AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1964)

DIRECTED BY Jose Mojica Marins

SCREENPLAY BY Jose Mojica Marins, Waldomiro Franca & Magda Mel

STARRING - Jose Mojica Marins as Ze Do Caixao (Coffin Joe),  Magda Mel as Terezinha,  Nivaldo Lima as Antonio, Valeria Vasquez as Lenita,  ilidio Martins Simoes as Dr. Rudolfo,  Eucaris Moraes as Velha Bruxa.

PLOT - Coffin Joe (the Undertaker in a small Brazilian town) is a man with an obsession. He believes that the continuation of his bloodline in the form of a son (who will be "the perfect being") is his way of ultimately achieving immortality. Unfortunately, Joe's wife Lenita is unable to provide him with a child as she is infertile. 

His ambitions and dreams of immortality broken, Joe descends into madness as he seeks to fulfill his obsession and find the perfect mate.

Joe's obsession leads him down a dark and grisly path to murder.

However, Joe had better look out - a gypsy woman has foretold his death and the unquiet spirits of his victims are looking for revenge...

PERFORMANCES - Writer/director Jose Mojica Marins plays Coffin Joe - the villain/anti hero of this bat shit insane little movie.

Joe is a strange character indeed in that he has all the trappings of a classic horror villain (the eccentric Victorian style clothing etc) and yet the atrocities he commits onscreen are more the kind of thing you'd expect a contemporary horror villain to get up to. Joe does some genuinely nasty (and quite gory for the time) things to his various victims - more the kind of thing you'd expect to see Jason or Leatherface getting up to rather than the more tame and mannered villiany his appearance would suggest.

Joe is the local undertaker and the inhabitants of the small town where he lives seem absolutely terrified of him, to the point that he frequently seems to get away Scott free with all kinds of horribleness. At one point he walks into a bar, challenges a group of drinkers to a game of cards, cheats, gets into a fight when he's called out for cheating, cuts one of the drinker's fingers off and then uses his money and reputation to buy the witnesses silence. He's clearly a man who can and does get away with murder.

Joe frequently gets angry and when he does you'd better make yourself scarce, handily though it's easy to tell when Joe's getting pissed off as his eyes have a tendency to go instantly bloodshot. 

It's weird, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but it's kind of cool all the same.

Joe hates authority in all its forms, particularly religion (can't say I blame him on that one), at various points in the film he openly flounts the religious traditions and rules of the community around him, whether it's by eating meat on a holy day or ignoring the customs of respecting the dead - if there's a way of pissing off the local priesthood then Joe's your man for the job.

Joe's biggest flaw (apart from his antisocial murderous behaviour) is the sheer balls to the wall obsession he has with fathering a son. Trust me - fanatical doesn't even begin to cover it. Whilst lots of men understandably want to produce a son and heir, Joe takes it to the next level.

You see, Joe believes himself to be a superior being and as a result of this he believes that his offspring will be an even greater and even more "perfect" being than he is. But to sire this perfect child he needs to find a perfect woman...and at the moment he doesn't have one.

Joe has a wife - Lenita (Valeria Vasquez) but she can't have kids. You do feel bad for her as she seems to genuinely love Joe and seems like she's quite a nice person but Joe - being the utter dickbag that he is - isn't satisfied with this and it isn't long before poor Lenita is disposed of...horribly.

Joe then sets his sites on his best friend Antonio's wife, Terezinha. Terezinha (naturally being of a sound mind and not a total bitch to her husband) doesn't take kindly to Joe's advances and blows him out, firmly putting him in his place. Needless to say this rejection pushes Joe even further over the edge and it isn't long before both Terezinha and Antonio are dead.

Hmmm...Murderous misogynistic tendencies, creepy overgrown fingernails, disturbing Undertaker fashion sense, an obsession with eugenics - is it any wonder that the ladies aren't exactly falling over themselves to let Joe impregnate them ? Maybe Joe would find it easier if he just went on Tinder...

Mojica Marins gives us a truly unhinged performance, it's no wonder that this film caught on in Brazil. Coffin Joe became a cult and counter cultural figure and appeared in many, many more movies (all directed, written by and starring Mojica Marins).  The only thing I can fault him on is that Joe does have a tendency to rant on a bit TOO MUCH. It's entertaining enough to hear him go on about the "immortality of blood" the first couple of times round but once you've heard it for the tenth or fifteenth time in as many minutes it does start to grate a little bit. However, this is more of a fault that lies with the later entries in the series, here at least Joe's SLIGHTLY more restrained and streamlined with his ranting and raving (only slightly mind you...)

The other characters don't really make much of an impression as they're only onscreen for a few minutes before dying horribly. I do like the crazy gypsy witch woman though. She acts as a kind of horror host and sort of "narrates" the story in places. She reminds me a bit of the Crypt Keeper from the old EC comics. She adds a much needed dose of good cheesy fun.

SFX - Considering that this is a low budget "art house" kind of horror movie there's not really much in the way of visual effects.

At the end of the movie Joe's victims return from the dead to get revenge on him. The ghosts are achieved by filming the actors in negative. It's an in-camera effect but it works quite well when combined with the black and white photography.

Simple but effective.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Finally tiring of going about playing the mating game in an acceptable way, Joe out and out rapes Terezinha. Traumatized by this violation, Terezinha then hangs herself.

Joe murders his wife by tying her up and getting a poisonous spider to bite her.

Joe then smashes Antonio over the head and drowns him in a bath (and he's supposed to be his BEST FRIEND ? God only knows what Joe does to people who've REALLY pissed him off).

Joe also gouges out the local G.P's eyes with his fingernails and then sets him on fire. Just... because...

Finally, the vengeful spirits of Joe's victims catch up with him. We don't see what they actually do to him but the end result is an apparently dead Joe who seems to have had his eyelids ripped off (don't worry - he gets better in time for the sequel - This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967) ).

We also get some suitably mouldy looking corpses when Joe opens up his victims tombs in a moment of paranoia.

RATING - At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is apparently the very first horror film to be made in Brazil (what took them so long to jump on the bandwagon ?), talk about starting as you mean to go on.

The film is atmospheric, brutal and has an art house feel to it, but it's also cheesy and slightly camp in places. It has one foot in classic Universal style horror of the 30's and 40's and one foot in the upcoming "new wave" of independent horror that was to storm drive-ins and grindhouse cinemas in the latter part of the 60's and 70's. It has a charismatic central performance from Mojica Marins who gives us a memorable villain in Coffin Joe. The only thing that lets it down is how "talky" it gets in places (which can get a bit repetitive) but other than that this a solid enough little movie and a sound start for Brazilian horror.

4 deadly undertakers out of 5.

ART - 

And that's it for the (extended) Halloween/Spooky season 2024, hope you've enjoyed looking at some creepy movies with me.

For the next week until the start of Christmas we'll be temporarily going a bit Sci-Fi with the emphasis on retro sci-fi - after that (come December the first) we'll be going full tilt into the festive season. See you next time...