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THE LATTER YEARS OF COFFIN JOE

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In 1964, the black-clad figure who would soon become Zé do Caixão (“Coffin Joe”) appeared in a nightmare to a struggling Brazilian filmmaker named , and quickly tumbled his way onscreen as the magnetic pole of At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. As portrayed by Marins, Joe burst onscreen as an instantly iconic horror presence: snazzily dressed all in black with a top hat and a demonic monobrow, and, most notably, talon-like fingernails the size of paring knives.

at midnight i'll take your soul posterJoe’s first two classic appearances (Soul and its 1967 sequel, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse) quickly established the rules for the character beyond his iconic look. Coffin Joe, a mortician by trade, is wildly sadistic, favoring elaborate tortures that often utilize tarantulas and snakes. Joe is megalamoniacal, constantly asserting his personal superiority over the common rabble of peasantry. Joe is militantly atheistic (a shocking in the deeply Catholic Brazil of the 60s—Joe not only loudly denies the existence of God, but even eats lamb on Good Friday!) Joe is obsessed with securing the immortality of his bloodline, constantly searching for a woman brave and depraved enough to be worthy of bearing him a son. And, curiously, while Joe has no supernatural powers of his own—he triumphs over his enemies, whether musclemen or an entire posse of townsfolk, by cunning, bravado, and sheer force of will—he is always beset by occult forces: curses from his victims, visions of ghosts, and, in Corpse, a memorable trip to Hell itself (which Joe refuses to believe in, despite his ten-minute firsthand technicolor torture tour.)

Although they have their rough patches—Joe can get long-winded when discussing either his own superiority or his lust for a child—the first two films are horror classics. Zé do Caixão became a sensation in Brazil, a horror mainstay with the look of a Freddy Kruger and the cultural reach of a Dracula. Marins launched a series of comic books, TV guest spots (most now lost), and personal appearances in character. Strangely, Marins would not directly continue the Coffin Joe saga for forty years after Corpse; but the character would reappear in various guises, most of which are covered in Arrow’s box set, “Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe.”

strange world of coffin joe posterAlthough he does not appear in any of the three stories that comprise The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968), Joe lends his name to the film and introduces it (“You can’t accept the terror because you are the terror!” Joe proclaims as a lightning storm rages). Zé do Caixão even has his own theme song here, an a capella folk hymn (“it’s strange, it’s very strange, Coffin Joe’s world,” moans the lead singer over the credits, as the camera focuses up the miniskirt of a gyrating go-go dancer.) The three stories here are fairly standard horror tales, like Continue reading THE LATTER YEARS OF COFFIN JOE →

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FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ANIMALIA PARADOXA (2024)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Niles Atallah

FEATURING: Andrea Gomez

PLOT: In a world of little water and plenty of debris, a creature wishes to find refuge in the sea.

Still from Animalia Paradoxica (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: For a couple of reasons, Atallah’s film brings to mind Begotten; for other reasons, it brings to mind Hotel Poseidon. For these reasons, Animalia Paradoxa is easy to describe as “weird.”

COMMENTS: There were a number of walkouts, there was an immediate rush by others when the credits clicked onto the screen, and a pair of young women sitting behind me were disappointed at the paucity of stop-motion animation. Their criticism was somewhat sound, as there is little of that element in the film; however, it is a credit to them that they remained to witness the entirety of Animalia Paradoxa as it languidly built its world and approached its bizarre climax and whisperingly uplifting denouement.

The experience begins with a shabby red curtain, drawn back by a marionette hand, revealing a reel-to-reel film viewer behind the crimson barrier. The hand cranks a lever and documentary footage of oceans, life, destruction, and more unspools, and eventually we meet our unnamed, and understandably mute, protagonist. She is covered head to foot in shabby, skin-tight habiliment, with only her milky eyes visible. Her exploration of the near-empty shell of a building in a wasteland is both skulking and lithe, implying she is not native to this terrain. There are occasional silent onlookers, and intermittently a group of cultists pass through the courtyard, spouting messianic fervor and hate.

Andrea Gomez, who performs the main character, captures its gentle soul through movement. She artfully and desperately crafts tchotchkes to offer up to a hand which emerges from a crack in a wall. She needs water for comfort, perhaps to live, and the gummi worms proffered by this hand, when fed to a mutterer suspended in a web of her own hair, releases water down her matted locks. The xylophonic sound cues and other chime and thump-based music underscores the unreality of this mythic exercise. Dialogue, though little is to be found, always grates, whether it be the megaphone-distorted tirades from the patrolling zealots, or the sinister coughs and utterances from a bloated basement-dwelling creature whose face is obscured by a suspended cellophane sheet done up in makeup.

This film oozes over you, which by and large is a satisfying, if not always pleasant, experience. The trash world Atallah assembles (alongside the collective Diluvio, which also includes the pair Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal Leon) is ugly and beautiful—and I hate phrases like that. The title, were I to guess, refers to us. Humans. Dry-land entities, yearning for water. But shortly after the screening, I decided not to think too much on this film. Its themes are clear, even as its execution is obtuse. The cryptic dream of Animalia Paradoxa is better handled indirectly, lest the clumsy fingers of reason shatter its eerie presence.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In certain theatrical moments, it feels like silent cinema, yet it is also strikingly contemporary in its concerns and approach to genre. As some of the best films are, it is difficult to categorize. This elusiveness plays to the film’s strengths.”–Alex Brannan, CineFiles Movie Reviews (Fantasia Screening)

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366 UNDERGROUND: THE ABSENCE OF MILK IN THE MOUTHS OF THE LOST (2023)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Case Esparros

FEATURING: , Gary Wilson

PLOT: A mysterious milkman helps a grieving mother deal with the loss of her child.

Still from absence of milk in the mouths of the lost (2023)

COMMENTS: I could give The Absence of Mil k in the Mouths of the Lost a “” tag, because the average viewer will immediately want to flee during the opening scene of a cow giving birth in real time. But, if you are reading this, chances are you are not the average viewer. Instead, I’ll just remind you that when you brave Milk, you are venturing into the strange and treacherous world of microbudget DIY surrealism—so calibrate your expectations accordingly.

A milkman (when exactly is this supposed to be set?) delivers glass bottles to a house where a young woman bathes in filthy black liquid with a blank expression; she doesn’t answer the bell when he rings. The milkman lives in a dingy basement decorated with pictures of missing children cut out from milk cartons—and a breast hanging on his wall that drips white liquid into a bowl. Meanwhile, in an alternate plane of reality, mute, cigar-smoking, boxer-wearing devils covered head-to-toe in white greasepaint plot mischief against a trio of masked children. The milkman has buzzy schizophrenic hallucinations where he sees a masked woman knitting and delivering electronically altered monologues while walled in by -style “paint-on-the-film” moving canvases. A few dramatic sequences, and much moping about the dilapidated house, advance the woman’s story, until she and the milkman finally meet for an exposition dump to tie (some of) the plot strands together. The children find it almost shockingly easy to best the middle-aged demons that beset them.

Milk clearly suffers from its low budget. The visuals often display thrift-store ingenuity, but the sound can be a serious issue: many sections were filmed without any, and there are several moments when what might be meaningful dialogue is muffled. At other times, the dialogue is both nearly inaudible and digitally altered. It’s needlessly frustrating. It’s also a pity that so much of the middle of the film has such poor sound quality, when in the opening and closing, where Esparos’ musician friends contribute songs (including a deranged cover of the gospel standard “I’ll Fly Away”), the sound mix is crucial and well-executed.

There’s a difference between having a lot of creativity on display and everything clicking. If you can focus on the former, Milk has a lot to offer. Some of the imagery is arresting: the cigar-smoking demons are as brilliantly conceived as they are easily achieved, and sequences like the woman who pierces her milk-bag bra (!) with a knife are hard to forget. And although some of the imagery is shocking, its always purposeful and empathetic. The movie has a good heart. It helps to love cows.

The Absence of Milk In the Mouths of the Lost [Blu-ray]

The Absence of Milk In the Mouths of the Lost [Blu-ray]
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SHE IS CONANN (2023)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, , Nathalie Richard,

PLOT: Waking in the afterlife, Conann the barbarian recalls various stages of her life, and her relationship with the dog-faced demon who guides her destiny.

Still from She Is Conann (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: She Is Conann lives up to its high weird premise—six gender-flipped incarnations of pulp hero Conan(n) the Barbarian—and then some. At this point, it seems likely that anything Mandico sets his hand to will merit candidacy.

COMMENTS: Bertand Mandico loves women. He cast women in all the male roles for The Wild Boys, then set his sophomore feature After Blue on an all-female planet, and now creates a distaff version of Robert E. Howard’s pulp warrior. There are a tiny number roles in Conann; the only major one is played by a female (and at least one female character is played by a male). Mandico also could be accused of having (or exploiting) a lesbian fetish, although it seems the main reason his women have sex with other women is because there aren’t many men around. But there isn’t much sex in Conann (although there is some graphic kissing). Mandico’s casting of actresses in typically male roles has become his auteurial signature, analogous to the non-acting that populated ‘ early movies. The feminine skew is simply part of his worldview.

Conann is essentially an anthology film, a fragmented hero’s journey, with each individual incarnation of the barbarian capable of standing alone: most kill the previous decade’s Conann, directly or indirectly, before embarking on their own story. The first two Conanns inhabit what is basically a high fantasy world, though one where the all-female barbarian tribes wear modified gorilla costumes with wicked nipple hooks. But the story expands after that, seeing Conann take a job as a contemporary stuntwoman, then a fascist officer, and then finally as a post-apocalyptic patroness of the arts. Conann’s character changes—you could argue she becomes increasingly barbaric—but what really ties everything together is Elina Löwensohn‘s demonic Rainier, who strides through the film nudging an obscure prophecy along, frequently taking flash photographs of Conann’s exploits for posterity. Her dog mask is surprisingly effective, leaving room for her eyes to hint at some sinister intelligence, but muzzling her overall expressiveness so that he/she remains mysterious.

The movie plays out entirely on indoor theatrical sets—mist-shrouded barbarian wildernesses, a sleazy urban snake pit where a wall of Conann’s apartment hangs in the air unfinished, a tin-foil-lined Hell. Shot mostly in black and white, it occasionally shifts to soft, faded color. There is an unusual amount of squirm-inducing (though black and white) gore, and more than one example of the ultimate act of barbarity, cannibalism. These elements distance the film from the tasteful art-house circuit, while the experimental plot and portentous dialogue (“You’ve killed Europe! You can’t do that!”) alienates the average genre audience member. In his “incoherent” manner, Mandico discombobulates the viewer between masculine and feminine, monochrome and color, melodrama and farce, art and trash. For most, his technique is off-putting; for us, it’s invigorating,

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The lo-fi production design is often wondrous, the midnight-movie vibe is fetching, but the film is ultimately probably too much of a good/weird thing to sustain its running time — although, for the French writer-director’s fans, such excess is the key to his success.”–Tim Grierson, Screen Daily (festival screening)

She Is Conann

She Is Conann
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEATH POWDER (1986)

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Desu Pawuka

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Shigeru Izumiya

FEATURING: Takichi Inukai, Rikako Murakami, Shigeru Izumiya, Mari Natsuki, Kiyoshirô Imawano

PLOT: In a robot’s dying moments, it spews out a mysterious dust that bounty hunter Kiyoshi inhales, causing his body to undergo drastic physical changes and sending him on a terrifying mental journey.

Still from Death Powder (1986)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Death Powder manages to stretch out a visual bouillabaisse to an hour, cramming into a short block of time all of the trippy imagery and body horror that anyone could want. It may be considered a forebear to the “New Flesh” genre, but it easily stands on its own merits as a twisted piece of cinema.

COMMENTS: There are a lot of things a movie can do to catch our attention here, but one surefire way to get us to consider a film for the List is to dispense with the niceties of filmmaking—e.g. discernible plot, delineated characters, visual clarity—but pay them just enough lip service to let the viewer know that they’re going out the window. The first 20 minutes of Death Powder deftly accomplish this, teasing out a proto-neo-Tokyo in which leather-clad, fedora-wearing private contractors chase down robots in a city drenched in neon and rain, like a stepping stone between Blade Runner and Akira. Until Kiyoshi’s hand falls off, that is, at which point Death Powder becomes something very different indeed.

Once he is infected with the titular substance, Kiyoshi can see all, including the impending arrival of the strangely defaced mafia called the Scar People that employs him. He also flashes back to a sort of origin story, a jarring and hilarious jump to what is essentially a rock-star/scientist’s product launch. There’s an immediate change in tone as the robot’s inventor comes leaping in wailing on an electric guitar while the robot—bearing the ominous name “Guernica”—smiles and delivers her personal stats. Kiyoshi also undergoes physical changes, like a grotesquely misshapen face, as well as the sudden ability to punch a man in the face so hard that his head explodes.

Death Powder brings to mind the Greg Bear story Blood Music, in which a man injects himself with self-aware nanoprobes and unwittingly instigates a global biological singularity, as much as it does 1980s Japanese cyberpunk. Guernica speaks to Kiyoshi in his head, making it clear that she intends to propagate herself, and that this is just the beginning. Sure enough, when a group of hitmen arrive, artsy images of maggoty innards and liquid-drenched monster masks convey their demise. It’s not hard to imagine that all of Tokyo will soon join them in an enormous writhing blob.

The copy of Death Powder that I watched (twice, in an effort to make sense of the thing) was dark and muddy, but having seen other clips and stills from the production, I think that’s how it’s meant to be. The film looks like it’s been shot equally on film and video; the good Dr. Loo’s infomercial features classic video toaster effects, and a fight scene includes a character kicking an inset box. But the lo-fi elements only end up adding to the film’s charm. There’s something tight and compact about Izuyima’s vision, how readily he conveys a physiological disaster brought about by technological hubris. This is a movie with the wisdom to get in, confuse and horrify, and get out in a tight hour, with a jaunty saloon singalong to send you on your freaked-out way.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bizarre and barely comprehensible one-hour short… surreal to the point of madness… ” – James Belmont, AnOther Magazine

(This movie was nominated for review by Charlie. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)