Editor’s Choice: The Fantastic Evil of Coffin Joe – ¡PART DOS!
The Fantastic Evil of Coffin Joe, Part Two: The Trilogy of Terror
by Marc Patterson
Picking up from part one, where we introduced readers to the character of Coffin Joe, we’ll now look at the three films that have made creator Jose Mojica Marins most famous and together form the Coffin Joe Trilogy of Terror
As we touched on in part one of this series, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is the birth of Coffin Joe to cinema. We are introduced to our madman through his now famous monologue, and are then actually warned NOT to watch the film by an old cackling witch, at which point we’re hopelessly trapped in the film due to our refusal to leave the theater. Now our very souls are in danger from the clutches of Zé do Caixão!
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul follows Joe has he attempts to hunt down the perfect woman who will bear his child. It’s extremely simple in premise, but made strong by several dominant set pieces that define Coffin Joe’s character. This film is the foundation from which all other films will build upon and firmly establishes the mythos of this sadistic killer as an anti-hero we both fear and admire. In fact, Coffin Joe films become the first “serial slashers” that encourage audiences to side with the killer. Years later we’d see the same effect applied to Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
In order to create effective horror Marins soaks the film in what is best described as Hammer Horror-styled atmosphere and displays some shocking gore (for that time), but mostly accosts the audiences with his brazen blasphemy, most notably a scene where Coffin Joe kicks back and enjoys a fine lamb dinner in front of a religious procession during Good Friday.
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is easily the least violent of the Coffin Joe films, but Marins times the violence set-pieces well, so that he is effectively able to sucker punch the audience whenever he likes. He’s so good at it that he can practically tell you when he’s going to hit you and it’ll still come as a shock.
Shot on a minuscule budget and on a tiny set with only thirteen days and twelve cans of negative film, minimalism and inventiveness define every frame. There’s little doubt At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul in particular feels more like a stage play than any of the others to follow, though it is executed competently and went on to find great success with audiences, while critics largely dismissed the film as trash.
Most impressive is the technical creativeness Marins displays in making the film. The entire production was shot on an 800 square foot sound stage with only one exterior shot in a cemetery. Marins would re-arrange furniture and wall settings to turn the studio from Coffin Joe’s home into a pub and then into a crypt. By utilizing multiple angles he was able to make a 300 square foot cemetery into a massive looking scene that shocked everyone involved with the production when they saw it; not in terror, but for how ingeniously Marins was able to make his tiny production look and feel so big.
With the success of Midnight, Marins was able to turn up the volume with the sequel This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, a film just as blasphemous, but without being as preachy. Personally speaking, this remains my favorite of the series. This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse sees Coffin Joe returning to his village, after he was thought to have been killed. He immediately sets back on his quest to find the perfect mother for his child, though now with even more sadistic resolve. In doing so he even manages to find a willing partner in the daughter of his adversary, a local military Colonel; however, he goes through a handful of female victims before he gets to her.
This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse is twice as violent as its predecessor, and much more liberal with sexuality. Where the first film contained no real nudity, this second film is rife with it. Again, Marins shoots the film in black and white, carrying with it the atmospheric touches from the first, though this is the beginning of the psychedelic and stylistic flourishes that would define the Coffin Joe films moving forward. Marins brings the film to a crescendo in a ten-minute, hyper-colorized scene where Coffin Joe is sent to hell after being dragged from his bed by a dark demon and into a cemetery, where the hands of the dead reach up through the earth to drag him to the depths below. Maddening theatrics dominate this dream sequence where the screams of the dead echo through the air as Joe is subjected to a nightmarish vision of his future, a place where ultimately he’ll be tortured by his victims for eternity.
Joe wakes from his nightmare in a crazed state, his beloved Laura by his side. She ultimately confides in him that she is pregnant and now Joe is finally feeling accomplished. However, the Colonel and his men have their own plans laid for Joe and the film quickly moves to closure as Joe must face down the Colonel and angry townspeople who want to see this demon destroyed. For the next forty years we will hear nothing more of this storyline until around 2005 when it was announced that Jose Mojica Marins planned to complete his trilogy with Embodiment of Evil.
Embodiment of Evil picks up exactly forty-years later and is set in modern day Brazil. We thought that Coffin Joe had died at the end of This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, but how wrong we were. He was found to be still alive, and was in fact taken to prison. Finally, after forty years, Joe is up for parole and is released back to the streets, but the world has changed around Joe. The city has grown up and the streets are loud with traffic and a culture that is completely foreign to him. We watch the seventy-two year old man stumble through the streets in his cape and top hat, stared at as though he had just stepped out of a comic book. His trusty side-kick eventually gets Joe to safety in his old lair, kept intact with a basement torture chamber and all. One thing has been on Joe’s mind during his stay in prison… the continuity of blood. Enlisting a handful of faithful followers, Joe again takes his horror to a new world, now more determined than ever to see a son born before his days are done.
Embodiment of Evil takes a drastic step away from the original two films in both composition and tone. It’s shot completely in color, save for a few flashback scenes that show material from the original films and provide a bit of back story. The significant increase in budget on Embodiment, combined with huge leaps in modern effects and cinematography technology make this hands-down the best looking film of the trilogy. The gore is without comparison. It’s over the top, yet completely in keeping with the spirit of what makes a Coffin Joe film unique. I sat in total shock watching Joe cut open the carcass of a huge pig only to reveal a naked blood covered woman, still alive, that he had sewn shut inside. This is only a single glimpse into a film packed full of grotesqueries designed to test the mettle of even the most hardcore genre fans.
Philosophically speaking, the film stays on point; yet in prior films Joe rejected Satan and God equally. Here he seems to embrace a more satanic aesthetic. While this isn’t likely to bother most viewers, it did rub me the wrong way a slight bit. Coffin Joe finds his strength in the casting off of all beliefs, and believing in nothing. However, the turn towards satanic motifs in Embodiment does seem natural once you start looking at all of the Coffin Joe films in a more broad spectrum. Though none of the films that come between the original two and this final installment are connected at all, they do show a slow evolution of this character into more of a demonic, cult figure.
One thing that is truly striking about all of these three films, and something that made me admire them early on, was how kind Joe is to children. Each film, including Embodiment of Evil, includes a scene where Coffin Joe protects, or comes to the aid of a child in danger. Particularly touching was the scene in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse where Joe races into a street to push a boy to safety, who was in danger of being run down by a motorcyclist out of control. Joe even takes a moment to pause and comfort the boy, playing for him music from a tiny music box to put the boy at ease. Once the mother takes the boy away Joe deals with the motorcyclist in true Coffin Joe fashion. In Joe’s world only children are innocent. They are the continuity of one’s blood. He even pauses to languish later in the film when he discovers that one of the women he killed was pregnant. He’s not repentant for the woman, but that he killed a child. It’s both savage and yet shows a rare human side to this monster.
As Embodiment of Evil came to a close I found myself quite satisfied with the trilogy. It’s rare that filmmakers can maintain consistency over a short period of time, nonetheless forty years, but Marins is one of those men who should be recognized not only for his contribution to the genre, but the fact that creating a rich and powerful story has always occupied the forefront of his attention rather than rushing a film to cash in a popular character.
Embodiment of Evil will undoubtedly prove to be the crowning achievement for a man who was lucky enough to have made a career for himself in portraying a monster, and has struggled along the way to separate himself from that monster over the years.
Join us in Part Three as we take a closer look at some of the other key Coffin Joe films from Marins’ career.
