O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Caixão (1968)

	Also Known As: The Strange World of Coffin Joe
	Year of first release: 1968
	Director: José Mojica Marins
	Actors: Luís Sérgio Person, Vany Miller, Mário Lima
	Country: BR
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 07.07.2016, Cinema Bio, NIFFF2016
Synopsis: A dollmaker and his four daugthers, a beggar in love and a critic journalist all come incontact with sex and death.
Review: This movie was presented at the Neuchatel International Fantasy Film Festival as part of a retrospective on the Genre cinema in South America. The young Mexican director Adrián Garcia Bogliano, also part of the movie selection committee, introduced the movie by emphasizing the influence it had on the following generation of directors on the continent, and replacing the movie in its context at the end of the 60's. Quickly looking for movies from the same period reviewed on JoRafCinema, I found for example 2001, A Space Odyssey, True Grit and Torn Curtain from the USA, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly from Europe, Branded to Kill from Japan and The Hunchback of Soho from Germany. It is thus surprising to see the poor image, sound and storytelling qualities of O Estranho Mundo... making it look like it was released in the 20's or 30's. But it has that other quality of a content ahead of its time: a bizarre mix of sexuality, horror and religion that unsurprisingly made it extremely controversial at the time. It is in fact an anthology composed of three 30-minute segments: The Dollmaker including very naked scenes and rape, Tara, very slow, mute and of the poorest quality but disturbing its its revelation of necrophilia, and Ideologia, poorly acted but delivering a message about the power of reason vs. instinct. The gore in the movie actually reminded me of Blood Feast by Herschell Gordon Lewis, first of its kind, released 5 years earlier. In summary, a movie behind its time in form, but ahead in content. A must-see for any amateur of History of the genre. Probably better avoided by anybody else.
Rating: 4 /10