By TESS HENSON

(Note.  This is the first in a series of articles that will unearth the grisly and scary delights of the "Coffin Joe" flicks.  The second Coffin Joe film, This Night I'll Posses Your Corpse, will be spotlighted in next month's issue.)

Coffin Joe.

Love him, hate him, hate to love him, love to hate him. However you feel about this once controversial and always compelling Brazilian horror icon, one thing you can agree upon is that he sure liked to push people's buttons.

Ze' do Caixao (as he is known in his native tongue) was the brainchild of Brazilian filmmaker Jose' Mojica Marins and the character came to him much like the way most great horror bogeyman do--in a dream.

While trying to get his idea for a first film underway which would deal with juvenile delinquents, Marins had a dream one night about a creature in a black cloak and top hat which dragged him from his bed and into a decrepit cemetery. There, the black-draped figure revealed to Marins a headstone that bore his name.

Marins awoke from this dream in a cold sweat, and decided right there and then to ditch the idea for a film about troubled youth in favor of a much darker, nihilistic film which revolved around a sadistic, paradoxical undertaker. Hence, Coffin Joe was spawned.

The filmic life of Coffin Joe in actuality spanned several celluloid offerings. If he wasn't the main character, he would become a minor one--a sort of judge waiting to deal out his justice to those sinners he deemed worthy. For, as we shall see in the first two Coffin Joe films--no one knows more about the depths of Hell, and no one revels more in that knowledge.

Coffin Joe first made his appearance on the big screen in 1963 with the film At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (a.k.a. A' Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma). Like most fledgling directors, Marins had his share of trouble financing his first film, and it immediately became a family affair when his parents sold their home to back the project. In return for their favor, Marins cast them in his movie! His mother plays a mourner at a funeral in the opening scene who is consoled by the sometimes sympathetic undertaker, and his father plays Francisco--the owner of a tavern Coffin Joe frequents.

In the typical low-budget, guerilla style of filmmaking, Marins also cast his friends as major players, with his secretary--Magda Mei--playing the character of Terezinha; and an old drinking buddy--Nivaldo Lima--playing the part of Antonio--Terezinha's fiancée. When the actor Marin's originally had in mind for the Coffin Joe character backed out just before shooting began, Marins himself decided to play the titular lead--which was probably the best thing that could've happened since the film seems to be wrought with Marin's own personal beliefs about religion and the propagation of life.

In this first of the Coffin Joe films, we are introduced to a character whose backstory is that upon returning home from fighting in World War II, he finds that his wife has been unfaithful. In a rage, he denounces all faith in a Christian god, and becomes the blasphemous, cruel undertaker of a small Brazilian village. As the film opens, an old gypsy witch--who we will see again later--invites us to view this unfolding horror story--horror-host style! A unique opening to a film to be sure!

As the town's undertaker, the villagers treat Coffin Joe with a modicum of respect, but it is more out of fear than affection. You see, he has a "god complex" himself, thinking himself stronger and better than the so-called peasants who surround him. Indeed, he does have the ability to manipulate the townsfolk into doing things that are against their nature. For instance, early on in the film Ze' (as Lenita, his housekeeper and sometime bed-mate calls him), returns home on Holy Friday from a day at the morgue. As Lenita serves up a dish of vegetables for his dinner he exclaims, "Where's the beef?"--much like the old lady in those quirky Wendy's commercials of the mid-Eighties.

You see, it is forbidden to eat meat on Holy Friday. However, Ze' has no such religious propensities, and insists Lenita cook him a lamb for his dinner. She does, and as the religious procession parades under his bedroom balcony, Ze' looks down at them and scoffs--all the while eating a large shank of lamb in plain sight of the priest, who in horror makes the sign of the cross. Later, when Ze' visits the local tavern, he sends a barkeep back to his home to fetch more lamb for him.

When the barkeep returns, Ze' again begins munchy-wunching on a huge leg of lamb--in plain sight of the other decidedly religious patrons. As Ze' looks around the tavern at the various men playing poker--he spies one that he thinks looks particularly hungry. Ze' beckons to him, and when the man responds, Ze' makes him eat the rest of the lamb--against the man's protests that it is Holy Friday. However, the man succumbs as it seems Ze' has a strange dominance over weaker minded individuals--probably aided by a large dose of fear on their part.

Coffin Joe does strike an imposing figure. He dresses all in black--with the black cloak and top hat of an undertaker. All that is fine and good, but what makes Coffin Joe particularly sinister is the thick, black eyebrows that join over his nose in a uni-brow, and his uncommonly long and unkempt fingernails. He also has piercing eyes, which--when he is enraged--become fearsomely filled with blood. Another example of Ze's cruelty and manipulation of the townsfolk is when he invites himself to a game of poker at one of the tables. It seems the luck is always on Ze's side as he quickly wins all the money away from the other players.

One young man, who has too much to lose, defies Ze' on the last hand, and won't let him take the money. Calmly, coolly and without hesitation, Ze' breaks the neck of a wine bottle and uses the jagged edge to remove the offending fingers from the rest of the poor man's hand. Ze' then collects the money--tells someone to call the doctor for the man--and when the doctor arrives, Ze' offers to pay the doctor for the treatment he gives the man out of the money he has just won at poker!

Ze' is then ironically praised by the doctor for his generosity. Another time, Ze' is back at the tavern, and is hitting on Maria--a niece of one of the other tavern patrons. When her uncle spies Ze's advances he becomes upset--but won't do anything about it.

Another of the tavern patrons--a big guy who it seems could easily have his way with Ze'--has enough and confronts him. Even though the man is much larger physically, Ze' is quicker--and eventually gets the upper hand and has the man on his knees, lashing him about the head with a bullwhip. Again, the man succumbs to Ze's dominance--it seems no one can stand up to him and win. And yet another time at the tavern Ze' is again making advances to Maria. Ze' attempts to give her some money as a gift which she does not want to take as it will no doubt lead to unreasonable demands later.

Her uncle again spies the two--and confronts Maria, who tells him that Ze' has just given her the money--much to her protestations--as a gift. The uncle then grabs the money from her hand, throws it to the floor and tells Ze' that they do not need his money and to please leave his niece alone. He then turns to leave the tavern with his niece. As they make their way to the door Ze' calls him out--telling him to pick up the money. The uncle stands up to Ze' telling him under no circumstances will he do such a thing. Again, Ze' is swift in his punishment, and soon has the man on his hands and knees in pain and grudgingly picking up the money and giving it back to his niece.

It seems Ze' has the ability to turn even the strongest of personalities into sniveling, plaintive babies. And to think, those are just the cruelties Ze' imposes upon the men of the town--we haven't even broached the subject of the way he treats women. Ah, but that's next--for in this film men are just the appetizer, as women are the main course for Coffin Joe.

Being an undertaker, Ze' is obsessed with death. As he believes in no god and no religion, he thinks that the only way man as a race of beings becomes immortal is through the propagation of life. In some of the first frames of the film Coffin Joe asks the audience "What is blood?"--and answers the question himself with the response "A reason to exist". Even as he is obsessed with death--and more specifically with the idea of dying without leaving an heir to continue his bloodline--he also becomes obsessed with finding a woman worthy enough to be the bearer of that heir, and in the process make him--in essence--immortal.

He tries with Lenita--who is more than happy to oblige and seems to have some real affection for him, but as it turns out she is barren. Ze's friend Antonio has become engaged to a local lass named Terezhina, whom Ze' more than fancies himself. He decides that he must possess Terezhina and make her the mother of his offspring, and will do anything to make that happen.

The first thing he decides to do is to get Lenita out of the way. He believes--in his own nihilistic way--that if a woman cannot bear a child, she does not deserve to live. He asks Lenita as he has her tied down to what will become her death bed--"Why would you want to live if you cannot bear a child?" He then releases a large and apparently deadly spider from a jar, which bites and kills her.

As he continues to pursue Terezhina--who rejects his advances--it becomes clear to him that he will also have to do away with his best friend in order to have her. One night he accompanies Antonio and Terezhina to a local witch's hut where the young lover's fortunes will be told. The old gypsy foretells death for both of them, and then turns on Ze' proclaiming that he will burn in the fires of hell. Believing in nothing--Ze' scoffs at the old witch's curse.

After Antonio and Ze' walk Terezhina home, Antonio invites Ze' back to his place for a nightcap. Back at Antonio's, the young man begins espousing about how happy he and Terezhina will be once they are married, not paying much attention to Ze's twisted philosophical rants on marriage and death. Ze' becomes agitated listening to Antonio prattle on and on about Terezhina and him having babies and the perfect married life, and finally picks up a fireplace iron and bludgeons Antonio.

He then drags Antonio's body into the bathroom and heaves him into the bathtub and turns on the water. Antonio unexpectedly comes to, and Ze' cruelly drowns his best friend. With both Lenita and Antonio out of the way--and with the authorities unable to pin the murders on him, Ze' feels free to now possess Terezhina completely.

He confronts her at her house, and after many protestations on Terezhina's part, succeeds in raping her. As he leaves her lying on the couch in a ruin--she tells him that she will kill herself before bearing him a child, and that even though she will be dead he will have no rest from either her spirit or Antonio's. She also tells him that at midnight, she will possess his soul. She follows through with her threat, and in a few days Ze' hears about her suicide by hanging. It's back to square one for Ze' in finding the perfect woman to accept his seed and bear his child.

Back at the tavern one night, an attractive lady stops in and asks directions to a particular homestead she is looking for, as she is quite lost. The men all tell her that she is still quite a ways from her destination. She then asks if one of them would be so kind as to accompany her, but as it is the evening of the Day Of The Dead--a holiday much like our Halloween where it is believed the veil between this world and the spirit world is thin and the dead walk the earth for one night--none of them feel obliged to help her. Save one--Coffin Joe.

He has no beliefs--the Day Of The Dead is of no spiritual importance to him, and he spies an opportunity to perhaps find another woman to carry on his bloodline. He escorts her to her destination--carrying on a civil conversation--and leaves her at the door of the house, expressing the hope of seeing her again--to which she agrees.

Ze' then makes his way back to the village thinking to himself that she could indeed be the one for him. Suddenly, he is accosted by the old gypsy witch--who proceeds to tell him that tonight is the night he will pay for his sins on this earth. She tells him to watch for certain signs--the whisper of wind through the trees, the cry of an owl, a silvery light in the black night--these are the signs that will foretell Ze's death. Ze' again rebukes her proclamations and makes his way through the dark night.

Suddenly he notices the whispering wind, and then he hears the screech of an owl. He becomes agitated--are the old witch's words true? Out of the dark night comes the glittery glow of a spirit as Ze' tries to light his pipe. The spirit--Antonio's--offers him a light. This is it--Ze' breaks down and runs helter-skelter into the night until he reaches his morgue.

Feeling more powerful on his own turf, Ze' starts bellowing at the gods, devils and spirits that roam the night--daring them to take him to hell. He hears the ghostly voices of Lenita, Terezhina and Antonio calling to him, and as he still can't believe in anything of a spiritual nature, goes to their burial vaults and opens them. Their decaying bodies--crawling with spiders and maggots--are enough to send Ze' round the bend, as he screams his horror at them--the horror of death and decay that he is so afraid of, hitting him with the full-forced reality of what is to come.

In the morning, the townspeople--who had heard his screams the night before but were afraid to investigate--find him in the vault--seemingly dead, with his eyes wide open and bulging at what was probably the horrific sight of his own death--a death without rebirth as he had failed at continuing his bloodline.'

Coffin Joe is a complex and ironic character, and sometimes we the audience will agree with his views on the chokehold of certain religions. We will laugh in agreement as he shows his scorn for organized spirituality. We also watch in amazement as he exposes the hypocrisy in those so-called religious people who can play poker and gamble and hang around in a tavern drinking on a holy day--but who cannot, for some unknown reason--eat meat. Which of the two seems to be a bigger sin to you--if you believe in sin?

We chuckle at the way he likes to mock the local townspeople's simple beliefs, with his strange admonishments as he leaves the tavern each time. For example, on the eve of the Day Of The Dead--he proclaims as he leaves, that if he sees a walking corpse--he'll send it back to the tavern for a drink! A statement that is certainly blasphemous to these simple, and single-minded folk. Early on in the film Lenita warns him that the devil will surely take him to hell if he doesn't change his ways. His answer to that is, "If I see the devil, I'll invite him back for dinner!"

However, as the film progresses and we see the cruelty with which Ze' dispenses his punishments on these so-called weaker people, we may begin not to like him so much. However, as much as he relishes in degrading these people, he has a profound respect for children, as they are the continuity of life--and would give his life to protect one, while on the other hand he would not hesitate kill the parent who would abuse their child. Yes, he is a sadistic bastard, but at the same time, we can agree with some of his reasoning. It makes for a deep, multi-layered and vastly interesting character-- one that unfortunately cannot be found in most of today's tepid horror offerings.

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul was the first Brazilian horror film, and because of it's potentially offensive nature, it was banned in many states in that country. In Brazil at that time--the country upheld a "states rights" form of government in which each individual state had it's own set of rules regarding censorship, among other things. So, while the film could be released without any edits in one state--in a neighboring one it would have to be heavily edited, or perhaps banned entirely. This resulted in many different versions of the film circulating at the same time.

In Sao Paolo, the film was so popular it ran for four straight months--a feat unheard of at the time--and immediately launched Coffin Joe as the country's pop-culture bogeyman. He was as popular in South America as a Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers is here in North America. One can even tour a Coffin Joe museum in South America as he has become a beloved national icon.

Marins was so intent upon completing this film that he wasn't above breaking the law a little, and employing rather drastic tactics. When he realized he needed foliage for his set, and didn't have the funds to go out and buy trees and shrubbery, he and his crew went to a park in downtown Sao Paolo and proceeded to chop down what they needed. They were subsequently arrested for the deed.

Another time, when a cameraman refused to work because of lack of lighting, Marins pulled out a gun and threatened to kill him. Others on the set corroborated the story, but when Marins was confronted he declared that yes, he did that--but it was just a prop gun. Unfortunately, the poor cameraman didn't know that.

When developing the look of the character, the makeup people noticed that Marins already had unusually long thumbnails. To match the look, long, false nails were bought and applied to Marin’s fingernails. It is amazing to note that Marins only had 13 cans of film stock to work with--when most films of the time took at least 50 cans to complete. Only having 13 cans did not detract from the quality of cinematography in the least, as this film sports wonderfully surreal and lush black and white images.

In another ingenious moment, Marins had to come up with a special effect that would denote a spirit accosting Coffin Joe. As he didn't have the budget--once again--for special effects, Marins glued sparkly glitter on the negative around Antonio's ghostly image. The result was effective, if not a little crude--but the idea behind it was extremely creative and inventive.

Marins has been compared to Luis Bunuel and Mario Bava in visual style, and to Russ Meyer for the exploitative nature of his films. Indeed, many scenes in this film reminded me of Bava's Black Sunday, and while the subject matter is certainly exploitative--it is dealt with in a much more sinister manner than Meyer's usual flippant approach.

While Marins chews a lot of scenery in this film as an actor, he was smart enough to improvise the entire eight minute scene near the end of the film when he is confronting the gods and spirits, and did it in one continuous take! He puts such passion into this scene that it is almost certain Marins feels the same way as his character about religion, and it is a compelling scene to watch.

My source for this article is the first disc in the wonderful Coffin Joe Trilogy set--in which At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, and Awakening Of The Beast come packaged in a wicked cool coffin-shaped box.

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul sports a new digital widescreen transfer from the 35mm print--which could still stand to be cleaned up a bit both in the audio and visual aspects, and includes an interview with Jose' Mojica Marins, the original theatrical trailer--and what's probably the coolest extra--a reproduction of the original Coffin Joe comic book. The film's runtime is 81 minutes and is presented in Portuguese with optional English subtitles. This DVD set was released by Fantoma.