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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Low Budget Film!, September 22, 2003
Director Jose Mojica Marins took Brazil by storm with the 1963 release of "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul," the first entry in what would soon become known as the Coffin Joe franchise. It may be quite surprising that such a low budget black and white film made in Brazil forty years ago would merit a DVD release, but when you watch the movie, you will readily agree that there is something special about Marins's project. After the release of this movie, the Brazilian director churned out numerous sequels that ultimately led to his becoming a pop culture icon in his native land. Marins often turned up in public dressed in the trademark Coffin Joe attire: a black cape, a black top hat, and hook-like fingernails about three inches long (the fingernails are real, by the way, as an interview with Marins confirms). Genre fans in the United States picked up on the Coffin Joe craze and sought out hard to find copies of his films until an American video company released them here few years ago. Now we can watch the horror that is Coffin Joe on DVD. I love it! I cannot wait to see the other two sequels also out on DVD.Coffin Joe's works as an undertaker for a small Brazilian town. He is not a popular figure with the locals, who cannot stand his sadistic bullying or his mocking attitudes towards God and Satan. Joe laughs at the silly superstitions of the townspeople as he chows down on meat on Fridays and heckles people in a religious procession. When Joe isn't preparing bodies for burial, he spends time taunting his wife at home, hitting on his friend's girlfriend, and hanging out at the local pub. Coffin Joe's biggest concern in life is his ability to produce an heir to carry on his "bloodline." Since his wife suffers from infertility, Joe cannot stand to be around her and must always be on the lookout for a gal who can have children. Perhaps it isn't all that surprising that his desire for offspring attains a murderous mania: after all, a man who doesn't believe in God or an afterlife would have only his physical presence to fall back upon. Reproduction would be the only way to achieve a sort of immortality. Joe's hotheaded antics eventually result in several grisly murders. In the course of his crime spree, he visits a fortuneteller who senses his evil and predicts a series of events that will culminate in Coffin Joe's demise. The undertaker scoffs at such supernatural nonsense and continues on his merry way. In various scenes, Joe murders and brutalizes his way through town. He disposes of his wife with a nasty looking spider, gouges out eyes, cuts off a man's fingers, drowns someone, and flogs a local at the pub. You just know that this guy is eventually going to get what's coming to him, especially after seeing his blasphemous jaunts through the local cemetery where he roars in derision at the dead and questions the very existence of a supreme being. Coffin Joe does finally learn that fooling with the primal forces of creation brings about events of a decidedly unpleasant nature. Marins brilliantly realizes his creation in this film. His performance as Coffin Joe only delves into the melodramatic on a few occasions, for most of the time he exudes an aura of palpable danger. The scenes where the undertaker questions the supreme deity reek of dark atmosphere, made even more intense by the black and white picture. To top the whole thing off, the movie employs some of the eeriest background music I have heard in awhile. The music and pitch black atmosphere help to conceal the low budget production values used in the film. You would swear Coffin Joe is wondering around in a big forest for most of the movie, when in actuality Marins used a very small indoor set for nearly all of his scenes. The best effect in the film occurs during a sequence where Coffin Joe encounters the ghost of one of his victims. In order to create a creepy aura surrounding this walking spirit, Marins glued glitter (yes, glitter!) directly onto the negative. It is simply incredible how well this works on the screen; I have never seen anything like it in any movie I have ever watched. Also, listen for the use of echo boxes during Coffin Joe's blasphemous diatribes, which give the scenes an added dimension of unearthliness. Little tricks like these make "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" an immensely entertaining experience. The DVD contains several surprising extras. You get three trailers for three Coffin Joe films and a lengthy interview with Marins about the creation of this project. The most interesting part of this discussion involves Marins's problems with Brazilian film censors at the time of the movie's release. Marins lied to the officials, telling them that he lost the negative of the film because he feared that the censors would confiscate the movie and permanently ruin it. At one time, at least ten different versions of the movie played throughout a Brazilian city. Fortunately, the DVD version is an uncut version of Marins's magical film. The movie's dialogue is in Portuguese, of course, but the subtitles are easy to see and, unlike many Asian films, actually match up with who is speaking. If you are in the mood for something well beyond the ordinary, look no further than "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul."
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Existential Villain = Sadistic Fun!!!, April 14, 2001
I finally got to see this film after many years of reading about it (and the other Coffin Joe films). Loved it! The black and white photography captures many great moments of surrealistic horror. Some shots would be suitable for framing. Brazilian bogey-man Coffin Joe makes a wonderfully existential villain, provoking would-be gods every chance he gets. Bless his little atheistic heart! The scenes of cruelty are not always the most realistic, but are hard to watch anyway. As an added bonus, this also contains one of the most horrific eye-gouging scenes ever (shades of Bunuel, as the box claims - indeed!).
The DVD is nicely packaged, including a small, nifty reproduction of a Coffin Joe comic book. There are trailers for other Coffin Joe films, and an interesting - if not overlong - recent interview with director/star Marins himself, discussing details of the film. The soundtrack could have used some cleaning up - there's some hiss and crackle, but at least the film is strong enough that this wasn't too distracting. The widescreen video transfer is really nice. Add this to your collection now!!!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This movie is a must have for any serious horror fan, July 22, 2002
Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, and Mummy aside, Coffin Joe was one of the first real modern horror archetypes to grace our movie screens. Actually he didn't grace any screen in America, because he was a Brazillian creation, and that was where he remained for the most part, until Something Weird Video introduced him stateside in the eighties. The quality of video was attrocious, but there was no denying the feeling of that suspenseful hook as it went into you.
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is not a movie that moves at necksnapping pace. Like all good movies about the darker sides of small towns, it conveys the effect of looking into a terrarium or some kind of cage. The star attraction of this tiny town cage, is Coffin Joe, the gravedigger, who holds all the citizenry in a spell of bullyish terror. Without giving too much away, Joe's dilema is that he has no son and his wife is barren. I'd say this is one man's quest to realize his dream, but you'll laugh at the irony of that statement when you see the movie.
This movie could not have been done in anything other than black and white. It's scratchy, unfocused tone only adds to the dreamlike, hallucinatory quality that the story of this movie is supposed to be made of. This film also is a triumph of imagination over severe financial constraints. Shot over a period of scant days, Marins even had the bad luck of having some of the film stock stolen before he even set to shooting.
Finally there is the matter of Coffin Joe himself. Like Freddy, Jason, or Michael Meyers, Joe has threaded himself through many sequels and vignettes. He is an utterly fascinating example of the complexities of the human psyche. Malicious, sadistic, there is even a touch of the heroic as he defies god and satan alike in the graveyard. There is more than one level to his character, and one viewing of this movie alone cannot pigeonhole him. Marins's (who also directed) portrayal of Coffin Joe is nothing short of electric. His performace shows that real terror sometimes is not above and beyond in the supernatural, but in what we are capable of doing to each other and to ourselves.
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