This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse

The idea of going bigger and bolder when tackling the sequel to a surprise hit is nothing new, as evidenced by Jose Mojica Marins' follow-up to cult Brazilian horror classic At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. The first film managed to achieve cult status in its native country and with anybody lucky enough to see it elsewhere in the world, so director, co-writer and lead star Marins managed to bag a noticeably larger budget and used this to further explore the darkest regions of his mind. The result - the wonderfully-titled This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse - is little more than a shameless re-hash of the previous story, but as a piece of psychedelic gothic horror, it manages to outshine its predecessor in every way. At the end of Midnight, Marins' Ze do Caixao, or 'Coffin Joe', was left for dead by supernatural forces. But now he's back, and more determined than ever to find the perfect bride to carry his child.

While the villagers hid in fear of Joe last time around, they have since grown weary of his superior attitude and suspect him of the many disappearances that took place in their community. However, without sufficient evidence to bring him to trial, Joe is released to carry on with his undertaker duties and his search for the mother of his future son. Assisted this time by a hunchback named Bruno (Jose Lobo), Joe imprisons some of the village's most beautiful young ladies and tests them in order to prove their worthiness. Sadly, the test involves an army of spiders, and while one woman, Marcia (Nadia Freitas), remains calm, the others panic and are thrown into a pit to be killed by snakes. While Marcia is deemed unsuitable to bear his child, she is employed as a spy while Joe sets out to seduce the beautiful Laura (Tina Wohlers), the daughter of a local colonel who shares Joe's twisted outlook and logic.

Marins only stepped into the role of Coffin Joe when the original actor dropped out before the first film started production, but this proved to be a stroke of luck as it's difficult to imagine anybody else donning the top hat, neatly-trimmed beard and grotesque, talon-like fingernails. Joe is more cunning this time around, using his wits to frame a local strongman for the murders and to escape some violent confrontations. A curse placed upon him by one of his victims slowly drives him mad, leading to one of the film's most exceptional set-pieces. In his dreams, Joe journeys into hell, a cesspit of cruelty and torture shot in bold colour (the rest of the picture is grainy black-and-white). Bloody limbs and body parts emerge from the stone walls and poor souls are whipped and beaten continuously is a never-ending carousel of savagery. It's a nightmare that even terrifies Joe, and this segment provides a disturbing window into Marins' imagination. This second entry into the Coffin Joe series moves a mile-a-minute, offering everything from phoney-looking backdrops to smoke-machine special effects as it touches on almost every taboo imaginable, but this excess is all part of its charm, and what makes the world of Ze do Caixao so unique.

This sequel lacks a little of noir atmosphere present in At Midnight I will Take Your Soul. It also reinforces more Josefel "Coffin Joe" Zanatas's logics in prejudice of mistery (all spiritual or magic elements in the former movie are proved to be only his imagination and fears): he believes there is no life after death, then the only way to be ethernal is to have offspring. That is why he seeks the most perfect woman possible to give him a child, "a perfect child" or preferably "a perfect son" (she may be not only beautiful but also share his eugenics belief, have no fear, and refuse any religion). There is also why he kills those who he believes that will not generate good children, and why be cares so much about children and particularly babies and fetuses. However, two of the best filmed scenes of his career are from this movie: the curse of Janaína and the sequence from him on his bedroom until his entrance in hell. The portrayal of hell in colour, constrating with black and white cinematography in the rest of the movie, is interesting but not the best moment.

This sequel to At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul once again stars Coffin Joe as the devilish gravedigger. It starts off where the last film ended with our anti-hero found to still be alive, he is taken back to stand trial for his crimes and is found innocent despite the fact that he committed his misdeeds in public for all to see! Anyway he now seeks a woman to bear him a child. To achieve this he captures several girls and kills most of them. It may sound straightforward but really the story-line is most bizarre and senseless. But this is the world of Coffin Joe and nothing else can really be expected to be perfectly honest.

In my view this sequel is better than the original. There are several reasons for this. For one thing José Mojica Marins has developed as a film-maker. He seems to have a – slightly – higher budget and this is used to expand things a little with better set-pieces and a great scene where Coffin Joe descends into Hell. This sequence breaks the black and white presentation and is shown in psychedelic colours. Marins depiction of Hell is highly imaginative and surreal with much grotesquery and sadism. Additionally, the movie does seem to be paced better than the first instalment despite being twenty odd minutes longer. It's also a fair bit gorier and sleazier as well. Coffin Joe dispatches with several of his enemies in a bloody manner by axe, boulder and shoe-applied razors! He also treats a gaggle of women very badly indeed with extended scenes involving lots of big spiders crawling all over then and then a group of angry looking snakes fulfilling a similar end.

It's a wild concoction for sure. It may well be a very low budget film but Marins makes the most of what he's got. And he does, after all, remain the only true Brazilian horror director, so on that basis alone his work is fascinating in itself. Perhaps as a reaction to his country's religious beliefs Coffin Joe constantly rails against theocracy and is a committed atheist. This, alongside his unexpected love of children, is a most bizarre trait for a horror villain and provides an original subtext to proceedings. At Midnight I'll Possess Your Corpse is certainly a film for the attention of cult film fanatics that's for sure.

Hose Mojica Marins is definitely a director whose films are many times overlooked. His character Coffin Joe is almost like the Freddy or Jason of Brazil. "This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse" is the second Coffin Joe film. After the evil undertaker has been cleared of his crimes, he's back to causing trouble yet again. He kidnaps beautiful women and looks to impregnate one of them to start a perfect race. After the ladies get tormented by spiders and snakes he kills them, leaving only one lady. What makes this scene horrifying is the 100 snakes and spiders that the actresses had to endure. The ghost of the one women vows to return from the dead and take vengeance on him, or is it just his imagination? It's never quite clear. Coffin Joe is an angry atheist who finally finds his evil mate which is the colonel's daughter. Even after him and his hunchback assistant smash her brother's head with a rock, she still likes him. She even skips her brother's funeral to get it on with him. The film's most memorable scene is it's surreal psychedelic ten minute Technicolor vision of hell. Death takes Coffin Joe to hell and he sees people scream in agony as they are whipped and tortured. In the scene fire, brimstone and snakes surround him wherever he goes. "This Night I'll Possess your Corpse" is chilling, gory, bizarre and subversive in it's religious and social themes. It's definitely a classic work of Brazialian cinema that deserves more attention.

As most people reading this will already know, This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse is Coffin Joe's follow-up to the excellent At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, and as good as the first film was; for my money, this one is even better! The legendary Brazilian comic book character may be cheesy, and José Mojica Marins' films may be cheap and silly; but he certainly has an eye for horror and this film features everything that made the first film great - and more! Once again, we have a plot without meaning, although there is some direction this time as Coffin Joe steps up his chase to find a woman to bear him a child. He doesn't go the direct route, however - and we get treated to scenes of torture as well as Coffin Joe preaching to his audience about the non-existence of God. The film works in spite of the ending of the first film, which is passed off by way of Coffin Joe being nursed back to health by the people he terrorises, before being cleared of his crimes on the grounds of 'lack of evidence'...even though most of them were committed in front of a crowd of people. Still, it's all in good fun!

With a name like Coffin Joe, you've got to expect the man to have an eye for horror - and the director delights in packing his film with delicious horror imagery, from spiders and snakes to skulls and deformed assistants! The wayward plot once again allows the director to do pretty much anything he likes - and for a man with so many ideas, this certainly isn't a bad thing. Despite a running time of nearly two hours, Coffin Joe's film never becomes boring or trite, and just when you think that the film can't possibly deliver any more surprises; Marins throws in a delightful colour sequence that takes place in Hell! The dialogue is once again a stand-out aspect of the film, as hearing Coffin Joe preach his own set of beliefs never becomes boring and the actor clearly delights in delivering them. The eerie atmosphere is always welcome, and the fact that the film is so clearly designed for entertainment is of huge benefit to it. I'll close this review with a word of warning; do not see this film unless you've seen At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, but once you have seen said movie - this one becomes must see!