At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul introduces one of the greatest cinematic villains of all time. Forget Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Hannibal Lector. Coffin Joe could teach them all a thing or two.

Coffin Joe is the creation of Brazilian director José Mojica Marins. Marins not only writes and directs but plays the Coffin Joe character. At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is the first Coffin Joe film and it’s very low-budget. However, there is an energy and power to this film that is visible to this very day. The film was a tremendous success in Brazil at the time, even though it never appeared in U.S. theaters. Something Weird released the Coffin Joe films on VHS a few years ago, but now they are finally being released on DVD.

When we first meet Coffin Joe he is still a mortal human and lacks the supernatural powers he gains in later films.  He works as an undertaker in a small Brazilian town. The superstitious townspeople aren’t sure what to think about him. He is definitely a strange-looking character, even for an undertaker, always dressing in a black suit, top hat and cape. A black beard, bushy uni-brow and long claw-like fingernails only accentuate his weirdness.

Apparently the townspeople tolerate Joe, they just speak in hushed voices when he is around. Then one Good Friday, Joe decides he wants to eat some meat, which is apparently very taboo for Brazilian Catholics. Joe doesn’t care. He sits in his window eating a huge leg of lamb and laughing and the church people as they pass by him. The expressions of the shocked churchgoers only goad Joe on further.

Joe’s delight at tormenting the religious townspeople is one of the most entertaining parts of the film. As we learn in his spoken introduction to the movie, Joe doesn’t believe in ANYTHING. Not God. Not Satan. He believes that life is the beginning of death and that’s pretty much it. So he’s not scared to go around tormenting the poor townspeople, flirting with their women, forcing them to take a bite of his lamb leg on Good Friday and beating the crap out of anybody who gets in his way.

Since everybody is afraid of Joe, they don’t rat him out to the authorities. Not even when he cuts a guys fingers off with a broken wine bottle. Joe is the biggest bully in town, but he’s got one problem. His wife can’t get pregnant. Joe is anguished that his bloodline will not continue and what good is a woman if she can’t bear a child. So he takes the most rational course of action. He drugs his wife and lets a poisonous tarantula bite her so that it looks like an accident.

Then he sets his sights on the homely looking Terezhina, who apparently is the most beautiful girl in the world to Coffin Joe. The problem is that Terezhina is engaged to Joe’s best friend. So Joe murders his best friend and rapes Terezhina.  It looks like Joe’s bloodline will continue until Terezhina kills herself and vows to kill Joe from beyond the grave. That’s where the real fun begins!

Marins is positively electric to watch. Coffin Joe is so cocky, so aggressive and so filled with bad intentions that he can barely contain himself. His lips quiver and his eyes practically bug out of his head as he contemplates his evil deeds. And when he gets pissed off, Marins uses a quick dissolve to show Joes eyes suddenly going bloodshot. It’s a little hokey, but pretty ***censored*** cool even to this day.

Watching this film, it becomes clear how far ahead of his time Marins really was. A lot of it is very dated, but there are still elements that are very effective today. The black and white cinematography is actually very good. Marins uses heavy shadows to set an oppressive mood, while doing his best to hide the cheapness of his tiny ramshackle sets. Some of the optical effects are pretty shaky, even in this DVD transfer, but they actually enhanced my enjoyment of the movie. There is even a sequence where Marins glued glitter to each frame of film in order to illuminate a ghost. It looks pretty goofy but it is still great fun to see this kind of shoestring ingenuity.

If you’re a fan of international horror films or experimental cinema in general, you will find a lot to enjoy here. Long live Coffin Joe!

Buy it at Amazon.com!

Rent DVDs Online from Netflix - Try it for FREE!