must protect
Speaker 3: my son from inferior people. Yeah, so the henchman beat
Speaker 3: him up. I like, how there's one guy they hired
Speaker 3: that's just the head butt guy. All he does is
Speaker 3: head butt.
Speaker 4: Yeah. He like.
Speaker 2: They get Joe down and then he's like bam, head
Speaker 2: butt knocks him out.
Speaker 3: So they put coffin Joe in a wagon to take
Speaker 3: him to the colonel. But then he pops up and
Speaker 3: he attacks, and he's got blades on his shoes, he's
Speaker 3: got secret weapons all over the place.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is so good. This this reminded me a
Speaker 2: little bit of Riddick. It's a little bit of Ridtick
Speaker 2: in all this, because there's a scene where Ridic is
Speaker 2: in the back of a cart and chronicles of Riddic
Speaker 2: and manages to kill some folks. But it also reminds
Speaker 2: me a little bit of Hannibal Lecter where, especially in
Speaker 2: the book and film adaptation of Hannibal, where you know, oh,
Speaker 2: this guy's super dangerous, but are a more resourceful and
Speaker 2: powerful entity has hired a bunch of guys to capture him.
Speaker 2: But it's very difficult to keep a handle on Hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult to keep Coffin Joe contained.
Speaker 3: And you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we get that scene where he has secret
Speaker 2: secreted razor blades like straight razors and his I don't
Speaker 2: know it, his back straps or something, and he swides
Speaker 2: them into his boot and then does this neat like
Speaker 2: scissor leg clamp kill.
Speaker 4: On one of the goons. It's it's pretty great. I
Speaker 4: love this sequence.
Speaker 3: He kills another one of the goons with an axe
Speaker 3: that he finds in a boat and then just like
Speaker 3: chops him in the head. And then he gets the
Speaker 3: world's fakest axe. Yes, it looks like he's made out
Speaker 3: of paper mache, so it's not as convincing as the
Speaker 3: straight raizers. Then he gets the other guys. He lures
Speaker 3: them into a trap in the swamp where they like
Speaker 3: sink in quicksand and they're begging for mercy and he's like, ah,
Speaker 3: I have defeated you. You are inferior. And again the
Speaker 3: swamp set is great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the hired goons are swallowed up by the swamp.
Speaker 3: It's great, and yeah, the more I think about it,
Speaker 3: the more your comparison to Hannibal Lecter. I think I
Speaker 3: said it earlier, but you off, Mike, you had said
Speaker 3: Hannibal Lecter to me before I made that connection. I
Speaker 3: think that is really apt in many ways, except that
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe does not have Hannibal Lecter's poetic brevity of comment.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like Hannibal Lecter. But if Hannibal Lecter
Speaker 3: talked like an iin Rand protagonist.
Speaker 2: I think this is one of the shortcomings of Hannibal Electors.
Speaker 2: Hannibal Lecter did not preach enough, and he also never
Speaker 2: traveled to Hell, Like, how did that never happen? I mean,
Speaker 2: plenty of other pop culture fictional characters have had their
Speaker 2: own Inferno moments, but not Hannibal Lecter. Come on, make
Speaker 2: it happen.
Speaker 3: All right. Well, we're in the final final stretch of
Speaker 3: the film, so the guilty consciences really just start popping
Speaker 3: up all over the place. Marcie, I remember her. She
Speaker 3: has a guilty conscience now, and she because of her
Speaker 3: feelings of guilt, she drinks poison and then she dies.
Speaker 3: But as she's dying, she confesses to everyone that she
Speaker 3: witnessed Coffin Joe do all the murders. He did it,
Speaker 3: He's guilty. So this leads the colonel to form an
Speaker 3: angry mob to go kill Coffin Joe in revenge.
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole time they know Coffin Joe did this.
Speaker 2: Deep down, I don't understand why this is such a revelation.
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe is a murder our.
Speaker 4: Coffin Joe, not Zee.
Speaker 3: And then there is a very sad scene where Laura
Speaker 3: is about to give birth and the doctor is there,
Speaker 3: but Laura and their child die in childbirth, and Coffin
Speaker 3: Joe is moved, despite the fact that he shouldn't feel
Speaker 3: love or feel sympathy or pity for anyone. In fact,
Speaker 3: it turns out that he can't accept Laura's death, and
Speaker 3: he is. He is driven into a kind of a
Speaker 3: fit of despondency, and he first shows denial like Laura
Speaker 3: can't be dead. She's you know, she's she's my perfect match.
Speaker 3: We will, we will create the superior man. And then
Speaker 3: he clearly is feeling sadness and he takes Laura's body
Speaker 3: and carries her to the graveyard, and then the real
Speaker 3: guilt visions begin, one of the women that he murdered
Speaker 3: shows up wrapped in a snake, telling him that she
Speaker 3: will possess his corpse, as she was the same one
Speaker 3: saying this in hell and the one who cursed him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Remember part of the curse was that he
Speaker 2: would never have a sign, and so this whole situation
Speaker 2: is the culmination of the curse too.
Speaker 3: So he starts yelling at the sky, which is storming.
Speaker 3: He says, come all spirits, come untrue things, comes spirits.
Speaker 3: If you exist and change my mind.
Speaker 2: Yes does God, If you exist, you will fight me
Speaker 2: now fisticuffs right here in the storm.
Speaker 3: So then God strikes a tree with lightning, and a
Speaker 3: burning branch of the tree falls off on top of
Speaker 3: Coffin Joe and like pins into the ground, and he
Speaker 3: literally says it was just a coincidence.
Speaker 4: Oh it's so good.
Speaker 3: He says, I am still superior. And a priest shows
Speaker 3: up with the Bible and a crucifix to convert Coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: He's like, you know what you can you can come
Speaker 3: accept Jesus. It's gonna be okay. Coffin Joe says, I
Speaker 3: am not weak. God does not exist, and he's you know,
Speaker 3: gnashing his teeth and foaming at the mouth, screaming at
Speaker 3: the sky. The mob arrives at the graveyard slash swamp.
Speaker 3: I don't know why you'd put the graveyard in the swamp,
Speaker 3: but apparently they did.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The mob shoots Coffin Joe and at the last he's
Speaker 3: mortally wounded. He's sinking into the slime, into the quicksand
Speaker 3: of the swamp. The skeletons of his victims start rising
Speaker 3: to the surface, and he literally yelps. He goes oh.
Speaker 3: And then and at the last he does come around.
Speaker 3: He repents. He says God, God is the Truth across
Speaker 3: a symbol of the sun, and church music starts playing.
Speaker 3: There's like church organ music. This totally sounds like none
Speaker 3: of the other music in the movie, and the priest
Speaker 3: crosses himself and Bruno looks on, seeming kind of sad,
Speaker 3: and then we get a readout on the screen that says, man,
Speaker 3: we'll only find truth when he searches for truth. And
Speaker 3: that's the end.
Speaker 4: So it all paid off, I guess sort of.
Speaker 3: So, but does Coffin Joe get to go to Heaven?
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope he would get to go to
Speaker 2: purgatory first. I would hope he would get the full
Speaker 2: divine comedy here.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we'd get a lot of descriptions of which
Speaker 3: direction the sun was setting as he goes around the mountain.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But okay, so we get the whole thing. We get
Speaker 3: all of the the depraved, evil, sinful, murderous behavior, but
Speaker 3: then we also get the redemption arc at the end,
Speaker 3: though it's very it's very abrupt, like he it's literally
Speaker 3: just the last thing he says right as he's sinking
Speaker 3: into the water. We don't get to see him like
Speaker 3: like pivot and do anything kind or you know, like
Speaker 3: act out his new redemption at all. It's just like that.
Speaker 3: It is the razor's edge deathbed confession. Sorry, death swamp confession.
Speaker 4: Yeah, death swamp confession.
Speaker 2: I've seen some criticism of this as being as maybe
Speaker 2: it felt, you know, too rushed or forced. I've read
Speaker 2: also that Brazilian sensors at the time only permitted, you know,
Speaker 2: all of this film's excess if it had an ending
Speaker 2: like this. And I'm not a completist by any stretch.
Speaker 2: On his various interviews and comments, but I've read that
Speaker 2: Maren's later said that he didn't like the ending and
Speaker 2: maybe felt forced to do it, But you know, at
Speaker 2: the same time, I think we have to, you know,
Speaker 2: think about the various influences and the idea of like
Speaker 2: Brazilian religious morality plays essentially being an influence on the
Speaker 2: film as well. And I don't know for for my taste,
Speaker 2: I didn't feel like the ending was felt completely rushed
Speaker 2: or completely tacked on. I mean it it it arrives,
Speaker 2: you know, swifter than a lot of the major movements
Speaker 2: in the plot do. But I mean it's I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how else this could have gone, Like what's what
Speaker 2: else could happen? Either you get the happy ending where
Speaker 2: the perfect baby is born. That can't happen. This is
Speaker 2: a hard exploitation movie. Also, it's not very climactic. If
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe challenges God to a fight and just God
Speaker 2: doesn't show up, and then Coffin Joe declares himself the
Speaker 2: winner and goes off to find another bride, like you
Speaker 2: need something to go down, and this seems like a
Speaker 2: fitting way to end it.
Speaker 3: I agree, I really can't think of another way this
Speaker 3: could have gone. But yeah, I don't know, Maybe my
Speaker 3: imagination is limited. Maybe I should be more of an
Speaker 3: outside the box thinker like Coffin Joe, and then I
Speaker 3: could imagine the curtain. No, I can see the other ending.
Speaker 3: So the mob shows up to get Coffin Joe for
Speaker 3: his crimes, and then he just turns it around on
Speaker 3: them again like he did earlier. He convinces them that
Speaker 3: it was good for him to do the crimes, and
Speaker 3: they are all stupid for criticizing him, and they all
Speaker 3: go home. They hang their heads in shame, and they're like, Wow,
Speaker 3: coffin Joe really is superior to all of us.
Speaker 2: Or I think you alluded to this earlier, or the
Speaker 2: idea that Coffin Joe becomes God or I don't know,
Speaker 2: becomes the Pope or something like that would be that
Speaker 2: would be fitting as well. Actually kind of kind of
Speaker 2: reminiscent of a Chronicles iritic, you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I became the thing I oppose, Like that would be
Speaker 2: a fitting downer ending for Coffin Joe.
Speaker 3: I think Coffin Joe becomes the Lord Marshall of the
Speaker 3: Necromonger Empire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's like darn it, I love this room
Speaker 2: in this throne. But this whole ideology is completely repellent
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: Okay, this does, though want to make me I have
Speaker 3: listical desire here to make a list of the best
Speaker 3: the best preachy hectoring villains from movies who give long
Speaker 3: lectures and sermons explaining why they're right and everyone else
Speaker 3: is wrong.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, Oh, that would be an interesting exercise because on
Speaker 2: one level, some of the memorable preachy villains, you know,
Speaker 2: they might not have actually preached that much. It's just
Speaker 2: kind of like our memory of effective storytelling is sometimes
Speaker 2: you actually show a little bit and we imagine the rest.
Speaker 2: That's not the case with this film.
Speaker 3: But that is a good point storytelling tip out there.
Speaker 3: I think often you have to show fewer examples of
Speaker 3: something in the story to establish the impression of a
Speaker 3: pattern than you would think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, this is this is a really fun one.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed this night. I'll Possess your Corpse. It's
Speaker 2: so many, so many additional details we didn't even get into.
Speaker 2: Like I love how when coffin Joe is dragged a hell,
Speaker 2: he's like dragged face first.
Speaker 4: Through the ground.
Speaker 2: Like there are moments like that where it seems like
Speaker 2: they could have done the easier thing and gone with
Speaker 2: just sort of the feet first drag. But but no,
Speaker 2: Maren's i' meant just a guess and it was like
Speaker 2: it was all in. It's like, nope, drag me face first.
Speaker 2: I'm the director, gosh darn it, and we want it
Speaker 2: to look physical. This needs to it needs to be believable,
Speaker 2: face first into the dirt.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, this moment, I possess no more insights about this night.
Speaker 3: I'll possess your corpse.
Speaker 2: All right, Well that's that's very uncoffin of you, Joe,
Speaker 2: but but I'll accept it. But hey, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: we can't continue to talk about Coffin Joe on listener
Speaker 2: mail in the future. So hey, if you have thoughts
Speaker 2: about this night, I'll possess your corpse or at midnight,
Speaker 2: I'll take your soul or any other I'd love to
Speaker 2: hear more about some of these other Coffin Joe films
Speaker 2: because it took. One of the reasons it took so
Speaker 2: long to get around to doing one of these is
Speaker 2: I was like, well, there are a lot of coffin
Speaker 2: Joe related films, which ones are even acceptable for us
Speaker 2: to talk about, And you know, there are some of these,
Speaker 2: I just I'm not sure you can really access right now,
Speaker 2: so I'd love to hear more about them. If if
Speaker 2: we have any Coffin Joe experts out there, write in,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. If you want
Speaker 2: to check out the other movies we've selected for Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema in the past, you can go to a
Speaker 2: couple of places. I blog about these episodes at immutamusic
Speaker 2: dot com, but also if you go to letterbox dot
Speaker 2: com that's L E T T E R B O
Speaker 2: x D dot com, you can find us there. Our
Speaker 2: username is weird House. We have a list of all
Speaker 2: the movies we've covered over the years, and sometimes you
Speaker 2: get a peek ahead at what's next. A reminder that
Speaker 2: we're primarily a science podcast, the real science, not the
Speaker 2: Coffin Joe science, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: listener Mail on Monday's short form Artifact or Monster Fact
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays, we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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