I'm of the belief that Coffin Joe is the coolest horror movie villain in existence. Sure, he's not as well known as Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, but those who do know him tend to love him. Nowhere, though, is he quite so beloved as he is in his home country of Brazil.
With his black suit, top hat, cape, and obscenely long fingernails, Coffin Joe (played by writer-director Jose Mojica Marins) first appeared in 1963's AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL, and went on to appear in THIS NIGHT I'LL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE (1967) and EMBODIMENT OF EVIL (2008). Although these three films comprise the official Coffin Joe Trilogy, the character appeared in other films of Marins, as well as TV shows.Only a selection of these appearances are available to the English-speaking world (and, in the case of the TV appearances, some are lost all together). But what I truly crave is the combination of freakery and geekery that can only be found in the art of the horror comic.
Coffin Joe appeared in a six-issue series of comic books entitled THE STRANGE WORLD OF COFFIN JOE in 1969, as well as comic book adaptations of AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL and THIS NIGHT I'LL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE in the 1990s. Further, the graphic novel PRONTUARIO 666: COFFIN JOE'S YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT details the years that passed between entries from 1967 to 2008. The sad part, however, is that very few of these are available in English.
In 2001, Fantoma released a boxed set of three of the Coffin Joe films, including miniaturized versions of a few of the STRANGE WORLD comics, translated into English--though trimmed down to a single story instead of the two that were originally presented. Obviously they had access to the issues and the rights to reprint them. What I would love to see is translated reprints of the complete Coffin Joe comics, either in collected or single issue form. I'm not picky.
But please, somebody, make it happen.
--J/Metro