Coffin Joe is still a real asshole to everyone he meets – an atheist and completely insufferable about it. In the last movie, after killing a bunch of people, he ended up blind, insane, and dead. This one simply opens among a mad montage of grave-clawing hands and squigglevision credits with [townspeople] “he’s still alive!” [doctor] “he’ll see again!” [judge] “exonerated for murder!”, and then we get on with it.
The townspeople gather to shout about their women who’ve gone missing, figuring the culprit must be Coffin Joe, then Joe comes out to yell at them, saying what, because I’m different?! I’m just as guilty as each of you, and I vow to go out and find this kidnapper! Then he goes straight home to his room full of kidnapped women and gives them another speech about how superior he is – belligerent speeches are his love language. Then he covers the women in giant spiders while they sleep.
Note the parrot behind Henchman Bruno:
Based on his actions, this does not appear to be a true statement:
It’s a little funny to cast yourself ranting about your superior mind, taking on an entire town full of the dumbest people alive. He shows interest in the colonel’s daughter, and when her brother tries to pay him off, Joe takes the money and crushes the brother’s head, framing some bald guy for the crime. His entire scheme involves setting traps for the women until he finds the most superior among them, then impregnating her to begin a new master race, so women are dying every few scenes, including, finally, his would-be bride, precipitating Joe’s downfall.
The backrooms:
Joe has a prolonged hell-nightmare in color, then goes into town and gets captured by his enemies, but they are extremely dumb and slow. He wanders into a storm daring God to strike him down, and when God does, Joe says ahh that proves nothing. A surviving girl from the snake incident (I believe that was after the spiders) rats on him, so a torch mob chases Joe into a skeleton swamp. Supposedly he accepts religion in the moments before drowning in the swamp, but he’s filmed from behind, we don’t see his mouth moving, so I don’t buy it. Coffin Joe would return in Embodiment of Evil… forty years later.
