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Film/Video THE CULT OF JOSÉ MOJICA MARINS OCTOBER 10-13, 2001 SCREENINGS TAKE PLACE IN THE WALKER AUDITORIUM. 
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As elusive as a phantom spirit, José Mojica Marins' alter ego, Coffin Joe (Zé do Caixão), has remained the stuff of legends outside of Brazil. Writer-director-star Marins created a shockingly inventive series of pop horror adventures in the 1960s, but they were long undistributed in the U.S., where cult aficionados only had access to descriptions of the films' narratives and low-budget spectacles. Born in Spain but raised in Brazil, Marins was a showbiz kid whose father was a torero and whose mother sang tango music. During his childhood, he traveled across Brazil with gypsies until his father settled in São Paulo to manage a movie theater. A precocious heretic, he made his first film at age nine, an apocalyptic story called The Final Judgment, which was "influenced by [his] experiences with the Catholic Church." During his adolescence he developed a skill for exploitation by dating girls with several siblings; his films would feature his girlfriends as the stars and use their siblings as the crew. Marins began making his signature series, the Coffin Joe films, beginning with At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul in 1963. Dubbed by the Hollywood Reporter as a cross between Russ Meyer and Luis Buñuel, Marins conjured creepshows with sadistic imagery, comedic sacrilege, and dynamic surrealism.
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