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Embodiment of Sadism: Author/screenwriter Dan Madigan on Coffin Joe's Return
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Si, evil. . .
Before beginning to write a piece on the hallucinogenic depravity known as Embodiment of Evil (Jose Mojica Marins' return to the internationally notorious character known as "Coffin Joe") I opened up an email from Mondo Lucha-A-Go-Go author and See No Evil screenwriter, Dan Madigan. In it are his thoughts about what he and I witnessed last night at the Los Angeles Film Festival. There was no way that I could write anything about the movie once my thoughts had been tainted by Madigan's email.
Email from Dan Madigan (Saturday, June 20, 2:39 a.m.):
Once again Brazilian director/writer/international horror icon Jose Mojica Marins (a.k.a. to his countless number of rabid fans by the macabre moniker "Coffin Joe" or more precisely Zé do Caixão) has unleashed his inner most depraved fantasies on film for the world to suffer through...his latest opus to offend is entitled Embodiment of Evil (Encamacao do Demonio)...and embodies it does...a complete and utter disregard for decency and any type of social context, a title more apt to be in the Marquis De Sade’s playroom than up on an art house marquee, a surreal sojourn into a dark and twisted psyche that is more in the artistic vein of Elizabeth Báthory than Luis Buñuel; and speaking of veins many are opened: cut, sliced, punctured, stabbed and torn…all types: pulmonary, systemic, varicose, arteries, capillaries, jugulars, carotids--a flying thrombosis of torture, enough cruelty to deplete the hardest movie reviewer's circulatory system of critique…it is either a blood fetishist’s wet dream or a phlebotomist’s nightmare.
The plot, or to be more succinct, the anti-sacrosanct storyline, is nothing more than gratuitously vile set pieces of some of the most deviant and demented misogyny every captured on celluloid…more an endurance test than entertainment, it is both repugnant in theme and repulsive in content. The film’s decadence, bordering on a Dantean level of unredeemable characters and indescribable acts of brutality, showcases the damaged and diseased mind that Marins has cultivated over the last four decades as the fright master supreme of South America. Marins' alter ego Joe is nothing more than the sick manifestation of a man’s morbid obsession not so much with violence for the sake of viciousness but to appease his own super-sized ego and extremely inflated sense of self-worth and inbred hatred of women.
Coffin Joe is Marins' id released: the dark soul that he wants us to believe lurks in all of us, part Edward Hyde part Charles Manson but all Coffin Joe. Atrocious, vile, despicable, more a 24 frame per second malignancy than a movie, it tries to be equal parts torturous as well as titillating with its lingering shots on young female flesh, both naked and flayed…shot with enough fervor to outrage all militant feminist groups [and anyone with a heartbeat, really--MM.] around the world into uniting into one Anti-Coffin Joe coalition…and it is a toss-up on what Joe finds more distasteful, nubile young girls who are willing to succumb to his lecherous advances to have the misguided honor of having his vile seed fester within their wombs in order to propagate his odious bloodline, or the hypocritical ineffectual Catholic church and all its pathetic pious idolatry, or the ineffective Brazilian government and its flaccid attempt at any type of socio-economic or criminal reform. But really, to look for any type of hidden social message is moot … this film is one continuous act of blatant cruelty played out in the span of ninety odd minutes (and odd they certainly are). . .
. . .and I loved every excruciating painful second of it. . .
…what does that say about me?
[Lots, Mr. Madigan, lots. . .MM.]
Email reprinted by permission.
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