Unleashed from prison after 40 years, Coffin Joe (you know, the guy with talons, long black coat and permanent scowl, played with hammy relish by director Jose Mojica Marins) and his hunchback assistant resume their life-long mission to obtain immortality by finding an appropriate woman to give old C.J. a perfect son. Black and white flashbacks from old Coffin Joe movies reflect how the past haunts him, while C.J. finds a modern world full of child-shooting authorities and easy scapegoats. Assigned to send Coffin Joe to Hell is a high priest who’s as mad and scary as anyone in the movie.

   Marins is understandably enthusiastic in this long-awaited return of his infamous genre character : the 73 year old veteran actor gets to grope, French kiss and fuck a succession of beautiful women while memorably smearing cheese and milk over a naked lady before letting a rat loose inside her (as director, Marins gets to then cut to a P.O.V. shot from inside her vagina).

   It’s a good-looking movie with rich colors, great make-up effects and a refreshingly droll sense of jet-black humor. The visuals are engagingly surreal - Coffin Joe emerging from a sea of blood, a nightmarish feeding frenzy with cock-eating and lips sewn shut - and the movie as a whole has the nasty, un-PC spirit of 70’s exploitation, albeit with far better production values and the magnetic presence of its leading man.

   There’s no shortage of gore : HELLRAISER is invoked for a sequence of a guy suspended by hooks in his back, along with graphic close-ups of involuntary body piercing to accompany all the scalping and crucifixion. The gruesome trend reaches its apex in a sequence where Coffin Joe slices off a naked girl’s ass cheek and feeds it to her. If that’s your cup of char, this is a must-see.