Coffin Joe - At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

Starring:Coffin Joe
Studio: Fantoma
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Coffin Joe at his ghoulish best
Creepy and genuinely disturbing
A truly must-see cult horror classic from Brazil
TEREZINHA; COFFIN JOE

Coffin Joe - At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
Starring: José Mojica Marins
Director: José Mojica Marins
Manufacturer: Fantoma
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000A2ZSO
Release Date: 2003-07-29

Customer Reviews:

Coffin Joe at his ghoulish best.......2005-11-28

Brazilian filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins spent his career writing, directing and starring in violent psychosexual horror tales filled with graphic images of carnality, brutality, and torture. Not surprisingly, his work was banned in his native country. But now, thanks to DVD, his films are accessible to anyone who has the stomach for this sort of ghoulish fare.

AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL marked the first time Marins appeared as his onscreen alter ego "Coffin Joe," a villainous Brazilian gravedigger who manages to break all Ten Commandments within as many minutes. This 1963 feature film may be Marins' best, mainly because it's more coherent than most of his other efforts.

The Coffin Joe movies are often self-indulgent, tedious affairs, but Marins' complete lack of artistic restraint results in bone chilling moments of undeniable power. It's a body of work that is at once both revolting and compelling.

Creepy and genuinely disturbing.......2005-08-08

Although cheaply produced and cinematically clumsy, this campy, grotesque Brazilian horror film has several moments of genuine visceral revulsion. The film's centerpiece outrage -- of the sadistic, amoral Ze Do Caixa (aka: Coffin Joe) eating red meat on Good Friday -- may hold less punch for modern, non-Catholic viewers than it did for Brazilian audiences in the early 'Sixties, but the graphic depiction of a violent, bloody rape and the goring out of one man's eyes will still make many viewers recoil. Director Jose Mojica Marins played the role of Coffin Joe himself, leering madly and cursing God as he toppled over the flimsy set and knocked over the props. A Mr. Hyde story with no Dr. Jeckyl to balance things out, the film was apparently a sensation in Brazil and spawned two sequels of an equally lurid nature. Unless you're a student of low-budget camp, I'm not sure you really need to spend the time on any of these films, but if you do check them out, prepare to be shocked.

A truly must-see cult horror classic from Brazil.......2005-04-25

At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul is probably one of the best cult horror films you've never seen. Decades ago, this 1963 classic shocked and disturbed Brazilian audiences (it was, in fact, Brazil's first horror movie) and gave birth to a whole Coffin Joe franchise, yet only in recent years has this landmark of horror filmmaking found its way to the shores of America - and it's about time because this is one amazing film. With its expressionistic and existentialistic overtones and a cruel, thoroughly unforgettable protagonist, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul shines with a dark aura all its own. The stark nature of the black and white cinematography seems to sharpen Coffin Joe's hard edges, accentuate his evil glare, and set the mood perfectly for a thoroughly corrupt soul to face the consequences of his amoral and atheistic challenges to both God and Satan.

The character at the center of this film is now well-known as Coffin Joe, but this is actually a mistranslation of his name, Ze do Caixo. The name fits, though, as Ze stalks around in his black top hat and undertaker's getup intimidating and scaring the beeswax out of everyone in town. Everyone fears him, for good reason - those foolish enough to challenge him wind up with missing fingers, ugly stripes all over their bodies from his ruthless whip, or - as happens increasingly in this film - dead. Ze spits in the face of religion, summing up his nihilist philosophy at the very beginning of the film - to put things in a nutshell, he wants to continue his existence by producing a son. His wife Lenita has yet to bear him a child, so he has no more use for her. Instead, he casts his glance toward Terezhina, not caring one iota for the fact that she is the fiancée of his only friend in the world, Antonio. Ze is not one to let a silly thing like friendship get in the way of getting what he wants. There are a number of deaths in this film, but I won't ruin things for future viewers by detailing them here. I'll just say that Ze takes great delight in killing, thus giving us some surprisingly gory images (especially for a 1963 film) - Brazilian censors tried to suppress portions of the film, but we now have the luxury of seeing it as it was truly envisioned.

The downright evil of the man may not come across as strongly in America or elsewhere as it did in Brazil, however. Eating meat on a holy day surely offended the Catholic audiences of Brazil much more than it will many of today's American viewers. Still, Ze's fury in the face of religion is made obvious to all, as he has a tendency to rail at the God he doesn't believe in and challenge anyone or anything to send him straight to hell. Such scenes of voracious nihilism, set in a graveyard and cast against a backdrop of stormy lightning seemingly serving to vent the anger of heaven itself, play beautifully here.

It is amazing just what director Jose Mojica Marins was able to accomplish on such a low budget. The set was limited, especially that of the graveyard and forest, but it hardly shows. No one was willing to play the part of Ze, so Marins took it upon himself to bring his malevolent creation to life - and does a magnificent job. He actually glued glitter onto his negative to create one special effect, but it actually works quite well - and indeed, the special effects are a tremendous plus for this shockingly impressive film. I especially loved the change that appears in Ze's eyes just before he unleashes his fury on another innocent victim.

American audiences met Coffin Joe for the first time in 1993; now, with the DVD release, it is time America's horror fans properly introduced themselves to Marin and gave a brave, ingenious director his due. While I haven't seen the DVD itself, I can say that the print of the film that I came across was incredibly sharp and clear in both sight and sound. The film is in Portuguese, of course, but the subtitles are easy to read and correspond very well with what is taking place on the screen. Coffin Joe is a strikingly captivating fiend who revels in his own evil; I daresay I've never encountered a character quite like him.

TEREZINHA; COFFIN JOE.......2004-04-02

Being a fan of foreign horror films, I was intrigued to find out that this was the first to be filmed in Brazil. Upon viewing the strange, but captivating movie, I knew that I had not been let down. True, the film is an oldie (released in 1964), but still delivers better than most from that time period, as well as some that are released today. The story is fairly simple: Coffin Joe, resembling Jack The Ripper with claws, wants a child born of his ideal woman. The religious aspects of the film, from the holy to the blasphemous, prove that the censors had a hard time releasing it, especially in that time period. The special effects are comical by today's standards, but are still effective in being creepy. The DVD hosts some interesting extras, including a comic book and the original trailer. Most entertaining is the up-to-date interview with writer-director-actor Jose Mojica Marins, in which he reveals that the ghost effect was done by gluing glitter to the actual film around the actor's image to create a glowing essence. This film proves that you don't need a mega-budget to make a good film.

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