morrison-dylan-fan Searching round online for details about any exciting,wild non-English language Horror films,I became very intrigued about a series of Horror film which I had read a big amount of praise for by a Brazilian director called Jose Mojica Marins , who had created a character called Coffin Joe.Originally thinking that Marins movies seemed to be too "underground" ,I originally decided that due to it looking like there was no way to get hold of the films,I would have to give up on my search in vain.Deciding to have "one last throw of the dice",I went to have a quick search on Amazon UK,where I made a terrific discovery that Anchor Bay had brought out the films in a really classy looking box set,which would at last give me the opportunity to see Marins's famous alter ego for the very first time:Coffin Joe.The plot:Feeling that time is starting to catch up on him ever having the chance to father a child,a reclusive gravedigger called Coffin Joe decides that he must make it a mission for himself to find the "perfect" woman in a small Brazillian village who can become pregnant.Shortly after meeting the now terrified locals,Joe begins to get into deadly fights (where he mostly injures or kills his opponent's with some sharp,extending fingernails and almost hypnotic eyes)with all the townsfolk,due to them not being too keen on Joe's desire to have all of the towns woman be only for him to use in his attempts to mate.Along with the trouble that he faces with the towns folk,Joe also has to deal with the woe of attempting to find "the one",that causes him to meet a good number of woman who he quickly resizes are not the perfect match for him,which causes him to brutally murder each of them.Almost giving up on ever finding a girl who is everything that he desires,Joe eventually uses his charms successfully and ends up meeting a sweet girl who he offers to "kindly" walk back home.Feeling that he has at last found his perfect victim,Joe is stopped in his tracks by the local town gypsy,who warns him that at midnight the ghosts of his past victims will come back from the dead to claim his soul.Originallly brushing off what the gypsy said as being the words of a total nutter,Joe soon begins to notice midnight approaching and starts to wonder if the gypsy words could be truer than he ever imagined.View on the film:Reading up the small bits of trivia on this films IMDb page,I have to say that despite him having a huge amount of pressure over this being a hit due to selling his car and his house (!) to raise the cash for the movie, actor/director and writer Jose Mojica Marins leaves any of the production troubles off the screen as he makes Brazil's stunning first ever Horror film.Whilst one scene in the film featuring cars does suggest that this is taking place in the present day,Marnis makes the atmospheric setting one of the films main strengths,thanks to the town and its people looking like they are from a long lost Gothic novel of the mid-late 1800's,with the excellent grainy black and white photography of the film making each scene feel as if it is covered in mud and decaying before your very eyes.Along with the fantastic look and the chilling setting of the film,Marnis also includes a strong Gothic element to his great performance of the title character,which despite him having the longest nails that I have ever seen, has Joe Carry's himself with a strong sense of Dracula like class and elegance which allows him to close in on all of the beautiful actresses in the film,until he is near enough to unleash his fingernail like fangs to destroy anything which he sees as imperfect.Whilst the slightly dragged out screenplay does make it look like Joe is completely filled with confidence,Marnis introduces a cleverly doubtful side to Joe filled with fear during the films last 30 minutes,as the initial dismissal of what he has been told by an almost Macbeth Witch slowly comes back to haunt and terrify his soul.Final view on the film:A stunning Gothic Horror,with brilliantly atmospheric murky photography and a wonderfully wild and fun performance from Marins.

Witchfinder General 666 'Zé do Caixão' aka 'Coffin Joe' is THE essential character in Brazilian Horror cinema, which isn't very prolific otherwise. The character was single-handedly created and played by Brazilian Horror/Exploitation icon José Mojica Marins, who has, over forty-five years, so far played the role of his life in 14 films (most of which he directed and scripted) as well as a TV series. This first film about the deranged gravedigger in search of a woman to bear him a son, "À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma" aka. "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" of 1964 isn't exactly a 'good' Horror film, but it is definitely a highly charming one, which deserves the certain cult-status it enjoys.The central character, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) is the stereotype of a schlock-horror character (though he often behaves like an everyday bully): a bizarre-looking black-clad fellow with a full beard who sports a top hat, a cape and overlong thumb-nails. Zé (José Mojica Marins), the gravedigger of a small Brazilian town, is generally feared by his fellow citizens, whom he bullies and treats despotically. None of the superstitious and religious townspeople dare to fight back at Zé, who believes neither in God nor in superstition, and who has no scruples whatsoever. Zé has a lovely wife who loves him, but he despises her because she hasn't born him a son. The gravedigger therefore goes out on an unscrupulous search for a woman to bear him a son..."At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" has many highly clichéd and stereotypical elements, and due to the low budget, it often looks very cheap. This only increases the camp-factor, however, and gives the film a very particular charm. It has to be said that a low budget isn't necessarily an excuse for a cheap look - after all, the sixties brought forth countless brilliant low-budget Gothic Horror films, including productions from countries like Mexico (with amazing films such as "Misterios de Ultratumba" of 1959 or "La Maldición de la Llorona" of 1962). The particular cheapness of "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" is a charming one, however, and though many elements have a cheesy look, it is obvious that writer/director/leading man José Mojica Marins made his first success with a huge love for the genre. Most of the actors are truly amateurish, and probably had no other screen-experience. The film is full of plastic skulls, fake spiders, fake cobwebs, and stereotypical characters (such as a gypsy fortune teller), and though these elements may look amateurish, they simply have to be loved. The film relies on these elements (as well as on the priceless character of Coffin Joe) in order to build up a creepy atmosphere - and, even though it is never suspenseful or even remotely scary, it succeeds in that. As stated above, this is not a good Horror film; in fact, it is highly nonsensical cheese; but it is also a highly charming and weird little film that cult-cinema fans should at least give a try. Personally, highly enjoyed it, and I am now looking forward to see more 'Coffin Joe' films. "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" certainly won't meet everybody's tastes, but it is definitely recommendable to my fellow fans of obscure low-budget Horror and Exploitation/Cult-Cinema in general.

bukkiah-1 The late film critic Dwight Macdonald once commented on the somewhat patronizing attitude displayed by French critics towards American cinema: "They seem to regard our movies as interesting specimens of native handicraft, like birch bark canoes." Many Americans seem prone to this also, given some of the comments I've read having recently seen "At Mignight I'll Take Your Soul" and it's follow-up "This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse" (those two titles by the way are absolutely interchangeable). The writer/director/star Jose Mojica Marins gets a lot of credit for this having been "the first Brazilian horror movie" and for having next to no budget; some even feel he's a "visionary" of sorts. Psychotics have visions too but we don't generally pay to see those (although of course in the old days "respectable" people went on guided tours through asylums). I don't care if a given movie is the first of it's kind or the last or in the middle, nor do I care what it cost to make. We can only go by what's in front of us, or at least I only can.What I saw in front of me on my TV screen (thank my lucky stars I didn't pay to rent or---gasp---buy this) was the most god awful piece of crap I've seen since---I don't know---the last of the "Chucky" series, maybe. I'm not sure where to start; maybe the outlandish premise: Mr Mojica Marins plays an undertaker in some remote village who looks like a fourth-rate vaudeville magician; when he "shocked" villagers by proclaiming he would eat meat on some day that apparently is supposed to be meatless, I half expected him to take off his black top hat, pull out a rabbit and start chomping on it--in fact that would have been more amusing than anything that did occur. This "Ze" wields godlike power in this particular village; it's never clear exactly why this is. One of the movie's many laughably chintzy special effects involves Ze's eyes turning bloodshot whenever he gets annoyed; maybe that puts everybody into a trance a la Svengali or something. Thus people stand around like zombies as Ze goes about whipping people in the face or hacking off fingers with a broken bottle or anything else he feels like doing. He also commits murder with impunity; these scenes begin somewhat promisingly but then peter out. There's an odd tameness to all the proceedings; nothing very scary or exciting or erotic ever happens. Ze spends lots of time deriding religion and daring God to strike him dead and is obsessed with having a son due to "the immortality of blood" or some such. This groping towards some kind of existentialist philosophizing would be more impressive if Ze had any interests other than sneering at people and generally being a jerk. He's a garden-variety bully and only would have merited a few minutes of screen time in a Stephen King flick. In one brief scene Ze admonishes a father to treat his son better but otherwise does nothing to demonstrate he's anything but scum himself.There are only two styles of acting on display, catatonic and maniacal (Mr. Mojica Marins mostly employs the latter). The only semi-enjoyable character is a deranged gypsy fortune teller who addresses the camera warning the audience not to watch what follows (that's one astute gypsy) and who occasionally pops up to warn Ze of his impending doom. The special effects make, let's say, "Tormented" look like Steven Spielberg. Towards the end a ghost character has some kind of aura that looks like it was drawn on the film itself a la Kenneth Anger; Mojica Marins also resorts to reverse black-and-white for other ghosts. It would've been about as effective if he'd merely had actors dress up in sheets. The sequel was more of the same except for straining credulity even further, if possible. "Corpse" did differ from "Soul" in featuring a color sequence in the middle of Ze dreaming about being in hell. This sequence should be required viewing in every Sunday school in the Christian world; it it's not enough to turn any normal kid into a questioner of dogmatism, then nothing is, or to paraphrase what H. G. Wells wrote about Fritz Lang's "Metropolis": "Either the sequence is hopelessly silly or the afterlife is hopelessly silly, one thing or the other..." Sure, it's fun sometimes when one comes across an "obscure gem" of some kind, although usually that obscurity turns out to be justified. Apparently Mojica Marins has done lots of other work in the following forty years, none of which I am inclined to ferret out. I understand he's a kind of cult figure in Brazil; well that's Brazil then, isn't it. If you see it on some cable movie channel, please follow the fortune teller's advice and don't waste your time. You'd be better off following the Brazilian soap "La Esclava Isaura" (as it's called in Spanish) on Telemundo; there's more unsettling human drama in five minutes of that than in Mr. Mojica Marins' entire opus, or opi?

preppy-3 Story about a funeral owner named Ze (Jose Mojica Marins) in some small Bazilian town. For some reason, he terrorizes the town mutilating people left and right. For whatever reason no one tries to stop him even when he cuts two fingers off a man and whips another brutally. His wife Lenita can't bear him children so he kills her. He then sets his sights on Terezhima, a girlfriend of his one friend Antonio. He drowns Antonio and beats Terezhima until she's bleeding and then rapes her. The movie goes on and on but I'm sure you get the idea.This is a no budget and pretty sick horror film. I know Ze (called "Coffin Joe" here in the U.S.) has his fans but I can't see why. There's next to no story line and it just shows us one scene after another of people being brutally beaten or killed. With the sole exception of Marins the acting is poor and the "special" effects are so obvious it's almost pretty funny. Wait till you see the ghosts that appear at the end! I only give this a 4 because I DO have to give Marins credit for making such a gory film in 1964. Also the non gore scenes--especially the ones in the forest and graveyard--are actually pretty atmospheric and the wild sound effects on the soundtrack (screaming and demonic laughter) actually work. Those scenes remind me (in a good way) of the old Universal horror movies of the 1930s and 40s.Still, this is a stupid and sick little horror item with bad acting and is surprisingly boring. What got to me was that nobody does anything when Ze is casually torturing people. Everyone just stands around like a bunch of idiots and watch. And wait till you see the witch here--talk about bad acting and overdoing it...