Jose Marin’s shlocky creation Coffin Joe has been crawling around the edges of the horror scene for nearly five decades now, and while he’s finally gotten round to cutting his fingernails, this latest instalment shows that he’s lost none of the visceral, operatic edge that make these movies both absolutely disgusting and hugely enjoyable.
Released from jail after 40 years, Joe immediately returns to his unending quest for the perfect woman first documented waaaay back in At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and in amongst the S&M monks, cannibalism and rat infestations we get a little bit of social commentary – the cape-and-top-hat theatrical devilries looking anachronistic when set against the brutality of slum life in modern Sao Paulo.
Undeterred, Joe quickly teams up with a hunchbacked grave digger – they’re seemingly in plentiful supply in South America – and sets about gruesomely torturing a selection of attractive women in ever more nefarious ways, all the while hounded by the ghosts of previous victims. It’s an awful lot to take in and there’s an uneasy mix of gorno and vaudeville that reads like Eli Roth remaking Hammer – which should by rights render the whole thing unwatchable.
In fact, it’s rather fun. The torture scenes are incredibly inventive (not to mention incomprehensible) but come off like a student play, so over the top that you cannot suspend disbelief long enough to immerse yourself. Likewise, a rat-faced sexagenarian in a top hat is hardly the most identifiable of leads, but his cod-Shakespearian, ranting style makes him entertainingly lovable. The set pieces are seemingly a love-letter to kitsch cinema and, despite the nonsensical narrative and terrible editing, the sheer dedication to poor taste is impressive in it’s own right.
Pitched deliriously close to overkill, it’s still worth sitting through, because underneath the gallons of blood (and at one point-hot cheese and rats) and screaming girls, there’s something quite unique waiting to be discovered.
