Director: José Mojica Marins
Fantoma Films/Image Entertainment
If you ever read Famous Monsters of Filmland during its initial run, you were treated to some ultra-rare, bizarre pics from the Brazilian films of Jose Mojica Marins, often placed in the "Mystery Photo" department. Just about everyone was stumped when these photos appeared, mainly because the films were never shown in this country. Sporting a top hat, black cloak, and enormous fingernails, Marins' ultra evil Zé do Caixao character (or Coffin Joe to the English-speaking public) is his own sinister creation, though he wasn't originally set to play the role. The director stepped in at the last minute as the actor originally cast backed out.
It's a good thing that he did, because Marins made the part his own, embodying it in every way, making appearances in trademark get-up (including authentic talon fingernails) to this day. Although he had been making experimental 16mm shorts as child in the 1940s, AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL is often referred to as Brazil's first true horror film. Made on a shoestring budget (as Marins often relays, there is practically no film industry in Brazil), the parts are performed by unprofessional actors (Marins often employed friends, relatives, and even the strict police that tried to break up his shoots!), and it's shot on a claustrophobic but convincing set, but it's like nothing you've ever seen before. Even though it was made the same year as H.G. Lewis' trend-setting, color-dosed BLOOD FEAST, Marins' first feature-length vision of horror is a fascinatingly unique tale that combines dark surrealism, graphic violence, and eerie black and white photography.
With AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL, we are first introduced to Zé do Caixao, a profane gravedigger who resides in a small, God-fearing Brazilian village. Zé wants so desperate to have a child, but his loyal wife is incapable of bearing him one. He takes his hostility out on the villagers in a series of blasphemous and vicious acts. Zé denounces the Catholic religion by feasting on a generous hunk of meat, laughing at a church mass from his window on a Friday. Zé frequents a pub where everyone seems to live in fear of him. It is there that he mutilates a poker player's hand with a broken wine bottle, after he refuses to pay up. While attempting to challenge his brutish tactics, one man is given the whipping of his life for it, and another has a thornbush crown from a statue of Christ plunged in his face. To indicate that Zé is perhaps not of this earth, his eyes are revealed in close-up with a sudden burst of bloodshot lighting, immediately before the tricky assaults on his victims.
No longer able to cope with his wife's infertility, he knocks her out and lets a poisonous spider bite her, making it look like an accident. Zé then accompanies his friend (it's amazing that he has one) and the friend's fiancée to see a witch-like gypsy. The gypsy predicts doom for the hapless trio, at which point Zé becomes furious and storms out. Zé later kills the friend right before his wedding, and rapes the fiancée in hopes of making her his own. Not being able to live with her lover's death and being ravaged by the evil Zé, she takes her own life, but not before she puts a curse on Zé and swears revenge on him. Later, on the superstitious "Day of the Dead," Zé wanders around calm and cool as ever, but it seems he'll finally get his just desserts.
Better-budgeted than its predecessor, THIS NIGHT I WILL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE picks up right where AT MIDNIGHT left off, where Zé had his eyes gauged out and was left for dead by supernatural forces. Not only did Zé survive the ordeal, but after being tried in court for his murderous deeds, he's found innocent due to the lack of evidence at hand. He's then given an operation to restore his sight. It's a miraculous success, and Zé assertively returns to town. He is now aided by an ugly hunchback named Bruno (no, he's not played by Woody Tobius Jr.) who looks like the evil mutant brother of Chico Marx. Zé is now determined to find the perfect woman, as continuing his evil bloodline takes precedence over everything else.
Zé abducts the town's most attractive women, in hopes of finding the one that will bear his children. He puts them through rigorous tests involving real snakes and spiders. They all fail and are killed, except for one that kind of works as snitch for Zé after he makes love to her. He then singles out a young girl from the town, seducing her with his Svengali-like charms, despite the obvious objections of her family and the entire town for that matter. She adores Zé even after he kills her brother in the most sadistic manner, crushing his head with a massive stone. Zé frames the village idiot/strongman (a false-eyed Mr. Clean look-alike) with the murder, but the townspeople are completely on to him.
Even after being cornered by half a dozen bullies, Zé manages to escape, as his obsessive will to see his unborn child is super strong. After being thrown into the back of a wagon to be escorted to his death, he thinks fast, placing some hidden blades in his shoes and slicing the necks of two of his captors. He escapes, striking another guy in the head with an ax; the others succumb to quicksand. Next stop for Zé is a dream sequence in Hell. After being pulled underground by some buried corpses, the film transforms to full color as we witness his descent into Hades. As this is a José Mojica Marins film, the vivid depiction of Hell is one of the most unsurpassed in cinema history, and too indescribable to relate in this review. And all this on a small set with very little money!
THE AWAKENING OF THE BEAST is unlike the other two films in that it places Zé do Caixao in a documentary-style environment where he's accepted as a fictional character. This film was banned for nearly 20 years in its home country, and it serves as Marins' social commentary on drug abuse and urban violence. In it, he appears as himself and as the Zé character, mainly during a color drug hallucination sequence. Marins is shown as the guest on TV talk show with a professor who discusses various reports about people using drugs.
These stories allow the first part of the film to be a series of vignettes that range from the strange to the silly. You'll see everything from a woman injecting herself with a needle, taking her clothes off and squatting on a small pot in front of a room of ogling men, to a fat movie producer snorting coke and stuffing his face with spaghetti, and then trying to seduce an auditioning actress. The professor of the film does an experiment with four addicts, using Zé do Caixao as the main focus of it. After taking his "guinea pigs" to a Marins horror picture, the group reasserts the strong impact of Zé, good are bad, and they trip out to his hellish visions, courtesy of a color sequence. In the end, the film gives a lesson on the power of suggestion and why people do the things that they do.
Fantoma Films and Image Entertainment have done a spectacular job bringing these three Marins films to DVD. Previously only available in this country as black market bootlegs, and later through a Coffin Joe line from Something Weird Video (on VHS only), this represents the first definitive release of these films in the U.S. Although the packaging dictates the inferiority of the source material despite using the best elements possible, such an apology is not necessary because the transfers on all three are more than acceptable. The black and white images are presented with nice detail and always looks sharp. Only the first film, AT MIDNIGHT, suffers from an occasional soft focus, but this is most likely due to its age, budget and 16mm origins. Naturally, this film also suffers from the most print blemishes out of the three, but the others get progressively better with AWAKENING being the most pristine of the lot. All are letterboxed in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The mono sound is fine on all three, despite the expected pops and hiss now and again. The films are presented in their original Portuguese-speaking language, with clear, optional English subtitles.
All three releases are accompanied by an interview (each running about 10 minutes) with the director, who dissects each film separately for the appropriate disc. Marins, who at 70+ still looks every bit the Zé do Caixao we know and love, gives interesting details and behind-the-scenes stories. He speaks only in Portuguese, so his talks are of course subtitled in English. Also included are trailers for all three films (the entire trio appear on each disc), a booklet with liner notes by Marins biographer André Barcinski, as well as a beautiful reproduction of an original Coffin Joe comic book that Fantoma went through the trouble to translate into English! (George R. Reis)