Review by Steve D. Stones
In tribute to Brazilian filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins (aka Coffin Joe) who recently passed away on February 19th, 2020. He was born on March 13th, 1936 in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Considered Brazil's first horror feature – At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964) is directed by and stars horror icon Jose Mojica Marins (aka Coffin Joe) as Ze do Caixao. The film is part of a trilogy of Coffin Joe films followed by - This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967) and Embodiment of Evil (2008). See also – Awakening of The Beast (1983).
It Midnight I'll Take Your Soul opens with Coffin Joe (Jose Mojica Marins) standing in a dark, smoke filled environment while asking the viewer questions like “What is life? It is the beginning of death. What is death? It is the end of life.”
After attending a burial at the local cemetery, Coffin Joe is hungry for a meal of meat. Because it is a local religious holiday of Holy Friday, he is not allowed to have meat. He leaves to buy lamb for his meal and eats it in front of his home window to taunt the beliefs of a religious procession that passes by.
Coffin Joe is known as Ze do Caixao in the film and is the undertaker of a small Brazilian town who disdains religion and dresses in a dark cape, top hat and carries a cane clutched in fingers of talon like fingernails. His appearance is similar to Dracula and Dr. Jekyll in the Robert Louis Stevenson classic - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In fact, Coffin Joe even pursues beautiful women in the film, much like Dracula, in an attempt to continue his bloodline by finding the perfect female companion, even though he is married to Lenita (Valeria Vasquez).
Lenita is unable to bear children, so Coffin Joe decides to torture and murder her by tying her to a bed while allowing a giant poisonous spider to bite her on the neck. The local police are unable to find any clues connecting Coffin Joe to the murder, so they accept the death as a simple spider bite.
Terezinha (Magda Mei) is a beautiful local woman that Coffin Joe wants to impregnate to have her bear a son to continue his bloodline. She rejects Coffin Joe's advances because she is married to Antonio. To get Antonio out of the way, Coffin Joe murders him by bashing his head into a bath tub and drowning him.
Coffin Joe is not a man to cross paths with or confront in any way. Anyone who crosses him is met with extreme violence. For example, in a scene that takes place in a tavern, Coffin Joe joins a table of card players. One of the players refuses to give his money to Coffin Joe after he wins a poker hand. Coffin Joe becomes violent with the man and breaks a wine bottle, then drives it through the fingers of the card player at the card table. The card player screams in painful agony. Coffin Joe sends for a doctor and agrees to pay all medical expenses. It appears he does have some sympathy for his victims.
In another confrontational scene in the tavern, Coffin Joe removes the crown of thorns from a Jesus sculpture on a table and punches a man in the face with the thorns after the man confronts him for making advances on his niece - Maria. This scene further reinforces Coffin Joe's disdain for religion, symbols and all things sacred that he disagrees with.
The end of the film foreshadows much of the bizarre sequences we can expect to see in the follow up film – This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967). A reflection of the counter-culture atmosphere of the 1960s, Coffin Joe injects the last few minutes of the film with strange, surreal images that make the viewer think perhaps they are watching an experimental Salvador Dali/Luis Bunuel film. These scenes are very psychedelic and hallucinogenic. The black and white treatment of this film gives it a gloomy atmosphere that is every bit as creepy as the classic Universal Studios monster classics of the 1930s and '40s.
May Coffin Joe rest in peace. His unique, bizarre films will live on forever to his many devoted fans all over the world.
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