Classy And Classic Hollywood Redux




House Of Wax (1953)

On October 6 I reviewed The Mystery Of the Wax Museum of 1933, excellent on so many levels, especially for such an early film. It was the last major film to use the two color process, and also premiered the same year as the original King Kong - and with the same co-star, Fay Wray. A gem of a movie you cannot miss.

I usually don't recommend remakes, kind of hate them to death, but this one is an exception. I remember the old indoor theater in my town playing this special matinee and being thrilled to get to watch it even though I was a kid (no, not the original showing tater tots, I'm not that old). Like the original, this had some key points that make it a true Hollywood classic, remake or no. For one thing, it stars the ever wonderful Vincent Price. In fact, it was with this film that his 'induction' so to speak into the horror genre was cemented. It also was the very first film to employ a brand new technology and it makes watching it that much more entertaining - it was shot in 3D. Watching it in 2D is perfectly fine, you just giggle at the parts that were obviously supposed to 'pop' out at you on the screen and it really doesn't take away from the movie at all.

Now it being made twenty years later meant a little updating of the story and the characters but again, mostly stayed true to the original story of the wax museum owner betrayed by his partner and horribly burned, only to resurface to make a new wax museum - with a sinister twist. In 1933 he was betrayed for 10,000 pounds which I couldn't find a way to figure out how much in today's money that was. This version is set in New York so the insurance money was $25,000 in 1953 money - which would be $215,517.24 today.




The story stays about the same and the wax figures are just as if not more wonderful (Wonder who they were on loan from?) and that all makes this just as good if not better than the original. The focus is more on Vincent instead of the female reporter of the first film - in fact, he's shown as his burnt, horrible self early on in the movie and used throughout. And this time Professor Henry (Vincent) is more than willing to have a 'Chamber Of Horrors' - taking the day's headlining murders (for which he was mostly responsible) and transferring them into wax displays. As in the first, the focus is on the Joan of Arc figure, which of course was made from the corpse of a woman stolen from the morgue. And the main 'skirt' of the movie (with the decade change comes lingo changes also) Sue (Phyllis Kirk) has a much smaller part, being the girlfriend of one of the sculptors who is very suspicious of the Joan of Arc character since she knew the young woman well, but easily captured to make Professor Henry's new Marie Antoinette, who he swears she is the spitting image of - or at least the image of the original wax figure he had of her.

The ending is the same - just as Sue is about to become the new Marie the police break in and in the scuffle the girl is saved and the Professor ends up in his own goop. But this film is well worth seeing even if you've seen the original - as is any Vincent Price movie of course.

It's funny, when they show these on AMC, they like to give a little history of how certain things came about - they of course mentioned this was a remake and I started to wince because they also mentioned a don't-even-bother re-remake of the movie also called House Of Wax, made in 2005 in Australia. I've seen it and I'll tell you why in a minute but yes, it is absolutely awful, modernized effects or not. It doesn't even try to follow the original model - it is simply a 'get a bunch of kids together and kill them one by one' movie made with was figures (and other things) scattered here and there. It was nominated for three Razzie awards, and the makers were also sued massively for a fire on the set that caused major property damage (but unfortunately the movie made it through). It tried to draw people in by having Paris Hilton as a co-star - she subsequently was voted Worst Supporting Actress. Everyone's favorite part of the movie? When Paris dies. In fact, for a while WATCH PARIS DIE t-shirts were popular promotion items for the movie. Yikes.


So Shoy, you horror freak, why did you put yourself through this abomination when you knew it was going to be awful and you weren't even doing reviews then? Well, <looks down at the ground, kicks feet> you see, on the soundtrack, playing during the ending credits, you hear part of the song Helena by My Chemical Romance who, if I've mentioned it way too many times I apologize, has been and is still my most favorite band in the world. Sigh. Their first soundtrack and that's what they get. They did much better with the movie Watchmen making a 3 minute rock version of the 11 minute Bob Dylan classic Desolation Row. Honest.

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "In Heaven's Name Who Paid For This Crap?"

Cut (2000) Australia

Okay this is a movie about making a movie that keeps getting its people killed. Unfortunately those people are not the ones who put this horrible Aussie throwaway together... On the minus side, it's a foreign film, meaning their version of scary is... off. On the plus side they have Molly Ringwald - umm, wait... This is, thankfully, NOT a found footage, hand held OMG what happened to everyone type of movie. Unfortunately it's much dumber than those. I mean this movie was SO stupid that whoever made the wiki page about it just kind of... forgot to complete the synopsis. It's written out and then after about 1/3 through just... stops. That. Is. Hilarious! That's why it's called a comedy/horror movie - cause nothing else about it is the slightest bit funny. Especially the part where I tried to find pictures for this stinker - put 'cut' into Google images and you'll get dozens of pictures of large companies that have  'cut' people, factories, jobs. That's scarier than any movie.

Quiet! Oh, you're dead. That's quiet enough...

Our basic premise: twelve years before they were making a horror film called Hot Blooded (which I thought a lot better title than Cut) which was your basic psycho slasher in a mask going after all the young people movie. They were almost done - but the director, Hilary Jacobs (a you've GOT to be kidding is THAT who that was? performance by Kylie Minogue) gets fed up with the ineptitude of her slasher. Later after they break he confronts her for humiliating him and as she's telling him how awful he is he uses the movie prop garden shears first to cut his own finger off (if you ask why I'll slap you, I'm not kidding around) and then to cut out her tongue (oh well, didn't like much her singing anyway). He then goes after the ingenue, Vanessa (Molly what-the-hell-happened-to-you Ringwald) but she manages to electrocute him.

Molly's breasts got better exposure than she did...

So now we're twelve years ahead in some Australian film school. The teacher wants his class to do something - artsy. They, being teenagers, want to do a slasher film. In fact they want to do THE slasher film - Hot Blooded. One determined director-to-be Raffy knows about the film's history (the teacher just got finished telling them all the blood-curdling stories about it - he had been the P.A. man during the filming) and contacts Vanessa who agrees to come back and finish the film mostly for the fame of returning to the movie that almost killed her - hoping it will boost her sadly sagging 'B' movie career (didn't help her OR Molly). They manage to get the original film footage, even though it is urban legend that whenever it shows, someone ends up dead. The class watches it - except for a practical joke, all are okay. They pack up and prepare to go to the original site of the movie to finish it - this time Vanessa will be playing her own mother (ouch that's gotta hurt - it'd only been 12 years). They don't know it but the man running the projector is hidden in a small room, having been disemboweled. Urban legend goes on...

Now THIS was classic 'cause... sorry, this is Nightbreed...

We get an endless (and I do mean endless, I don't care if they say it only was 82/98 minutes (what the hell - are they trying to count metric or something) it felt like an eternity). Because you know how this goes - yes, there's a real killer. Yes, immediately people start dying one by one (some adults as well as the usual grad students). Our only twist? It's not some dissatisfied crank who doesn't want the movie made. What this movie is trying to go for is that the inept original actor was soooo pissed that when he died, he BECAME the character and comes alive whenever it's played. Riiiight.

So it's shriek, dodge, parry, thrust, run, die.... shriek, dodge, parry, thrust, run, die... keep repeating until you fill up 82 (or 98) minutes. As a kind of side point we are told that Raffy wants this movie finished 'cause Hilary Jacobs was her mother (duh). If this was the case, why didn't the psycho spirit killer go after her first? Oh yeah, 'cause then the movie would be 10 minutes long.

Oh yeah, we had THIS...

Vanessa still shows herself to be a tough broad, still managing not to get killed by this celluloid nightmare. Okay Molly did a halfway decent job with the script she was given, I'll give her that much. And looks better at her age than I ever did so... I'll just shut up.

So he's celluloid basically right? Somebody finally gets the bright idea that destroying the original copy of Hot Blooded will do him in and at the end we get some halfway decent effects of his steady, uh, melting, as the reels are burned. At the end, he kind of pools and bubbles on the ground until he's just goo. Goo from what exactly? Should we have called Ghostbusters? Anyway, this torture flick (for us) is over....

Oh no little grasshopper - you know they can't end a film until there's a twist. See there was ANOTHER copy of the film (that only had one copy). Now only the original was supposed to bring the goo man out, right? Oh, but that wouldn't be any fun. In New York a film class is 'lucky' enough to have gotten hold of the 'only' copy of Hot Blooded and after hearing all the 'urban legends' associated with the film it starts... and we see goo man poised behind the teacher with his garden shears (good, cause she should get it first).

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "In Heaven's Name Who Paid For This Crap?"

Demonic Toys (1992) Straight To DVD

I changed the title a little because yeah, there are horrible movies out there, I've seen plenty, but what I want to know is - who's got the deep pockets to finance this garbage and how do I get in contact with them 'cause I've got lots of film ideas they could pay for - and guaranteed they'd be a ton better than this incredibly lame, badly acted waste of 86 minutes. And if they're not going to bother to release it to theaters anyway, who's gonna get hurt? Oh, unless somebody else streams their movies at home and runs across it... hey, it's their life, if they wanna waste it too....

Where is that girl with my sweat bottle?

It's set up in a clumsy gotta-get-this-in-a-hurry manner of two cops who are lovers waiting during a sting operation. Of course, since this is the perfect time, Judith (Tracy Scoggins my nominee for worst actress ever) tells Matt (don't worry about his name) she's pregnant. And here comes their target. Since they're as good cops as they are subtle, it goes wrong immediately and Matt is killed (told ya). One criminal is wounded, the other runs with him into the Toyland Warehouse. Get it yet? Huh? Huh? Don't worry, this is so obvious it practically kicks you in the.. uh in a very sensitive place to get its point across.

Why can't my boy demon dress this nice?

We get supplemental characters - a security guard named Charneski and a tough fast food delivery boy Mark. They're hanging around talking about - absolutely nothing but the funny part (you have to really look for funny here 'cause there's nothing) is that the guard is watching Puppet Master. Now if you want to see a GOOD movie about nasty toys, that's the movie to watch. Not nice to rub in our faces that we're stuck watching this one when we could be watching something a hell of a lot better.

I think this was the first Ronald McDonald figure...

Anywho, all are in this warehouse full of dumb toys. Oh and a demon. A demon in the form of a child (sometimes). The paper thin premise is there's a demon who wants to be a real boy (an evil Pinocchio if you will) and he's been waiting for his chance - with Judith's baby. How did he know she was going to be there that night just as she was pregnant? Hey, does your life have logic to it? It does? Well then that's why you're not making any money living it, are you? So our demon, labeled simply 'the kid' (Daniel Cerny who, although his voice is dubbed is still the best actor in the whole damn movie) is animating toys to kill those inside because with each death he gets stronger. Uh huh. If you hate clowns or dolls or bears or anything else that looks menacing, don't worry about this movie. They're all so cartoonish there's nothing scary about any of 'em. And it gets really ridiculous (NOW it gets ridiculous?) when the 280+ pound guard is killed, a 10 ounce baby doll drags him around the warehouse. Riiiiight.

This scene is classic... oops, sorry, it's Puppet Master.

But back to our well-acted role of boy demon - see Judith (the best this actress can do is sweat and I'll bet someone had to do that for her too - she's just awful) kept having this dream about just this boy and another boy always 'fighting' by playing cards - oooh, scary. And now this boy wants HER boy to grow up in - he's been waiting for her for 66 years. Do we get the anvil-over-the-head point now? It's so stupid you begin to think the animated toys are kind of clever. Oh and the grease jockey Mark who seems to keep surviving along with Judith. You know he's going to make it 'cause he's 'street smart' right? Those kind always seem to last until the end anyway...

Tough = Live     Fat = Die

One other very small funny - the boy demon keeps telling Judith he's going to 'do the nasty' with her so he can be born. Okay I have a twisted sense of humor, but they must have made that boy repeat 'do the nasty' about a dozen times. All right, down to the punch line - just as she's about to be, uh, 'done', a fair haired small wooden soldier toy releases her bonds and becomes a boy the same size as our demon. They then do - you know what, I don't have the foggiest what they were trying to do - mostly just grunt at each other. Of course the fair haired one wins. He is Judith's unborn child. He obviously knew his mother was too damn stupid to save him so he had to become a toy just to save his own bacon. And our movie is done.

By the way, if you haven't seen Puppet Master, get it - it is a really good 'evil toy' movie - not like this crap.

Coming Soon To The Blog You're Kind Enough To Read...

A Whole Slew Of Movies (And They Ain't Good)

I'm trying to use my last couple of days of Amazon prime movies to get all the ones that look at least partly watchable done before my free time is up. This is hard, because there are NO partly watchable ones on the Amazon list. They may have different stuff than Netflix, but that's not a good thing. I don't know what movie hell they drug these out of but wow, what stinkers.

So I'll be a bit busy for the next couple of days, trying to get it all in and probably watching some faves that I've seen umpteen times as well as my new The Walking Dead episodes in order to break up the torture.

Thanks again to all my loyal readers, you've blown me away with all your support and I'll have something for you that's absolutely awful very soon.

Old Movies Revisited Just For The Fun Of It

The Hunger (1983)

Okay, I'm cheating completely 'cause I've seen this movie and I knew it was good but hey, when you actually start watching cartoons for the umpteenth time to avoid movies, you need a good one to get yourself going again. And this is good, made from the same named book by Whitley Strieber.  We've got Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon - guaranteed good stuff. Now this is a vampire movie, but a lot classier and more interesting a story than the usual prowl at night, bite necks and hide from the sun. Okay, I've got to repeat a joke that was told and I promise I won't mention sparkling for the rest of the review: 'Went to the Halloween stores this weekend looking for vampire costumes. Funny thing; all the sparkly outfits were in the fairy princess section... It's all so confusing...' Major thanks for a great joke and making me laugh 'til I about wet myself to Jason Backus for that one. There is absolutely NO sparkling here - and the actors have range and know how to act. Oh I almost forgot - toward the end of the movie there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by Willem DaFoe who is billed as 'second phone booth youth'.

Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) is a beautiful vampire who promises her lovers eternal life and eternal youth. She means it about the life - it's the youth she kind of fudges on. See, while she's been alive for who-knows-how-long, her companions only last a couple hundred years (boo hoo) and then age rapidly until they are mere husks - but they are still alive. They're immortal after all.

Her current love is John (David Bowie, exuding sex and charm - of course this was two years before he did the music video Dancing In The Streets with Mick Jagger, which Family Guy calls 'the gayest music video ever made'), a talented cellist she married in 18th century France. The films opens in a night club in New York to a live performance from Bauhaus, a real English rock band. They live together in an elegant New York townhouse posing as a wealthy couple who teach classical music. 

Oh and no, they don't hide from the sun although they do sleep in the daytime so they can go out at night, and have a special retort in the basement to burn all the bodies they collect. And no fangs - in order to 'feed' they wear Ankhs of all things, with special tips that when the cover is removed, easily penetrates the arteries. It was funny to watch after they were done washing their hands and Ankhs in the sink, I don't know why, it seemed so... silly. So they are yuppie vampires but they also have a lot of class and style.

John however soon develops problems he was not told about. First he starts finding it hard to sleep (God do I know THAT one), then he sees signs that yes, he is getting older, even though by 'feeding' they are supposed to keep their youth. When he gives a 'what the hell' to Miriam she confesses that well, yeah, you're going to live forever - but you're not going to like it. As he ages more and more rapidly he seeks the help of a doctor named Sarah (Susan Sarandon) who's doing work on Progeria, the disease that rapidly ages and kills children. He hopes that her research has shown a way to slow down or reverse the process. She thinks he's nuts and keeps him waiting for two hours instead of the 15 minutes she promised - by that time he is now in the geriatric phase and she's shocked and insists he stays - nope.

As revenge and a last gasp at youth, John murders a young girl who played classical music with them and who Miriam was going to 'induct' into the family when she was old enough. Her blood doesn't do him any good. He begs Miriam to kill him but hey, immortality is a bitch. Especially when youth doesn't come with it. She carries his now husk-like body to an upper level in their building, where we see other coffins, also carrying the living 'remains' of her former lovers. She closes him in, talking to the other caskets, asking them to be 'nice' to him. Ick.

Sarah shows up to find John but Miriam says he's gone away. There's attraction between the two and we have a somewhat protracted, but still not cheap or tawdry love scene between the two. Sarah is acting as if she's in a fog, barely aware when Miriam bites her arm, and she bites Miriam's arm, the two mingling their blood. Miriam then gives Sarah John's Ankh. Sarah's boyfriend Tom (Cliff De Young) can't understand what her problem is - she won't eat although she's starving and throws up anything she tries. 

At her lab she finds there are two blood types in her system fighting each other. She pretty much knows now what the hell is going on. She goes back to Miriam to reject this 'gift' but it's too late - and Miriam gives her the 'eternal life, eternal youth' speech which we now know is a lie. Tom shows up and Sarah is supposed to kill him. She resists, but hunger makes her do it. Miriam thinks Sarah is hers now, but as they both sit at the piano getting cozy, Sarah drives the Ankh into her own neck to kill herself, forcing Miriam to ingest her blood - why? Maybe it was the 'warring blood types' stuff the lab was talking about, maybe she figured she wanted her blood to win... in any case, she collapses. Miriam, desolate, carries her upstairs preparing to put her in yet another coffin.

Now this is confusing but still pretty cool. As she's about to say goodbye to Sarah, the other coffins rumble around and open and all these mummies (still alive, but ick) surround Miriam to, I dunno, gross her out to death? Nah, what eventually happens is that Miriam falls off the balcony clear down all the floors to the bottom. Doesn't kill her of course, but for some reason the combination of this plus Sarah's blood makes her age rapidly, turning into a mummy herself. For some reason, this releases the others, and they all fall apart into dust. Why? I dunno - you'd have to read the book I guess.

Now this is where the movie was supposed to end, with Sarah and everyone else in the house being dead and boom, story done. But the moviemakers wanted to keep the ending open for a sequel (thankfully there wasn't one) so in their new ending Sarah survives and moves to London, using the proceeds from the sale of the building (And how did she get that exactly?) to buy another building in London. She is seen looking out at the city, two young people who are her, uh, family? Lovers? Future mummies? living with her. Meanwhile in a box in the basement, a trapped Miriam is heard faintly screaming (eternal life without youth is a real bitch).

Susan Sarandon later expressed regret that this sequence seemed to make no sense in the context of the rest of the film: "The thing that made the film interesting to me was this question of, 'Would you want to live forever if you were an addict?' But as the film progressed, the powers that be rewrote the ending and decided that I wouldn't die, so what was the point? All the rules that we'd spent the entire film delineating, that Miriam lived forever and was indestructible, and all the people that she transformed [eventually] died, and that I killed myself rather than be an addict [were ignored]. Suddenly I was kind of living, she was kind of half dying... Nobody knew what was going on, and I thought that was a shame."

And that strange ending was the only flaw in a pretty good flick and different take on the vampire genre.

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?"

Ghost Game (2004)

There are films that you KNOW are going to be stupid. The title is stupid, the premise is stupid, and you have absolutely no faith at all that there will be any kind of plot or good storylines or acting. Yup, this is a prime example. I KNEW I was going to hate it, I KNEW it would blow chunks but hey, that's what I do. This pile takes the required college students, puts them in a cabin in the woods and kills them off one by one. Where have I heard that synopsis before? Oh yeah, in EVERY SINGLE FREAKING HORROR FILM ABOUT KIDS WHO GO TO CABINS. You'd think they'd keep those young idiots out of there. Nope. Plus they call this a comedy-horror movie. If anybody laughed one time during this movie it's only because somebody sitting beside him/her told them a joke - there's absolutely nothing amusing here.

I could only hope to be this 'hideous'...

We first have a scene of three 'witches' (it's hard to take witches seriously who wear cheerleading skirts and a ton of Revlon makeup) who gather to this 'sacred' place in order, supposedly, to increase their powers. One, a blonde had quit but was too scared of this coven of three (uh duh guys, you're short about ten bitches - err I mean witches, sorry) and now is trying to redeem herself. She shouldn't have bothered. She's the subject of a human sacrifice, and we get the idea that none of the three actually make it out of there alive. But like I said, hey - bitches in cheerleading skirts are not high on my 'want them to live' list.

Then we skip ahead 30 years. Why? Why not? I'll make this brief because you can pretty much write this one yourself, I know I had my review done before the movie was half over. We have seven people total, three couples and an extra named 'Cousin Ted' whose apparent function was to spout nonsense and the occasional 'by George I think he's got it' knowledge because, after all, he is a brain. Sort of, I mean he DID agree to come with these idiots. This cabin, just to mix things up a little, is on an island in the middle of a river, and is only accessible by canoe. Phones? Bitch, please - you know that despite there being 95% cellular coverage in the US, there's not gonna be any there. Anywho, they're drunk and bored and want to play a game and pick one from the cabin. It's a metal box (left by the witches of course) and as they open it, there's a paper which says in large letters 'DON'T PLAY THIS GAME'. Which, of course, makes it a moral imperative that they play right away. There's not really any playing per se since there's only some sort of coded map that supposedly is to complete a ritual but no one in the group has the foggiest idea (except our Cousin Ted - sort of) what the hell it's for. Now the wiki says this is when the three witch 'ghosts' are released. Actually they call them three 'hideous' ghosts. FUNNY! I guess being beautiful, wearing cheerleader outfits and having more makeup than a department store didn't help their looks any. Of course, none of them looked like they had access to a comb.

YES! Time to collect my check and go home.

So they die. One chokes. One drowns. One is stabbed by ???.So far it's all the guys so we have three bitches - sorry, college girls and Cousin Ted. They run around the island gathering the things he claims he figures they need to 'stop' whatever's going on. But they keep dying. Good! Finally there's one girl and Cousin Ted. Now they need a sacrifice and Ted, not wanting to die, keeps stabbing the girl but the knife doesn't penetrate. They need VIRGIN blood. Poor Cousin Ted. Bye Cousin Ted. Thinking things are finally over, the last girl celebrates at the grave of some other witch (Yes, this small island had its own cemetery of course, don't they all?), one of the 'ghosts' appears and says nope, you all die and stabs her. The end. Thank goodness.

Where does he get the titles?

The end shows the owner of the cabin cleaning out the bodies and picking up the pieces of the witch game wondering why the kids keep insisting on playing it since they always die. But he doesn't care much - more money in his pocket (and more graves I guess). He immediately rents the cabin out to the next suckers and we see the young people's vehicles with FOR SALE signs on them, joining other vehicles he has collected from other stupid college kids. Keep going guy please, there's a lot of very stupid college kids that are only wasting their parent's money - they need to die. And this horrible horror movie is over.

A Brazilian Horror Phenomenon That Should Really Be Experienced - Maybe

The Strange Hostel Of Naked Pleasures

Coffin Joe Horror Films

Never heard of Coffin Joe? Starting in the 60's, Brazil was desperate to break into the horror genre I guess and using the things that scare Brazilian people (which apparently is a lot of religious gobbledygook and superstition about dead people) they went with a young and ambitious film maker/actor/media personality, Coffin Joe.

The first appearance of 'Coffin Joe'.

I get IFC and the Sundance channel which means I get to experience some good foreign films... and a whole mess of bad ones. One month for whatever reason, IFC, I think, decided to 'dig up' the Coffin Joe films as a set and show them off for a whole month. Or at least it seemed like a whole month. Wanting to see both the foreign and the period type piece of horror I decided to invest some time (these things go a bit long) and see what the Coffin Joe phenomenon was all about. Ooof, was that a nauseating experience. Never mind that he speaks in symbolic hyperbole that you need a translator to get straight (even though they did dub the movies in English it really doesn't help) and that nothing made much sense and some got downright silly (my favorite was the B&W movie, which most of his films were, with scenes of 'Hell' in brilliant color, like only Satan gets the cost of Technicolor for his domain.).

Jose' and his incredible nails.

Coffin Joe is still alive by the way. His real name is Jose' Mojica Marins and he was and is considered quite the media personality, especially as Zé do Caixão, loosely translated in English as 'Coffin Joe'. His first film as this character was in 1963, named At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. Saw it. Didn't understand a bit of it. But for the Brazilians this is as much as part of their culture as Night Of The Living Dead is a part of ours. Coffin Joe's real name in the movies, rarely spoken, was Josefel Zanatas, which again as a loose translation using part of the first name and the last name being spelled backward is 'bitter Satan'. Okay. Coffin Joe wears a black suit, a cape and a top hat. His most notable features are his grotesquely long, curled fingernails. I mean this guy must have spent a fortune in fills at his local beauty shop since he kept them long in real life in order to 'stay in character'. What a trooper. To completely explain his personal philosophy, I borrowed from wiki, sorry, but there's no better way to explain it:

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse

Coffin Joe is an evil, amoral character who considers himself superior to others and exploits them to suit his purposes. He hates morality and superstition (which he includes religion as) to the point of obsession. His central belief is that (self) imposed superstitious beliefs tend to prevent individual development, inhibit positive social change. Those who do not accept his central belief are considered to be weak, lack power, and limited in their ability to rationalize objectively. Those who share with him similar beliefs are considered to have power and intelligence above the 'normal' person. The primary theme of the character is his single-minded obsession with the 'continuity of the blood'; he wants to sire the 'superior' child from the 'perfect woman'. His idea of a 'perfect woman' is not exactly physical but someone he regards intellectually superior to the Brazilian average, and in this quest he is willing to kill anyone who crosses his path. Coffin Joe's weakness is his overconfidence in his primary belief. The overconfidence inhibits his ability to cope with forces that reveal themselves to exist, contrary to his beliefs.

If you understand any of that, you pretty much know how all his movies are going to go and how they will end. Or not. He is very inconsistent with this 'philosophy' and often seems to infuse new stuff at will, just to make things more interesting. The very first Coffin Joe movie I saw was about how he ran a motel where all these people checked in except for one couple he wouldn't allow in. The night was filled with debauchery (Brazil being much more lenient in what was allowed on the screen than the US) and when the jilted couple return in the morning with the police to file a complaint, instead of a motel, they find a cemetery. They were alive, so they couldn't come in. Right.

Other 'Coffin Joe' movies to, umm, enjoy:

• At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963)
• This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967)
• The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)
• Awakening of the Beast (1970)
• The End of Man (1970)
• The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974)
• The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1976)
• Hellish Flesh (1977)
• Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind (1978)
• Perversion (1979)
• Embodiment of Evil (2008)

Watch at your own discretion. Know that you may, and most probably will, become incredibly confused, and know this was just another notch in the horror film genre, still proudly distributed by Brazil.