And so, my Journey into the works of Artist, dreamweaver, visionary…plus actor…José Mojica Marins Begins its wind down with
‘Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind’. The final film in the original run of ‘Coffin Joe’ movies (Though, Coffin Joe would see one more revival in 2008 with ‘Embodiment of Evil’).
And…this ones a bit of a mixed bag. The plot largely revolves around the story of one ‘Dr. Hamilton’ who is checked into an insane asylum who’s plagued with hellish nightmares combined with a recurring incident in which Coffin Joe kidnaps his wife Tania for his ‘Continuing bloodline’…thing.
Dr. Hamilton is convinced Coffin Joe is real and is ACTUALLY REALLY TRYING to take Tania away and impregnate her. and so, his fellow doctors summon non other than Artist, dreamweaver, visionary…plus actor…José Mojica Marins! To come and speak to Dr. Hamilton under hypnosis, to get a better understanding of what exactly is going on with the whole ‘Coffin Joe’ business, and to try and convince Dr. Hamilton that Coffin Joe is just a fictional character written about in José’s movies.
And…if that sounds vaguely familiar to you, thats because it is…Because its (broadly speaking) the plot of ‘Wes Cravens New Nightmare’ and…Im going to say this up front as it’s the nicest thing I will say about this movie. This entire films core plot about Coffin Joe infecting peoples dreams with hellish visions to get them committed to an asylum so that they can do real world damage, and the messing around with what is a dream and what is reality, is VERY ahead of its time as a trope and predates the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ franchise by a good 5-6 years.
THAT however, is where my praise kind of begins and ends for this film. It has a very novel and original idea at the core of it. But it mispends that good idea in arguably the worst way possible.
Because, in my previous review of ‘Hellish Flesh’ I lamented the fact that this felt like José was pretty much burnt out of film making by this point in his career after REALLY phoning it in for most of ‘Flesh’ and largely using pre-existing derivative plotting and recycling his own visual style to just, get a film out the door.
Well…’Hallucinations’ Gazump’s ‘Flesh’ by taking things to the next level. Because ‘Hallucinations’ is a ‘clip show’ movie.
Essentially José booked a day or so in a studio, got a load of actors nude and had them writhe around on a cardboard looking dungeon set totally about 20 minutes of footage, he then shot about 15 minutes of footage on location, and then intercut those new scenes with tinted clips and excised censor footage from all his old horror films. And thats the movie.
You’ll get a 2 minute new scene with Dr. Hamilton and José playing himself discussing coffin joe as a character, and then it’ll cut to 15 minutes of clips from 4-5 of the films we’ve already watched. In fact. the clips make up 48 minutes of this hour and 23 minute long picture. and if that doesnt scream ‘I cant be arsed to pay to make a movie, especially when I have offcuts rotting in my attic’ I dont know what would.
as such, I dont really feel confident in being able to talk about this film in the way I usually would with film generally. The direction and cinematography all looks quite nice and theres a decent level of experimentation. But it all looks nice and creative because its offcuts from movies where he actually HAD a budget and fire in his heart to MAKE an interesting a good movie.
The newly shot footage is all VERY generic, poorly lit and barely manages to hold basic technical ability. Its a really poor offering honestly.
The edits a hot mess. You can only be so forgiving with art house cinema. And here, it really does just feel like they rummaged through offcuts and censor footage and jammed together as much of it as they could get away with.
The soundtracks droning and uninteresting, the performances in the new footage are dire (If I hear someone scream ‘TANIA!’ one more time, im going to reincarnate.) Its honestly a real shame, because to me? This film really smacks of ‘so close, and yet so far’ had they actually BOTHERED to develop the idea of Coffin Joe being a malevolent presence trying to escape from his hellish prison we found him in at the end of ‘This Night I’ll Possess your Corpse’ we literally COULD have seen his popularity experience a renessance as they pretty much would have invented ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ half a decade earlier than intended…But, as a knock on Freddy Kruger may have not existed…soooo…yeh.
Even though this film came out after ‘The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe’ I think it would probably make a good prequel to it. with José’s ‘in film’ character retreating after the events of this film. But thats head canon and me trying to be kind. Realistically, the only reason you’d need to catch this film is if wanted to essentially ‘speed read’ all the coffin Joe movies, and didnt want to have to sit through 7+ hours of psudo philosophy for the privilage.
A rather dissapointing end for me. Its marginally better than the last offering. But that missed opportunity to reinvent Joe for the 80s really left a bad taste in my mouth…especially considering it would be 30 years till we’d meet Coffin Joe again…
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hallucinations-of-a-deranged-mind/