by Stefan Rainer Harbach

Jose Mojica Marins with a portrait of Coffin Joe. Photo by Stefan Rainer Harbach.

José Mojica Marins has amassed, over the past half century, a slavish cult following for his psycho-sexual horror films. Yet he remains little known to a new generation of genre-film fans outside of his native Brazil.

Mojica Marins – perhaps better known by his alter ego and most famous cinematic invention, Coffin Joe – is now the subject of a feature documentary, Coffin Joe: The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins, which premiered at the recent Sundance Film Festival. First-time directors André Barcinscki and Ivan Finotti – who in 1998 co-authored The Damned, a biography of Mojica Marins – delve beneath the surface of Marins’s blood-and-sex-filled films to shed light on the the man behind the trademark top hat, black cape, and fantastically long fingernails.

Stefan Rainer Harbach recently visited José Mojica Marins in his native Sao Paulo, Brazil, to discuss horror filmmaking, comic books, and the sad eyes of Charlie Chaplin.

Stefan Rainer Harbach: When was your first contact with movies and what impact did they have on you?

José Mojica Marins: My first contact was very early because when I was only three or four years old I moved from a normal house into a movie theater. My father was a bullfighter here in Sao Paulo. My mother was a tango dancer after arriving from Spain, but she didn’t like that kind of errant life. My father had a cousin who had a theater in the neighborhood of Vila Anastacio and my mother became manager of this theater. So we went to live inside the theater...

Harbach: In the theater?

Mojica Marins: Yes. Behind the screen. I was always there, watched films with the projectionist, and at a very young age became interested in motion pictures. Also, I started to read comics at age six or seven, and soon afterwards began to collect them. By the time I made my first film I think that I was one of the biggest collectors of comics in Brazil. So, seeing the moving image, seeing the images of the comics, I had always dreamed about the possibility of doing it myself, to put my ideas into moving images on a screen. When my tenth birthday came, instead of asking for a bicycle like all the other boys of my age in the neighborhood, I asked my father for an 8-millimeter camera and started my first film, Last Judgement.

Harbach: Wasn’t film expensive for a 10-year-old boy at that time?

Mojica Marins: No. I bought three or four reels after collecting some money by passing a hat around to the theater customers. I was very good at raising money from an early age. For this first film I needed a lot of worms, so I spread the word among the kids around the block that I would give a free ticket to the Saturday matinee for each pound of worms collected. The result was that I got sacks and sacks filled with worms ...

Harbach: What was the film about?

Mojica Marins: I was always going to Church and hearing about Judgement Day. Also, after reading Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and other science-fiction comics, I had this crazy idea that creatures came from other planets inside coffins to observe humans who where good or bad. And I imagined a large dancing saloon … While the patrons were dancing a bolero or a tango, these coffins would appear and the good people would be sucked out into space and the bad ones would be paralyzed and decomposed instantly, transforming them into worms.

In one scene, a family was having dinner at home and suddenly the mother was sucked into space, along with one of her sons, while the others who remained were paralyzed – because they were bad – and were transformed into worms. The worms fertilized the grass. And, in this way, the whole of humanity was purified.

I remember my father was very impressed by my ideas. He called a priest to witness this incredible way that a child had imagined Judgement Day. The resulting tragic end was easily predictable: the priest saw those images and said that I should be taken to a sanatorium for treatment. How could a 10-year-old child imagine such terrible things? He must be crazy!

Harbach: So since the age of 10 you already knew the kind of films you wanted to make?

Mojica Marins: Yes. And that’s because – when I was between five and six years old, we had a neighbor who used to sell potatoes in his store. One day he died and the whole neighborhood came to his funeral. Priests, the police officer – everyone was at the funeral. His wife was crying, saying that only the good die, the bad remain. Then the sons of the deceased suggested that everyone should pray for his return. I was there with three friends and we each prayed. And during our prayers, the body started to move around in the coffin. Everyone started to run! Nobody remained at the funeral. The man wasn’t dead; he had catelepsy. We helped him get out of the coffin, the priest started to make funny gestures, the wife wanted to divorce him saying that this wasn’t her husband, that it was the devil and so on. And nobody bought potatoes from that man anymore. He tried to move to another neighborhood but the gossip persisted and he was sent into an asylum, dying two years later in that institution. That made me very interested in the subject of death.

I made two more films in 8 mm, then passed to 16mm, until the end of the ’40s – and we just found a film that I made in 1948! In the 1950s I started with the 35mm films.

When I was making God’s Sentence (Sentenca de Deus, 1958) in the Vera Cruz studio, my main actress was taking a bath at the studio’s pool when she had a stomach problem and died. I had to stop filming and search for another actress. I found another who had tuberculosis, but I didn’t know. She was stricken during the filming and also passed away. As a consequence, I was branded as a cursed moviemaker. Press and movie people started this gossip. Then I got a third girl… and what happens? She suffers a car accident and loses a leg! I recognized this as a special omen and stopped the picture. I canceled everything. Sometime later I met a novelist, Aureliana Sa Porto, and we transformed the film into a book, which was quite successful.

Harbach: Tell us about your second 35mm film, The Fate of the Wonderer (A Sino do Aventureiro , 1958), which you made in Cinemascope.

Mojica Marins: Well, in this film I had problems with the Catholic Church caused by a scene in which two women where shown naked from a distance of 300 feet. They were taking a bath by a waterfall. The Church accused the scene of being pornographic and started a campaign against the film – especially in small cities of the Brazilian hinterland, where the Church had more power.

So I tried to make friends with the priests and asked them what I could do to obtain the support of the Church for my films. There was a priest in the neighborhood Church who told me to make the priests heroes in the films. The result was My Destiny in Your Hands (Meu Destino Em Tuas Maos, 1962).

Harbach: How did you obtain financial support to make movies at that time?

Mojica Marins: It was easier to obtain money to finance a rocket to the moon than to make a motion picture. But I had some leadership, I mobilized my friends, we passed the hat around. Once we made a "cultural toll" at the Anhanguera highway. It involved three hundred kids laying down on the highway; no car could pass without giving a contribution. The police came and started hitting everyone. But we kept our positions. Nobody moved. So the cars continued giving their contributions.

Harbach: Where did all the kids come from?

Mojica Marins: I put an advertisement in the paper, and they started coming non-stop. Afterwards, I moved my little studio to another neighborhood and created an acting class for young people.

Harbach: You never had a big investor who gave you money to make a movie?

Mojica Marins: No, only through hat passing and exhibiting parts of the film during production together with the whole cast. People saw the actors on the screen and in real life, and became enthusiastic about the production. That is how I went from 16mm to 35mm.

Harbach: At this time, what was your main influence or inspiration?

Mojica Marins: My influences were the comics. There was no film school anywhere here in Brazil, so I developed my own language, which many consider unique.

Harbach: Didn’t the cinema of that time influence you?

Mojica Marins: What mostly influenced me, and which caused a great impression on me, were the eyes of Charlie Chaplin – always sad, melancholic. In my films I try to use close-ups to show those eyes. Those anguished eyes inspired me in this mystic world. I still remember that I couldn’t laugh watching his films because the eyes were so sad. And therefore I am always looking for eyes – eyes and more eyes. In the human eye we have the most important human expression.

Harbach: Why do you construct scenes to scare and frighten people. Do you enjoy this?

Mojica Marins: I think of this as my contribution to the public. The same way people pay to ride a roller coaster because of the emotion and the thrill that it brings, I think that I also have to give something to the public in exchange for the entrance ticket. I like to give them emotions too. Many didn’t understand my message when I created my alter ego, Coffin Joe. He is a character who struggles for innocence and purity. He protects children. He is always searching for the perfect son through superior woman. And, in reality, he wants to make the world more peaceful. His philosophy is: It doesn’t matter if one hundred people die if six billion are safe.

Harbach: How was Coffin Joe, or the idea for this character, born?

Mojica Marins: It was a dream that I had, a nightmare actually. I was at home having dinner about 11 p.m. It was a time of crisis, I was in the middle of production on a film, Damned Generation. I was resting when, in my sleep, a faceless creature appeared, all dressed in black, who took me to a cave where I could see my tombstone – and on it was written my date of birth and the date of my death, but I didn’t want to see the date of my death. Then I woke-up very impressed, around five in the morning. All kinds of priests and healers were called, but I said no, that I only had a dream, a premonition. But I couldn’t finish the film I was working on. The other producers left and I decided to do At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.

I reunited some businessmen who collaborated with shares to raise the necessary amount to finance the movie. I started to look for the main character and nobody wanted to do it, fearing it would be ridiculous. So, without having anybody to play the central character – and I had this beard and two long nails on my thumbs – my Argentine make-up man suggested that I should add eight fake nails to complete the character. So I stepped in before the camera playing Coffin Joe. I had rented an old, small studio and I found a black cape there. I had a black suit, sold all my furniture to get money for the film and sent my wife to her parents’ house until I finished the film, using a top hat to complete my character.

Harbach: What is the difference between the character Coffin Joe and the moviemaker José Mojica Marins?

Marins: The difference is enormous. I’ve been married five times, I have seven kids, and my tenth grandchild was born recently. Coffin Joe doesn’t love and doesn’t hate since he isn’t attached to any feeling. I, on the contrary, am a prisoner of my feelings. Coffin Joe is always looking for the superior woman; he is always looking for a son to perpetuate his blood and his mind. That’s why he is looking for a woman who thinks like him – and this son would save the world, would change the system because he is against the rules of the system that are imposed upon all of us. Mojica is a moviemaker and Coffin Joe is a gravedigger who inherited his father’s business. He is rich, but Mojica is poor because he makes movies and the cinema in Brazil isn’t profitable.

Harbach: Do you see a distinction between horror films from the sixties and seventies compared with those of recent years?

Mojica Marins: I think the excessive use of computer technology and special effects are damaging to this type of film. The excessive use of violence and blood has the opposite effect: children see that as comedy. Heads that fly, arms and hands being cut off – it’s not the proper way. In Awakenings of the Beast (1968), a scene of a needle entering the skin while a character is poisoning himself with drugs is much more effective than showing all that blood – which becomes so vulgar that it turns into something more funny than scary.

Recently, my film At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul was presented after The Blair Witch Project in the same theater. Thirty five people were watching the American film, and someone said to me that if 50 people showed up for my film it would be a success. Six hundred people came, and there wasn’t space for more! Many were seated on the floor. After the film, I had to speak to the audience, otherwise no one would leave the theater. We stayed for almost two hours with a magnificent debate, where I answered questions from people from all around the world. So, I think they really consider my kind of terror impressive.

Harbach: If Peter Cushing, Vincent Price or Christopher Lee knocked on your door and said he would like to be in one of your films, which one would you choose?

Mojica Marins: If Boris Karloff were alive, I would choose him. I have this ring given to me by Karloff’s daughter. And a film that I never will forget from my adolescence was The Tower of London. Especially the scene when he is closing a door; in order to close it, he had to step on the hand of a child who was on the doorway. That scene impressed me so much that I will never forget it. Perhaps that is why I made my character Coffin Joe a protector of children everywhere.

Harbach: What international actress would you like to invite for a starring role in a future project?

Mojica Marins: If she were alive, I would choose Rita Hayworth. But I would like to have Sharon Stone in one of my films. Her sexual type is very appropriate for the two famous terror opposites – beauty and the beast. A good mixture of terror and eroticism is always effective in terms of cinema entertainment.

Harbach: And your opinion about Roger Corman and the series of films he made at American International based on the work by Edgar Allan Poe?

Mojica Marins: They where creative, quickly done, like I do mine, and he is a great artisan. I was with him in 1996 when he was here in Sao Paulo. We even agreed to do a film together – actually two films with the same story. He would use American actors and crew, and I was going to use people from here. He would film his film in his style, and I in mine. It was to be a film in two parts using the same story, just to see the results of two different points of view.

Harbach: How is your position at the moment within the U.S. film community and market?

Mojica Marins: Well, three of my films are being released now in DVD through a distribution company called Fantoma. And according to recent news, the sales are fantastic. Thirteen of my films were released on video in 1993, and four of them are still being sold. My next project is to exhibit my films in 35mm at theaters commercially, not only at film festivals.

Harbach: What is your most recent work?

Mojica Marins: I just finished a medium-length film for Globo Television Network with Isadora Ribeiro, Ney Latorraca and other first-rate actors of the Brazilian film and theater scene. And the results were very good. It was made in 35mm and had a very good audience. This year I will finish two more feature-length films. They are about the drug problem in schools. They show the human side of the junkie, the point of view of those who combat the traffic, and the dealer’s side too. The story is mine and the screenplay is by Nilcemar Lear, my ex-wife and mother of two of my sons.

I also want to finish my trilogy, begun in 1963 with At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, continued in 1966 with This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, and ending with a film that I should have made in 1967 that I intend to finish this year, The Devil’s Incarnation (a.k.a. Incarnations of Lucifer).

Links:

For info about the documentary Coffin Joe: The Strange World of José Mojica Marins, contact Joana Macedo at joanamacedo@synapse-brazil.com

Official Web site for Coffin Joe: www.uol.com.br/zedocaixao/

members.tripod.com/mud/cjarticle.html

You can also purchase films by José Mojica Marins in the U.S. at the following sites: picpal.com/somethingweird/cjoe2.html
www.somethingweird.com/index.htm
www.tapeworm.com/webdocs/latenightmatinee7.html
members.aol.com/RdHsRecord/joe.html