This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse

This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse

Original Title: Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver

Directed by: José Mojica Marins

Brazil, 1967

Horror, 108 min

Anything can happen in movies. Dead characters can magically be alive in sequels, it happens all the time. What we throught was one absolute ending, is twisted to something else and hey presto, the beast is back! So why not Coffin Joe! Opening with his trademark philosophical questioning - the one that proclaims his philosophy and goal -  This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse jumps right in where At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul ends, recapping that story and giving more details about the last moments of the previous film, before quickly taking us through credits, blitzing images of nightmarish scenes to come - and bringing us up to speed - Zé do Caixão is hospitalized, sent to trial, freed of all charges and regains his eyesight. Blam! Now we’re ready to roll again.

Zé do Caixão is still on the prowl for a woman fit enough to bare him a son and keep his blood line running, but this time around he’s got a reputation to stand up to. Fellow villages run in fear as he walks back into town, people are aware of him and keep their distance, and even question him being in their village.

A series of stylish off-screen gloved predator kidnapping several young women rallies up the villagers who rush straight to Zé do Caixão and confront him… Oh yeah, his powers of persuasion are just as sharp as ever and he smooth talks his way out of a heated situation. The punch being in the reveal that all women actually are victims of Zé do Caixão. He’s abducted them to be part of his selection of possible brides to be. After locking them in a room, offers them gold and fortune, but later that night he releases an ocean of deadly spiders into the room to single out the best options. As the night gowned women sleep, the arachnids crawl all over their bodies until panic sets in. As they scream Zé do Caixão opens the door laughs sinisterly and tells them that his rest to measure their courage is now over. Losers are taken to his underground laboratory and given to Bruno the Hunchback [Jose Lobo] as an early birthday present… another example of Zé do Caixão giving to the less fortunate.

The main narrative of This Night I’ll Possess Your Soul is still Zé do Caixão searching for his bride to be and doing so through groups of women he puts through a series of merciless tests along the way – like love making whilst listening to the death cries of the loosing women trapped in a pit of venomous snakes. It’s like a dating show for sadists!

Villagers hardly dare stand up against him, and even the rural law enforcer Colonel is powerless in the presence of Zé do Caixão. Standing feebly, the Colonel can only watch as Zé do Caixão sets his sights for his daughter Laura [Tina Wohlers]. Laura doesn’t waste her time to acknowledge the caped, top hat bearing Caixão, but shows her own true colours as an evil selfish woman with no scruples at all – who even ignores going to her own brothers funeral, with the knowledge that he killed her brother, so that she can stay in a snog Zé do Caixão. Undoubtedly a woman in his taste! It’s during these scenes that Marins once again deliberately provokes by crosscutting his seduction of Laura, undressing her and making love in the cemetery with the funeral of her brother.

I find it fitting at this point to remind you that this sinister, egocentric maniac who was once tried for murder of several people with nothing in his mind but securing his own bloodline, still acts on behalf of others! Early on in the movie a motorcyclist races down the dirt road towards a bunch of children playing blind mans buff. Only thanks to Zé do Caixão does the child seeming to face certain death survive as he courageously throws himself out into the road shoving the young boy out of dangers path. This gives such a great dimension to the character that never is commented on, he can easily abuse and murder innocent people for his means, but he won’t let anyone harm a child. Just like in the original this comes back to bite him in the ass, and is a vital reason for his descent into madness this time too.

Zé do Caixão a very typical anti-hero in every way. An outsider, a vigilante, a lone wolf – but all good things come to an end, and in the sixties “villains” where certainly not getting away with their crimes on screen. The great irony of Zé do Caixão and his desire to keep his bloodline alive is that unbeknownst to him one of the women he murdered in his first tests of the kidnapped women was pregnant. With the realization that he disrupted another man’s bloodline and that he killed a child – remember he’s very protective of children – his world comes crashing down around him once again. It’s in this distressed state of mind that he starts to suffer from nightmarish hallucinations as his guilt starts to drive him insane.

When the skinny shadow man comes to drag him to hell don’t freak out, your acid hasn’t taken you on a bad trip, and the movie does become a colour film for a short while. This is a stroke of genius, as visions of hell on cinema should stand out. Raging from Benjamin Christiansen’s Häxan 1922, through Nobou Nakagawa’s Jigoku and even Olaf Ittenbach’s No Reason 2010, trips to hell are always terrifying experiences, and if one can show the horror in colour the better it is. Marins goes crazy with lighting, effects and sets as Zé do Caixão wanders through corridors of pain, suffering and torture before he has the most shocking reveal of his life!

It’s through empathetic recognition that we feel for this delightful antihero, and what is kind of startling with This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse is that for a while it looks as if Zé do Caixão is going to succeed with his plan… although some harrowing decisions are to be made before he’s forced into the darkness all alone once again, and challenge God to prove his existence!

With better financing this time around Marins had the chance to dig in deeper and paint with a broader brush. Characters are more extreme than the original; the rouges gallery is a wider span – disfigured villagers, Bruno the Hunchback, more women, more nudity, and more extreme violence. More on that and how it ended up putting a break on Marins vision for the second instalment.

There’s also a shift in pacing this time around, Zé do Caixão isn’t quite as frenetic as he was in the first movie. He’s certainly as eccentric and megalomaniac as ever, he’s still an atheist devout to his existential approach to life, but now he’s more certain of his goals and ambition. Instead of a raving lunatic, he comes off as the disdainful and suave character that certainly will stop at nothing to reach his goal.

There’s some great irony within the piece, such him being an atheist and then confronted with the visions of Hell, or even the use of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah Part 2, when learning Laura is pregnant, remember he’s an atheist and an Existentialist right! This irony may not be intentions, but there’s a reason why it becomes ironic when it’s used in this Existentialist piece. I find a similarity to stuff like Milan Kundera’s existentialist work The Unbearable Lightness of Being – a movie that scared me, and definitely shaped my view on life when I saw it back in the eighties. The theory that Kundera relied on in this piece was that of Eternal Return. One of Nietzsche's pet peeves which suggests that the universe is recurrent and will continue to be so for all eternity. It’s within this recurrent eternity that man must chose wisely. Because when one accepts that there is no God each man and woman must rely on themselves for all their decisions, which gives them freedom of choice. Existence is an individual thing and one has total freedom. I also see it as further reason why the three films all work in similar ways, leading to similar climaxes. This is what Zé do Caixão has, and this is how he lives as he considers his choices to be his own path to freedom. As pointed out in the piece on At Midnight I’ll take your Soul, this is why Zé do Caixão’s world is shattered when he’s taken to hell and shown that there is a Devil, and with a Devil comes a God… Considering that Marins aimed for a much more nihilistic ending to the film – one where Zé do Caixão doesn’t die in the swamp, but instead throws the priests crucifix at the mob and laughs at their religion, staying true to his Existentialism - the movie ends in a much more odd way where the Existentialist views are discarded. Although this was certainly not Marins decision, and I’ll return to that in a short while.

Despite being more or less a pimped version of his original film, I’d like to point out that newcomers shouldn’t take shortcuts and jump in at the second piece. This is a series that evolves and the character develops in certain ways along the way. Do yourselves a favour and start at the beginning.

Unlike many other sequels, Marins pulls a five-fingered punch with This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, as it’s everything that At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul was intended to be, but amplified beyond that initial film. More nudity, an even more sinister Zé do Caixão, bigger sets, better effects and a confused sudden conversion to believing in God at the last moment. At the time Marins started making his Coffin Joe Films in the mid sixties they where films that for the time where extremely graphic and provocative. Something that came back and bit him hard in the ass when the dictatorships censors forced him make several cuts to the film and tag on the religious finale. Tough deal, but when the Dictatorship tells you to change your film or loose it for all eternity, Marins had no other option than to alter the film to their tastes. It still makes a great movie despite Marins still feeling that the censors killed his film. Perhaps this is why Marins only used Zé do Caixão as a cicero and guide through many of his films to come, there’s no point unleashing the beast if he cant be used to his full potential. Something Marins would make sure happen with The Embodiment of Evil more than forty years later. This time Zé do Caixão would be back in every possible way!

Black Magic Rites

Black Magic Rites

Original title: Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel trecento...

Aka: The Reincarnation of Isabelle

Directed by: Renato Polselli

Italy, 1973

Horror, 98min

Distributed by: Kino Lorber/Redemption

Weird, trippy, freaky, almost incomprehensible… there’s a lot of ways to describe Renato Polselli’s Black Magic Rites, but personally I’d say that it’s something of a misplaced treasure of psychedelic fantasy forced into a grey zone between horror and sexploitation.

An extremely short pre credit sequence shows us a woman, Isabella [Rita Calderoni, a Polselli regular and star of Luigi Batzella’s stunning Nuda per Satan (Nude for Satan)1974], being traditionally burned at the stake. Cue credits and quickly get us into a strange sect holding a sacrificial ceremony with the hopes of resurrecting the dead Isabella who hangs from their dungeon wall.  Getting safely and predictably through the wonderfully ritualistic sacrifice with it’s almost Mario Bava style lighting. After her heart is torn out of her warm body, the wench is dead. But one more virgin’s heart is needed to resurrect their beloved Isabella. Establishing a mansion with a weird cult in its ruins only requests one more thing for a perfect set up, Black Magic Rites tosses two into the mix. Not only does he present us with a jet-set nouveau riche partying up at the rumoured haunted castle, but he also uses a reluctant occultist [Raul Lovecchio, who also starred in Polselli’s wonderfully trippy Giallo Delirio caldo (Delirium) the previous year) and his henchman who refuse to move out of the old place.

A good fifteen, twenty minutes are spent establishing characters, Jack Nelson [another Polselli regular, Mickey Hargitay] has bought the old castle, which we presume the cultists hang out at. The young women of the village who gossip about Raquel’s death (the cults latest female sacrifice) and ignite several theories of what goes on at the castle: a pagan cult, vampires, ghosts etc. Jack arrives at the castle with his niece Laureen [Calderoni again] – who you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out is the “chosen one”.  Laureen is engaged with village chap Richard Brenton [William Darni, the fourth actor in Black Magic Rites who also starred in Delirum). To celebrate the engagement and pending wedding, Nelson throws a huge party for friends of Laureen and Richard in the mysterious castle… With the main cast established and set, it’s time to let the horrors, sexy times and mind-expanding eeriness to start.

Female partygoers start to go missing, some are turned into Vampires, the cultists prepare their final sacrifice, the Occultist, who turns out to be Count Dracula, lingers in the shadows moping about the wrong doings of the past and characters who are one side of the spectrum slowly shift to show their true colours. I like it, and it keeps Polselli from falling into the passive pit of convention. This is where a somewhat complex web of present day and past times starts to twist and wind into each other. Before the film is over, there will be plenty of nudity, violent deaths, vibrant lighting, funky guitar riffs great reveals and major polarization of the leading characters.

Cinematographer Ugo Brunelli, who was a favoured DP of Luigi Batzella and Robero Mauri, also hot almost a dozen films for Polselli and really pulls out all the tricks of the book on this one. Sinister lighting with a strong use of reds/greens/blues and some superbly composed shots give several awesome looking moments in Black Magic Rites. Going back to this film after so many years – the last time I saw it was on one of the old Redemption tapes – it’s fair to say that this is one fine movie that tries some bold stuff for it’s time and really deserves to be seen again as it’s a intriguingly told piece of genre gold. 

Black Magic Rites is also an orgy of fast zooms that would put Bava or Franco to shame, and the beat of the editing is furious, at times some of the most forceful and violent that I’ve seen in an early seventies movie. When I do interviews and talk storytelling with filmmakers, there’s a theory that I constantly return to, a theory that talks about the three different movies that you make, the one you write, the one you shoot and the one you edit. Frequently filmmakers come to the conclusion that no matter what you write and shoot, the edit, despite any vision one has when writing and shooting, is where it all comes to life. Black Magic Rites is such a movie, and what frenetic life Polselli pounds into the film with his ferocious editing. This is fine art in the making my friends. If nothing else you should see this film just for the rabid pace that the first half steams on at. Unfortunately Black Magic Rites was only one of the two films Polselli edited (the other being a porn film in the eighties) and that’s a shame, as this is impressive editing indeed. It adds to the conviction that Renato Polselli almost disappears in the shadow of contemporary Italian filmmakers who gained international success. If you are into Euro horror and genre, please make sure to check out some of Polselli’s work, it is splendid stuff.

With that said, it’s also fair to point out that the main narrative flashback of Isabella’s execution does go on for way to long and gets kind of tiresome, despite presenting important backstory, exposition and character traits told though fast edits and emotional music. But it’s part of the plot and a decent trick for the twist of the last act. The rapid editing also disappears towards the end of the second act when the vampires start to walk the grounds, women fall out of their dresses and tables start to turn. Although the climactic last act reclaims the hard pace and rapid cuts and the movie comes neatly together style wise.

Whilst the movie may come off as a bewildered confusion, courtesy of Renato Polselli’s self written script, it’s actually a pretty intricate piece that unfortunately get’s somewhat lost in its own complexity. Where it’s fairly common praxis that leading lady Rita Calderoni play both modern age Laureen and past times witch Isabella, Polselli doesn’t stop there. Everyone in the cast plays dual roles. It’s a curious approach, and if not for the simple fact that Polselli in a stroke of genius polarizes all the characters in the two time frame setting, one would have looked upon it as a cheap way to save on extras and supporting cast costs.

There’s a good use of love themed subplots where the main cast all play parts, a lot of the movie’s story is sadness and yearning when it all comes around. For some strange reason though, where there’s a pretty decent emotional core story and a tense atmosphere, there’s also some rather uncalled for comedic relief where a sinister rape almost comes off as a farcical romp, and don’t get me started on what may just be the worst fake snake, bat and rat moment ever put on film!

Climaxing in something that reassembles a rush of insight and semi-explanation, it’s obvious that not even the characters can fully explain the odd series of events that have taken place. There’s several questions posed, what was true, what was lie, what was reality and what was fantasy. One leaves the film slightly confused and must self debate the possibly if all was all merely sinister plan concocted by the cult leader, or was it just hauntings of past love or merely all just an emotional fever dream.

Black Magic Rites is a delightful oddity; suave, feverishly weird, eclectically enigmatic and a well crafted must see movie. It’s time to rediscover the magic of Renato Polselli!

(Which you now can do in full HD through Redemption and Kino Lorbers series of Euro cinema releases.)

Here's a pretty spoilerish trailer if you feel like watching key scenes and story! 

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul

Original Title: À Mela-Noite Levarei Sua Alma

Directed by: José Mojica Marins

Brazil, 1964

Horror, 84min

Ok, time to dig into some serious cult dwelling… time for some Zé do Caixão! Every country has their own cult character, cult monster, and cult personalities. Brazil has Zé do Caixão and that’s Coffin Joe to you and me.

An important key to understanding the world of Zé do Caixão is presented from the word go with the opening monologue, something that frequents the majority of José Mojica Marins films. Here Caixão stands amongst the bushes and delivers the important mantra that echoes throughout the three movies in the Coffin Joe trilogy: “What is Life? It is the beginning of Death. What is Death? It is the end of Life! What is Existence? It is the continuity of Blood! What is Blood? It is the reason to exist!” Words that will return on several occasions and are of high importance as these words are the philosophy of Coffin Joe!

A wonderfully EC Tales from the Cryptish Gypsy opens the movie, wishing us all a terrible evening, mocking us, taunting us and then cursing us, because if we dare to watch this films, she will take our soul at midnight! Then crash right into the movie where top hat bearing, caped gravedigger Zé do Caixão [Marins] just home from a funeral, mocks the mourners before asking his wife where the meat is as he sits down to diner. But being Holy Friday she gently tells him that there is no meat on this sacred day. Caixão throws a fit, slams his plate on the table and tells her that no Bible thumper can stop him! Moments later he gobbles down a leg of lamb as he laughs at the procession walking past his window.

More than anything Caixão desires a son to carry on his bloodline, although his girlfriend Lenita [Valéria Vasquez] has failed to do so yet. This has led him to become obsessed with his best friend Antônio’s [Nivaldo Lima] girlfriend Terezinha [Magda Mei], who he is convinced will be able to birth him a son. This obsession sets off a series of sardonic events under Caixão’s influence. And it really is a terrifying series of events, such as Caixão chopping off a blokes fingers in a bar, murdering his girlfriend, raping his best friends girlfriend, killing same best friend and even his own wife. But it doesn’t end there, he desecrates graves, taunts the dead, pours acid on his foes, challenges death and the afterlife. These are the ways of Coffin Joe, a narcissistic Existentialist, and I’ll return to explain that later.

All strong protagonists need a nemesis, an antagonist to threaten them. Yes, Caixão is the protagonist, despite his ill deeds, this is what makes him an antihero. But despite that, he is the protagonist as this is his film, his story, his fate. Rapidly making enemies, but using his charismatic powers of persuasion, Caixão lures his way out of every confrontation, but there’s one he should pay more attention to. The witches curse and threat of an early death. When all the omens start pointing towards the curse being an authentic one, Zé do Caixão starts to loose his mind, and with that his beliefs. As the film rushes into its climax in the cemetery Zé do Caixão is pushed off the deep end and into oblivion without completing his quest… at least for this time.

Not only for the sheer cult value and dark story it tells, but At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, and Coffin Joe is fascinating in the way that at the same time this man is so evil and will stop at nothing to get his way, like murdering whoever gets in his way, he without hesitation stops an abusive father from shouting at his son. He turns the tables and gives him a bollocking on the importance of taking care of his child and protecting the bloodline. This is of importance to the series and will return in many of José Mojica Marins's films to follow, the diabolical Coffin Joe frequently protects innocent children. This also plays a vital role to his degeneration during the last act!

As a character Zé do Caixão is one of the most fascinating ones ever to grace the screen. He’s a complete sceptic and doesn’t believe in ghosts, god or the devil. He speaks his mind and he’s actually an existentialist. An existentialist in such a way that he’d be able to take on Sartre, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard any day. I find that the existentialist attitude of Caixão is part of the key to reading Coffin Joe films. Existentialism is very much about being true to oneself, having faith in oneself and taking responsibility for one’s own fate. This is very apparent in the character, everything he does he does, he does it to benefit himself, to pleasure himself, to create his of fate. Nothing, no God, No ghost, no devil can affect him as he only believes in himself. So when Coffin Joe sets a goal, he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it, and nothing can stop him from reaching it…

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is Brazil’s first horror film and Marins’ Zé do Caixão is definitely one of South Americas most known Horror Icons. At an early age young Marins was smitten by the magic of cinema, when his father, who managed a cinema let him spend time in the projection room. It was during such a visit that he accidentally saw a documentary on venereal disease, and the first thing he saw was a vagina infected with gonorrhoea. Marins states in interviews that this scarred his childhood and in all his horror films he tried to recreate the horror and disgust that the image had left with him.

At the time he started making his own films, he’d already been acting for some time, and his first attempts where at directing he’d tried out Drama and Westerns. But when he stepped into the realm of horror he was onto something highly potent and sensitive Inspired by theatre, horror comics and classic films he came up with Zé do Caixão! But where we today can enjoy these movies at our own leisure, it has been no easy trip for Marins, who’s not only films have been at times been censored, banned and seized. During the sixties he was mobbed on the streets both by fans and “haters” who couldn’t separate Marins from his character and where convinced he had a pact with the Devil.

When the Brazilian Dictatorship took over, around the same time he was making and releasing the Zé do Caixão films, Marins found himself persecuted, threatened and even jailed as they read political commentary into his films. On top of that he had the church and clergy all over him condemning his vile films. 

I’m not going to make much of it, but like many other visionary filmmakers, Marins ended up in the gutter of low budget filmmaking shooting and starring in smut, pornochanchada films – soft core sex comedies. If you have seen the 2001 documentary Coffin Joe: The Strange World of José Mojica Marins, you will learn that he went beyond soft core and into some very seedy territory, something he himself seems reluctant to talk about, but producer Rubens Francisco Luchetti is remarkably proud of. Once again an innovative filmmaker is forced into a territory he didn’t choose, but was driven into by their passion for making films. Crap films that are forcefully made when an auteur is forced to become a gun for hire searching for funds to make the movies they want to. Nevertheless, Marins took the deals, shot the shit, and used his paychecks to make the films he wanted, and the money from the pornochanchanda films financed many more films to come.

There’s some confusion to the lineage of the Coffin Joe films. Marins character Caixão does return in several films, although the Coffin Joe series is only three movies, À Mela-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul), 1964, Esta noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse) 1967 and the final instalment, Encarnação do Demônio (Embodiment of Evil) 2008. Despite this Coffin Joe does appear in something like a dozen other Marins films. But here his role is more that of a narrator or Cicero, such as he does in O Estranho Mundo de Zé do Caixão (The Strange World of Coffin Joe) 1968.  You could compare it to something like Wes Craven’s Freddy Krueger, who appeared in a bunch of official films, but also hosted TV Show Freddy’s Nightmares and featured in the strange The Freddy Krueger Special (1988) which aired on MTV to tie in with A Nightmare on Elmstreet 4: The Dream Master.

Thanks to curious fans, late night TV, VHS distribution (remember them SWV tapes?) and dupe trading of his films by back in the eighties, nineties Zé do Caixão slowly did arise from the dead. Back with a vengeance, building his cult, José Mojica Marin now stands firmly amongst the classic horror icons that have come before him, and to this day he’s still an active filmmaker. In 2008 he wrote and directed the third part of the Coffin Joe trilogy, Embodiment of Evil , and currently slated to contribute to a segment for the forthcoming anthology film The Profane Exhibit.