José Mojica Marins

José Mojica MARINS (1936) has been interested in cinema since childhood. He tried his hand at a first feature film, Sentença de Deus, when he was just18, never finishing it. His first released feature was a Western, A Sina do Aventureiro (1959). He would make one more film, the drama My Destiny in Your Hands (1963), before crafting the on-screen persona he would become best known for, Coffin Joe (Zé do Caixão) in At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964). A sadistic gravedigger who entraps women, the Coffin Joe character has been resurrected in six of the director’s subsequent features (not including the character’s TV, radio, comic book and action figure embodiments). Between making horror films, Marins has also flirted with other genres, such as erotic comedies (How to Console Widows) and even hard-core pornography (48 Hours of Hallucinatory Sex). A well-traveled figure in both lowbrow and highbrow circles, Marins continues to be a notable media presence in Brazil today.