After the incredible one-two punch of At Midnight I Take Your Soul and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, director Jose Mojica Marins and his amazing creation Coffin Joe made a slight pivot. This time he returns with a wild horror anthology that is nearly as good as its predecessors. Despite the fact that it’s called The Strange World of Coffin Joe, the title character only appears briefly in the intro. (At least Marins takes center stage in the third story where he plays a thinly veiled variation on Joe.)
The first story is “The Dollmaker” (****). An old man and his four virginal daughters make beautifully handcrafted dolls. One night, four men break into their home and rape the daughters. The men soon learn the terrible secret behind the dolls’ lifelike eyes.
If you’re making a horror anthology, having a story about creepy dolls is a veritable prerequisite. What’s interesting about this one is that it doesn’t lean into the supernatural realm as it’s essentially a tale of revenge. That doesn’t mean it isn’t atmospheric as hell. The shots of the eyeless dolls’ empty sockets are particularly eerie.
“Obsession” (****) is next. A pathetic balloon salesman pines for a sexy woman who passes him by on a daily basis. After the woman is murdered (on her wedding day, no less), the hunchbacked street vendor sneaks into the woman’s crypt and violates her corpse.
This one has a great gimmick as it’s told without dialogue. That helps to amplify the atmosphere that Marins has created. He also does a fine job of tiptoeing around some pretty icky subject matter. Some may be miffed by the abrupt ending, but the fact that there is essentially (spoiler) no plot twist is more surprising than anything O. Henry could’ve come up with.
The final tale is “Ideology” (****). Marins stars as a professor who goes on national television and claims love doesn’t exist. One of the hosts is intrigued by his proclamation and the professor invites him and his wife to his home. There, he shows them various displays of vulgar lust and depraved degradation and puts their love to the test.
Although Marins dresses similarly to Coffin Joe, he acts differently enough to make the professor come off as a distinct character in his own right. He still has the same kind of hardline viewpoints that make Joe so much fun. Directing wise he does another fantastic job. Marins effectively blurs the line between sex and horror during the sequences inside the professor’s dungeon where the kinky goings on make Madame Olga look like Mother Teresa.
So, if you like your horror anthologies a bit more on the depraved side, you should definitely take a trip to The Strange World of Coffin Joe.
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