Embodiment Of Evil

What the hell was that?!

Jesus! I'm kinda flabbergasted at this movie, I mean it was good but uh, I recommend a strong stomach for it. Well I guess Marins got to throw up a big middle finger 40 years later to the censor board cause not only is Coffin Joe alive and well, but his contempt for the cross is higher than ever. So after spending four decades in a sanitarium Zé do Caxão returns to the modern day big city and goes on an abducting rampage with the help of a cult in his honor to spread his seed, while several characters who has ties to his murderous past join forces to kill him once and for all. The first thing I gotta say is, it is so damn weird seeing Coffin Joe in the same regalia walk the streets of modern day Saõ Paulo, it almost slips into fish out of water territory more for the viewer than the story because it's just so out of place though the story continues business as usual. Secondly, whoa dude this may be the most fucked up horror movie I've ever seen. Now I need to state clearly, I haven't seen films like the Saw series or Hostel so the torture scenes presented here are truly horrific and just made my jaw drop, I was sooooo not prepared for any of this! The nudity also skyrockets, you pretty much see everything on multiple women almost straight through to end credits. I mean jeez, this series just gets more hardcore with each entry. Major applause for both the effects artists and performers respectively, this shit is gruesome and the ladies deserve some respect. José Mojica Marins hasn't lost his touch in all this time, and all the trademarks are still present of his character from the violence to the mental freak outs. I'm happy he got to give a definitive end to his character and was able to make the movie he wanted to make without interference. I'm also greatly curious as to what the fanbase is like in Brazil and how much this series has impacted the culture there. Technicals are on a strong foundation, still keeping it's independent style while looking very modern. I'm still kinda floundering here guys, I just wasn't ready to get hit with such a finale to the point where I just don't know what else to talk about. It's a very good movie and albeit far from everyone's taste has it's place in horror history along with the other two films, and I do recommend it if you want something out of your wheelhouse. A lot of horror fans in America in this day and age traverse to foreign countries for their horror films, and I hope I contributed to get South American cinema some more love. Watch this if you're brave enough and get ready for a trip. 3 stars, 7.5/10, with just one more week of reviews before I return to my crypt.

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse

Damn. Proper good sequel!

It is almost night and day the difference between all aspects of production from the first and second film. Far from trashing the values of I'll Take Your Soul, I very much liked the almost homebrew production and technicals but I'll Possess Your Corpse is practically overflowing with greater values. A wide and extra filled cast, a worthy and superior continuation of the story, and pretty clean film stock showing off the location and sets. The story goes somehow through a tenative stretch, Zé do Caixão survived his brush with otherworldly spirits and also is acquitted of any potential murder charges as well and settles back into his life still with the goal of becoming a father in his tunnelvision sights. He ups the ante too, instead of hopping from one woman to the next he abducts a group of women at the same time in the worst season of The Bachelor I've ever seen, to pick out the woman just right for him. And the weird thing is it works. Twice. Don't ask me how, I'm as alien on the subject of love as I am an alien on this planet! Seems women are more than happy to throw themselves at him this movie, and in an equal and opposite reaction the townsfolk are forming mobs at every turn to bring Zé to justice. It is far from simple and clean storytelling, I am profoundly eating my words of last review cause this is a kinda complex, scheming, machinating plot that is woven through several characters who all have their goals and personalities, and I gotta admit it worked very well! The film pushes closer to 2 hours and barely wastes a second of it, Marins is always progressing the story and even the identity of Coffin Joe. In less than the first 10 minutes of the film he saves a kid from being run over, his passion for childbirth reaches a fever pitch, he comes to terms with some of his actions and once again is visited by supernatural forces, still despises religion though, and makes a most unexpected character choice right at the end. In the most shocking moment of the film he has a nightmare about literally being dragged to Hell and comes face to face with the torments and landscape of it, and you know I'm not a profoundly religious person but that whole scared straight shit is true, like I promise to be as good of a person as I can be after seeing that damn scene! It's the most outrageous and yet disturbing version of Hell I've ever seen and shot in stark and vibrant color, the rest of the film is classic black & white, which adds even more to the experience of it. And the finale took me severely aback and apparently it wasn't even in the script, Brazil's censor board made Marins change the ending entirely and you'll know exactly what they changed when you see it. Sure you can absolutely show bewbs, the freaky world of Hell itself, and some pretty ruthless deaths, but further sacrilege to the name of Deus? No can do buster. It's the only truly bad thing I can say about the movie and it's no foul on Marin's part! But other than that this is a great sequel honestly! I love it, I have no problem saying it's superior to the first film, and if the first Coffin Joe movie didn't have your full attention and you wanted more from it this is the movie for you. I give it 4 stars, 8/10, and we're doing a biiiig time leap from 1967 to 2008 with the final part of the trilogy.

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

The year is 1964. The place is Brazil. And this is the first horror movie from that country.

Once more Cinemassacre's Monster Madness introduced me to this trilogy of films directed and starring José Mojica Marins as Zé do Caixão or as he's known in the States, Coffin Joe. It's kind of amazing to see a piece of world history like this and it would be the first film I ever saw from either Brazil or South America, and I'm very curious to see where this all goes. The plot is pretty basic involving a small town where our absolutely not protagonist resides Ze who is the resident coffin maker, as we see his cruel and unusually punishing tactics in trying to secure a woman who will birth to him a son to continue his bloodline. That's basically the whole movie, there's not a lot of frills but I don't expect a lot of complex storylines for a horror film and it's effectively discomforting and horrifying. Coffin Joe is a bastard with a capital B, like I haven't encountered a movie villain this heinous and fucked up I think in my life. He murders any opposition to his goal, maims and intimidates the townsfolk to the point where he can do whatever he wants, abuses and rapes women, and has a distinct hatred for religion. You are stuck with this guy the whole movie, and the film far from glorifies Zé but man is it rough to sit through! José plays it so straight almost to the point it doesn't seem like acting because he embodies the part so well, apparently they couldn't find a good fit so he just decided to do it himself so he had his work cut out for him both on and off screen. The cinematogtaphy and editing is extremely simple and yet at the exact same time ambitious, they went for a desired effect and shot even if it wasn't seamless in execution which I actually admire and praise. You'd be surprised how little background information there is for this film, so who knows what brought the idea to mind, what the production was like, hell even the release and legacy are a bit foggy even in today's trivia soaked culture. You'd think for a movie made in 1964 it wouldn't be that shocking and gruesome, even more so considering the part of the world it was made in where censoring was common and wide ranging depending on the film, but it's pretty hardcore in it's potrayal of body mutilation alone then you throw in the abuse and rape and it gets even more extreme though you don't see any nudity. I'm almost convinced the greatest offense taken back then was the sacreligious standing of the main character, a true defining trait that at first I chalked up to atheism because Zé states he has no belief, but then it shows he has great contempt for religion, it's symbols, and considers the followers of the christian religion cowards and fools. The only belief he really has is creating an extension of his bloodline, having children as a sort of quasi-immortality. And I suppose if you wanted to you can give him at least one good point, he sees a father about to strike his son and he intervenes and says no parent should hit their child for they are the continuation of your family and the future of the world, so hey he won't beat his kids but he'll absolutely fuck with their mother any chance he'll get. Ummmm....priorities?? Yeah he's pretty irredeemable. I actually quite like the look of the film, it's fairly low budget and is extremely candid of the environments, it's interesting. It's a pretty rough time trying to find a copy I'll tell you that, the old box set is pricy and the recent giant collected release of all three films is not any better price wise, but if you're a hardcore fan of these movies the new collection by Arrow seems just the ticket. And for everybody else, you can find an acceptable quality video on YouTube. Not too sure how a sequel could come about given the ending but that's what we'll look at tomorrow. I give this 3 stars, 7.5/10!