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Awakening Of The Beast
Banned for almost 20 years, this surreal and insane catalogue of debauchery was Marins’ most controversial, experimental, and provocative film -- and with a full-on, twenty-minute Technicolor trip sequence inside of Coffin Joe's world, it was also Marins’ most explicitly psychedelic. The movie links together episodic scenes of drug use, orgies, and general moral inequity with a Charlie Kaufman-like meta-story with José Mojica Marins/Coffin Joe debating with critics on the detrimental effect of drugs and phenomena like his films on Brazilian culture. And the climax is a real monster -- a bizarre "experiment" sequence in which our hosts oh-so-scientifically dose four degenerates (of various class and demographics, of course) with LSD, give them a Coffin Joe poster to stare at, and watch them all enter a brightly multi-colored hellscape of Marins' devising. Marins’ relationships with authority had always been mutually acrimonious, but here he sets out to make a film that includes everything the establishment didn't want to see. Awakening of the Beast was a cinematic act of defiance and an aesthetic revolution. Incredible.
Dir. José Mojica Marins, 1970, DigiBeta, 93 min.

Finis Hominis (End of Man)
Financially crippled by the banning of Awakening of the Beast, and threatened with imprisonment if he ever dared release it, Marins decided with his next film to abandon his gruesome obsessions, and emphasize the fantastical imagination and elemental myth-making skills that led critics to compare him to Bunuel, Arrabal and Jodorowsky. So exit Coffin Joe, and enter Finis Hominis - -a wholly new archetypal creation that, in a sly wink to his censors, is the Jungian opposite of his evil-embodying Coffin Joe character. Or is he? Who is this benevolent, messianic Christ-figure who emerges naked from the sea, puts on the outfit of a sideshow fakir, and goes about leaving a trail of happiness and spiritual fulfillment wherever he goes? Stripped of the horror elements that usually cloak Marins' vision in blood and guts, what is laid bare by Finis Hominis is a director capable of focusing his feelings and observations into intriguing and personal parables -- a philosopher, and an artist.
Dir. José Mojia Marins, 1971, DigiBeta, 79 min.