At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul! Is reputedly the first "horror film" produced in Brazil ( beyond maybe some snuff porno loops produced by organized crime and bandied about in urban legends). It's the product of one José Mojica Marins, a.k.a., the legendary "Coffin Joe," a horror filmmaker of no small repute in his homeland, who has been the subject of countless films, television programs, comic books, songs, you name it.
Coffin Joe, who passed into the great Dark Void two years ago, after a long and distinguished sojourn upon this damned earth, wore what looked to be a stage magician's outfit, with a beard and long, curling, claw-like fingernails. He smoked a curling Sherlock Holmes pipe with a huge bowl, and his character played on images of the occult Svengali, voodoo's top hat-wearing Baron Samedi, and a ruthless silent film villain, the kind that would tie Mabel Normand to the railroad tracks while her great droopy, sad moon eyes bogged in terror. He was, however, a creature all his own, an artist unto himself, and his film work and persona prove that one possessed the other. Where did Marins end and "Coffin Joe" begin? It is an enigma.
My friend Elias, who created the harsh noise project Sleep of Ages, and who lives in São Paulo, once saw Coffin Joe perform what he described as a ritual" in a public park. I have no way of knowing what the particulars of that ritual were, but I would have liked to have known how much of it was entertainment, and how much he may have truly believed in. Jodorowsky is just as much a mystic, it is said.
As for the the film, it begins with an incantatory speech from Coffin Joe, where he looks directly at the camera, pointing, speaking of "the continuity of blood," as the stench of death. And that "when everyone is born they begin to die." Perhaps not exactly the right translation, but you get the idea.
Visual pyrotechnic cutting, in the form of fast, quick scenes and animated titles accompanies an opening score that could have been taken from an old Halloween record, with lightning blasts and lo-fi howling wind and shrieks. (Almost reminds me of those cheap Halloween sound effects cassettes you use to be able to buy at the drugstore all October long; they always had a paper orange label and came in a hanging plastic container that could have just as easily housed an action figure.) Then we get the story of "Zé do Caixão," a local mortician who affects an occult persona but seems to scoff at it as "mere superstition from peasants and yokels." He demands meat (lamb) on Good Friday and smashes a broken wine bottle onto the hand of a man he suspects of cheating at cards. He is no humanitarian; he's a cynical, mean-as-hell Nietzschean Darwinist, who revels in his "unbelief." But he will soon learn.
Lenita (Valéria Vasquez), his lover, cannot bear his children, and since he is looking to present to the world a "superman" to carry on his most valuable bloodline, he kills her in a most shocking manner, tying her up and letting a giant spider take her. Likewise, he bludgeons and kills Antonio (Nivaldo Lima), the boyfriend of a girl (Terezhina, played by Magda Mei), who he sees as standing in his way.
He sets another man on fire. Terezhina, his chosen love, hangs herself. He smashes a crown of thorns from a Christ-like statue into the side of a man's face. Even if you discount the eye-gouging, Zé is a violent man and this is a surprisingly bloody film.
The stereotypical fortune-telling gypsy "witch" (Velha Bruxa, played by Eucaris Moraes) is presented, cackling with glee, warning Zé that the "Procession of the Dead" will come for him, to make him pay for all of his sins and blasphemies, his scorn of the spiritual world and his wrongdoing, He scoffs at her. "At midnight, the devil will appear in the form of a cat...she warns him during a reading. He'll take your soul."
After killing everyone he wants (and committing murderous assaults at a local bar for which he is never seemingly jailed), there comes a point in the film, after he has set his roving eye on a new girl, wherein the spirits (on the "Day of the Dead," no less) DO come for him. He wanders, denying they exist, denying his belief in them, reveling in it; but he can hear the old gypsy woman's words echoing in his ears. EVERYTHING she has told him comes to pass.
The ghostly images, and the final scenes (which oddly seem to evoke Romeo and Juliet for some reason) show the imminent destruction of Ze, who has deserved it the entire film for his murderous, blasphemous ways, His final shot is what appears to be as an upside p-down head. But you'll just have to watch it yourself because I'm not certain.
The animated titles and sound effects at the beginning, the weird, cryptic intros by Coffin Joe and the skull-wielding Gypsy woman, mark At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul!, right off the bat, as an old-time spook show, a creature feature par excellence, with a couple of manic hosts, introducing the flick that they also star in. It's good, unclean fun, at midnight, or any other time of the day.
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul! can be viewed on YouTube.
About the Creator
Tom Baker
Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com
Comments (1)
This was a great read. I really liked your insights here! Definitely want to check this out.