At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul – The First Coffin Joe Feature

Review by Steve D. Stones

In tribute to Brazilian filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins (aka Coffin Joe) who recently passed away on February 19^th, 2020. He was born on March 13^th, 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.

Plan9 Re-run: In today's world, Woods is kitsch and Wood is scholarly!

The following column originally ran in the Dec. 28, 2009, Standard-Examiner.

By Doug Gibson

It really annoys me that golfer Tiger Woods has become a scandal item. For so long he seemed the perfect, respectful, graceful, honorable role model. And instead he's off tomcatting like the stereotypical frat boy in a bad R-rated movie.

But Woods is just one in a long line of the respectable who go bad. Look at politics. What a consistent mine for scandal is found there: Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Barney Frank, Tom Foley, David Vitter, the late Ted Kennedy ... all these are lawmakers who have been caught in sex scandals.

Scandal has been around forever, but for a long time we didn't have several cable channels and more Web sites devoted to wallowing in it. The more respectable the person was before being dragged into the tabloid media muck, the bigger the catch.

But I've wondered, if Tiger Woods becomes kitsch, is it possible for kitsch to rise to scholarship? Is that a future byproduct of our scandal world? Will there soon be higher education courses on the Tiger Woods' affairs and their effect on relationships between whites and African-Americans?

As bizarre as that sounds, anyone who has perused some university course books might not be surprised to see such a class.

Although he never was a politician or a sports star, no one better embodied kitsch than Ed Wood. The transvestite filmmaker made some very interesting "bad" films, such as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Glen Or Glenda." He also wrote more than 100 novels. An alcoholic, he eventually drifted into porn writing and filmmaking and died homeless. The kitsch of his films created a cult that at first was smarmy but gravitated to a respect for his imagination, if not his talents.

In 1993, Tim Burton made a romanticized version of Wood's life called "Ed Wood." The movie resulted in the re-publication of a few of Wood's long-gone novels. The eventual result of the film has been a very slow but solid shift in how Wood is perceived. The much-maligned man associated with such films as "Night of the Ghouls" is suddenly a subject of scholarship.

Granted, Wood's cult has decreased as his more smarmy fans aren't interested in literary criticism on the filmmaker, but the remaining fans are more apt to discuss Wood in the same breath with Luis Bunuel or "Waiting for Godot."

To be honest, if Wood were alive today he'd probably ask them what the hell they were talking about, but don't be surprised if you peruse a college course book and see a film class devoted to Wood. The new book, "Ed Wood -- Mad Genius: A Critical Study of the Films," by Rob Craig (McFarland Press, at www.mcfarlandpub.com), will certainly audition as a text.

The book, which reached my journalist's desk recently, is fascinating reading if you are a Wood fan -- I am -- and pretty dense reading if you are not, or if your exposure to Wood is limited to Burton's film or "Plan 9 From Outer Space" Or "Glen Or Glenda." Its main interest is that it's real, scholarly literary and film criticism of Wood's work. Some of us have waited decades for a book like this.

Having said that, Craig's observations are hit and miss. The strongest part of "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" is Craig's assertion that many of the absurdities in Wood's films, such as night being day and vice versa, ridiculous dialogue and threadbare sets that remind of improv theater, are actually examples of Brechtian theater, and attempts to convince the audience to accept the alternate reality, or alternate world, in which his film exists.

Although it's easy to scoff at this and call it pseudoscholarship, even the most smarmy Wood watcher will admit that his films are unique. No one-lung director or producer ever made films as interesting as Wood did.

The weaker part of Craig's book is his attempt to find a feminist message in Wood's films. To do this, he populates the pages with references to the late radical feminist Andrea Dworkin. On many pages she's the only source for an argument by Craig. There's a certain ridiculous irony in Craig using Dworkin to find feminism in the works of a film-maker who has pornography to his credits, but that's a topic for another time.

To sum up, if you are a Wood fan or really want to know more about Wood, "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" is worth reading. If not, rent Burton's "Ed Wood" and get to know a quirky, likeable guy.

In any event, let's just enjoy the irony of our popular culture allowing Tiger Woods to sink to the level of Paris Hilton while Ed Wood rises to the level of Luis Bunuel. That's America.

In today's upside-down world Tiger Woods is kitsch and Ed Wood is scholarship

The following column originally ran in the Dec. 28, 2009, Standard-Examiner.

By Doug Gibson

It really annoys me that golfer Tiger Woods has become a scandal item. For so long he seemed the perfect, respectful, graceful, honorable role model. And instead he's off tomcatting like the stereotypical frat boy in a bad R-rated movie.

But Woods is just one in a long line of the respectable who go bad. Look at politics. What a consistent mine for scandal is found there: Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Larry Craig, Barney Frank, Tom Foley, David Vitter, the late Ted Kennedy ... all these are lawmakers who have been caught in sex scandals.

Scandal has been around forever, but for a long time we didn't have several cable channels and more Web sites devoted to wallowing in it. The more respectable the person was before being dragged into the tabloid media muck, the bigger the catch.

But I've wondered, if Tiger Woods becomes kitsch, is it possible for kitsch to rise to scholarship? Is that a future byproduct of our scandal world? Will there soon be higher education courses on the Tiger Woods' affairs and their effect on relationships between whites and African-Americans?

As bizarre as that sounds, anyone who has perused some university course books might not be surprised to see such a class.

Although he never was a politician or a sports star, no one better embodied kitsch than Ed Wood. The transvestite filmmaker made some very interesting "bad" films, such as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Glen Or Glenda." He also wrote more than 100 novels. An alcoholic, he eventually drifted into porn writing and filmmaking and died homeless. The kitsch of his films created a cult that at first was smarmy but gravitated to a respect for his imagination, if not his talents.

In 1993, Tim Burton made a romanticized version of Wood's life called "Ed Wood." The movie resulted in the re-publication of a few of Wood's long-gone novels. The eventual result of the film has been a very slow but solid shift in how Wood is perceived. The much-maligned man associated with such films as "Night of the Ghouls" is suddenly a subject of scholarship.

Granted, Wood's cult has decreased as his more smarmy fans aren't interested in literary criticism on the filmmaker, but the remaining fans are more apt to discuss Wood in the same breath with Luis Bunuel or "Waiting for Godot."

To be honest, if Wood were alive today he'd probably ask them what the hell they were talking about, but don't be surprised if you peruse a college course book and see a film class devoted to Wood. The new book, "Ed Wood -- Mad Genius: A Critical Study of the Films," by Rob Craig (McFarland Press, at www.mcfarlandpub.com), will certainly audition as a text.

The book, which reached my journalist's desk recently, is fascinating reading if you are a Wood fan -- I am -- and pretty dense reading if you are not, or if your exposure to Wood is limited to Burton's film or "Plan 9 From Outer Space" Or "Glen Or Glenda." Its main interest is that it's real, scholarly literary and film criticism of Wood's work. Some of us have waited decades for a book like this.

Having said that, Craig's observations are hit and miss. The strongest part of "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" is Craig's assertion that many of the absurdities in Wood's films, such as night being day and vice versa, ridiculous dialogue and threadbare sets that remind of improv theater, are actually examples of Brechtian theater, and attempts to convince the audience to accept the alternate reality, or alternate world, in which his film exists.

Although it's easy to scoff at this and call it pseudoscholarship, even the most smarmy Wood watcher will admit that his films are unique. No one-lung director or producer ever made films as interesting as Wood did.

The weaker part of Craig's book is his attempt to find a feminist message in Wood's films. To do this, he populates the pages with references to the late radical feminist Andrea Dworkin. On many pages she's the only source for an argument by Craig. There's a certain ridiculous irony in Craig using Dworkin to find feminism in the works of a film-maker who has pornography to his credits, but that's a topic for another time.

To sum up, if you are a Wood fan or really want to know more about Wood, "Ed Wood: Mad Genius" is worth reading. If not, rent Burton's "Ed Wood" and get to know a quirky, likeable guy.

In any event, let's just enjoy the irony of our popular culture allowing Tiger Woods to sink to the level of Paris Hilton while Ed Wood rises to the level of Luis Bunuel. That's America.