Coffin Joe: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964)

[trekgeezer]

This is the first  of the Coffin Joe series made by Brazilian director Jose Mojica Marins (he's also the star). Evidently Jose and these films have quite a cult following.

Coffin Joe is the top hat and cape wearing undertaker in a small Brazilian town. He is also the local sociopathic bully. Joe doesn't like much about anything except for the power of fear he has over the towns people.

After a funeral at the beginning of the movie Joe goes home for lunch. He quickly get p**sed when Lenita, his house keeper, brings him a lunch with no meat. Seems it's a holy day, so no meat allowed. Joe leaves to look for a leg of lamb to consume.

While Joe is wolfing down the lamb at the local pub he decides to join in on a poker game. When he wins and one the other players begs for his money back, Joe just breaks a bottle and cuts the guys finger off. Being a good sport though, Joe does have someone summon the doctor and says he'll pay  the poor fellows medical expenses.

Joe then goes home to torment Lenita. Poor Lenita is barren and Joe wants offspring and she can't provide him with one, so she has to go. He knocks her out with ether and then gags her and ties her to the bed. When she wakes up  he lets adeadly tarantula loose on her, then after she's dead he thanks her for the entertainment.


Joe starts getting the hots for his best friend Antonio's fiance Terezinha.  Antonio asks Joe to go with them to gypsy to get their fortunes read. The gypsy tells Joe that he will pay for all his misdeeds.

Later when Antonio and Joe are alone at Antonio's place Joe clonks Antonio with a poker, then puts him the bath tub and drowns him .

Although all the town's people know what probably happened, Joe skates as usual. Later he visits Terezinha and proceeds to knock her around and rape her (this is only implied, not shown).

Terezinha hangs herself later. She leaves a note, but doesn't implicate Joe in anything. The doctor has to write a report about her death, but is interrupted by Joe. Joe gouges the doctors eyes out with his long finger nails and the douses him with alchohol and sets him on fire.


The end of the movie is Joe on a rant about God, life, reincarnation, and plethora of other babblings. It's at this point I was getting sleepy and gave up. I understand the ending is very disappointing.

According to IMDB this movie was,except for two outside scenes, made on a 600 sq. ft. soundstage. The production is sub low budget.

A couple of things to look out for as far as cheese factor, when Joe is getting ready to do bad he does the closeup raised eyebrow thing, then his eyes get really bloodshot.  He could also use a serious manicure.

Overall (to me anyway) this came pretty close to a snoozer, but since IFC is showing the entire series on Friday nights I will brave the other two.

This Night I'll Take Your Corpse and Awakening the Beast (I read this one has hippies and dope, and got banned for 20 years by the Brazilian military dictatorship).

[Mr_Vindictive]

I've yet to see any of the Coffin Joe films, but I did Tivo this one last night.  I hope to get around to watching it tonight as I've always heard good things.

Your somewhat disappointed review makes me a bit wary of the film but oh well.  I guess we're all on this board to suffer. 

[trekgeezer]

I really never heard of these films before I saw IFC was showing them. The pacing seems kind of off and the speehes interpersed throughout the movie put me off a little bit.  Another thing that bothered me is that athough the movie is subtitled, the dialogue seems dubbed for some reason.

I've read some good things about the other two, so I will be watching them.

[Andrew]

I have the terribly unwieldy box set that came out - it is shaped liked a large coffin and refuses to be stored easily.  Watched them all at the time and I decided some of the things you noted are probably caused by cultural differences.  In some ways, I felt the movie was working like Bollywood films do.

This, the first one, seemed like an honest effort that was flawed.  If memory serves, the second was not all that bad and did not dip into the goofiness (like the glowing ghost).  The third film, I remember it being a terribly confusing mess with a misplaced goal of shocking the audience.

[Scott]

Saw COFFIN JOE: AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL a couple years ago when I rented it from Netflix. It wasn't as good as I expected, but somehow I feel it's a must see film from Brazil, so Skaboi don't be discouraged and do check it out. It's definately worth the look just don't expect to be blown away.

[Yaddo 42]

Another thing that bothered me is that athough the movie is subtitled, the dialogue seems dubbed for some reason.

Maybe it was shot without sound, and recorded later, many movies that were to play in many different nations from this time were shot this way. If it was shot on as small a budget and soundstage as IMDB says, this seems possible. Just from a logistics standpoint, even if the film was for Brazil mostly.

I have the second film, meant to pick up the others but Best Buy turnover purged them quite quickly. Still haven't watched it all. But the interview with him and the trailers are pretty damn cool.

Wasn't there a topic a while back about Coffin Joe, talking about the films, and someone on here had a Brazilian wife who knew of Joe as an odd celebrity there. Also The thread seemed to say that the blasphemy and disrespect of religion and Catholicism was a big shocker for the time in Brazil.

Guess I should do a search for it.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I got around to watching the film last night.  My reaction was quite a bit different than Trek's.  The film was pretty good, in my opinion.  It was surreal, strange, but entertaining.  I was also surprised at just how violent the film was for the time.  Also the issues it touched on, such as rape and religion I'm sure were taboo in it's time as well.

Someone on IMDB said that one's first meeting with the Coffin Joe films are a strange experience.  You either love the character or are confused.  In my experience, it was the first.  Can't wait till IFC shows the two sequels in the coming weeks.