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This
Night I'll Possess
Your Corpse
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8
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8 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Rod
Barnett |
Yes,
folks, Coffin Joe is back! Picking up immediately after the
events in At Midnight I'll Take
Your Soul, this film reveals that the evil and cruel Zé
do Caixao (José Mojica Marins) survived that movie's
vengeful denouement regardless of how dead he may have looked.
After a lengthy stay in the hospital and an oddly quick dismissal
of criminal charges he moves to a new village in his native
Brazil and sets up shop again as a mortician. Of course, it
soon becomes evident that Zé has learned nothing from
his horrifying adventure in the first film. He once again sets
out to find the perfect woman to bear him a son so that his
blood will be immortal. Zé is nothing if not persistent.
He starts by kidnapping several comely lasses from the village
and subjects them to an attack by spiders to test their courage.
Out of the group only Marcia (Nadia Freitas) demonstrates no
fear of the crawling tortures. Zé feels he's found his
mate until she balks at the cruelty of putting the other girls
to death in a pit of snakes. Zé shows contempt for the
final words of one of the doomed girls, who promises that she'll
have her revenge on him and "possess his corpse".
Disappointed with Marica but not angry, he lets her go knowing
that she loves him and therefore will never reveal what she
has seen. A few days later the beautiful Laura (Tina Wohlers)
returns to town from school and much to her family's horror
becomes Zé's lover. She moves in with him and they are
indeed the perfect match. Both are atheists and despise the
"inferior" people around them with their stupid supernatural
beliefs and pathetic compassion for the weak. All is going well
until Laura develops medical problems during her pregnancy and
the couple have to choose between the baby's life and the mother's.
This demoralizing blow seems only a set back for Zé except
that Laura's family and others in the village may have finally
had enough. In classic mob fashion they stalk the monster Zé,
who begins to hear the cursing words of his earlier female victim
as he flees.
Like most sequels to a successful original, This
Night I'll Possess Your Corpse
is a virtual remake of the first film. After dispensing with
the lingering questions from At Midnight
I'll Take Your Soul the film leaps full-bore into trying
to do the same story a little better —
I'm happy to say that it succeeds very well. As much as I like
the first Coffin Joe movie I really prefer this one for its
improved take on the ideas and set pieces. Even though This
Night is longer it actually feels shorter and was definitely
helmed by a director surer of his skills. With Marins in fine
form both in front and behind the camera, I was pleased to see
that even while treading familiar ground he seemed to have found
fresh ways to film even the less horrific moments. When we are
once again shown Zé in an out-of-character moment of
kindness after rescuing a child, it is the parent's fearful
reaction to the incident that sticks in the mind. Staging Ze's
seduction scene of Marcia in a bed overlooking the snake pit
into which he's thrown the other women is pure evil genius.
And I didn't even mention the deformed hunchback assistant!
But the crowning bit of cinematic insanity
is Zé's nightmare of a trip to Hell that's shot in a
bizarre color process unlike anything I've ever seen before.
In this nightmare he stumbles through a Day-Glo cavernous pit
in which snow falls while demons whip and torture nude people
melded into the stalagmites and walls. He sees all these terrible
sights and is appalled, since this is the refutation of his
atheistic beliefs. When he comes to the throne of Hell and finds
himself seated there as ruler it's too much for him; he's jolted
out of sleep screaming maniacally.
This is a tour de force segment of bizarre
cinema and should be witnessed by any fan of the horror genre.
Even after more than 35 years this nightmare scene is eerily
effective and shows a filmmaker working at the edge of his abilities
and budget. As stated, I think this is the best of the Coffin
Joe films and well worth seeing. The fact that this movie didn't
cause a generation of Brazilian film nuts to become moviemakers
is almost unbelievable.
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Fantoma
has done a great job with their DVD of This
Night I'll Possess Your Corpse. As with the At
Midnight disc we get a 1.66:1 digital transfer from the
original 35mm negative. The film is never going to look perfect
considering its budget and the I’m not sure that the color section
looks exactly the way it was intended, but minor flaws aside,
this is as good as I can imagine the film will ever look.
Included as extras are the same three trailers as on the first
disc and a new interview with director/star Marins discussing
this film. Seemingly filmed at the same time as the previous interview,
Marins is quite forthcoming about the production of This
Night and some of the problems involved. I was shocked
to learn that most of the film was shot in an abandoned synagogue
and that one of the ladies in the snake pit was nearly strangled
by one of her reptilian costars. It's sad to hear him explain
that he intended to make a trilogy of Coffin Joe films but has
as yet never mounted a third production for his signature creation.
All the movies Zé do Caixao appeared in after this film
focus on other characters with Zé appearing as either a
boogeyman or silent observer.
In that vein, the last extra included in this
DVD is another great reproduction of an issue of the Coffin Joe-hosted
comic book The Strange World of Zé do Caixao
(translated into English). This issue's tale is entitled Magia
Negra ("Black Magic") and, like its predecessor
packaged with the first disc, is an EC comics-inspired story shot
though with sex and nudity. Great stuff! 8/3/03 |
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