‘COFFIN JOE’ TRIPLE-BILL : including new release ‘Embodiment of the Devil’ [6/10] updated WED.8.JULY

Published on: July 5th, 2009

Zé do Caixão (usually translated as "Coffin Joe") is one of the most colourfully intriguing figures in post-WWII Brazilian culture, spanning the worlds of cinema, TV, comic-strip, politics and much else besides (perfumes! Volkswagens!!) He's popped up in all manner of big and small-screen enterprises over the last four and a half decades, each time played by his creator, José Mojica Marins (see Christoph Huber's invaluable overview of his career, as linked below), who's frequently written and/or directed the projects.
   Central to the mythos are a trio of horror films: a black-and-white pair, long established as cult/underground favourites, were made on minimal budgets in the mid-sixties. Then Mojica Marins very belatedly – and somewhat unexpectedly – emerged from semi-obscurity to complet the "trilogy" on a much grander scale with Embodiment of the Devil, which premiered at Venice last year.
   The closest comparison is with Dario Argento, a slightly more "mainstream" figure in the world of fantastique cinema, whose 'Three Mothers' trilogy spanned 1977's Suspiria, 1980's Inferno and 2007's Mother of Tears. Though second to none in terms of promotional exploitation of his image, Mojica Marins is, shall we say, nowhere near Argento's league as a film-maker. The best of the individual segments in the Zé do Caixão trilogy – Embodiment of the Devil - is inferior to the weakest in Argento's demonic trifecta (Mother of Tears.)
   But the odd thing about the Mojica Marins pictures is that, despite their numerous individual deficiencies, they do cohere and combine into a whole that's much more effective than their separate parts….

   The first two movies are close variations on a specific theme – as hinted by their very similar, very easily interchangeable (and 'confusable') titles. In At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul we're introduced (via not one but two hammily extravagant spoken-to-camera prologues) to thirtyish small-town grave-digger/funeral-director Josefel Zanatas, known to all and sundry as Zé do Caixão or just Zé for short – more than any other nation on earth, the Brazilians have always been obsessed with nicknames. 
   A blithe, dandyish psychopath perpetually obsessed with mating with a "superior" woman in order to perpetuate his "superior" bloodline and create a "superior" child, this ranting Nietzschean Machiavel thinks nothing of offing his live-in lover, his supposed best "friend", and anyone else who comes even close to getting in his way. 
   A staunch, fanatical atheist (during a period when Catholicism-dominated Brazil – the place, as they used to say, where "the nuts come from" – was effectively a dictatorial police-state) Zé goes about his nefarious business with minimal interference from local representatives of authority – police, the church – and is only stymied when falling foul of another "outsider": his town's ancient, curse-dispensing witch.
   While never exactly a sympathetic individual – he's a short-tempered bully, a lecherous rapist, a verbose egomaniac who's awfully fond of the sound of his own voice (Brazilian-Portuguese proves eminently well-suited to arrogant ranting) – Zé is certainly among the more charismatic of movie monsters, one whose vaulting ambition and preening self-regard give him a maverick energy and an indomitable drive that no-one else on view comes close to emulating.
   If nothing else, it's bracing to encounter such a confidently blasphemous anti-hero from such a notably god-fearing – which makes it all the more disappointing when the climax of Midnight, featuring the anti-hero's elaborate comeuppance, comes down so firmly on the side of superstition, religion and those whom Zé so vituperitavely scorns as "bible-thumpers."

   As it turns out, the finale of At Midnight isn't what it appears - as with the heroes of old-school Saturday morning serials, Zé cheats what had looked unmistakably like death, thanks to a bit of retrospective narrative revisionism at the start of follow-up This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse. Nimbly cheating justice and moving to a new locale in a dusty middle-of-nowhere town he resumes his corpse-strewn pursuit of the "ideal" woman.
   Mojica Marins works with a bigger budget this time – most of which looks to have been spent (squandered?) on an elaborate, primitive-colour dream-sequence in which Zé takes a tour of a frostier-than-usual Hell. It's somewhat drab and unimaginative stuff for all the envelope-pushing torments on view – especially in contrast with what is by far the most inventive element of the picture: truly berserk opening titles comprising quick glimpses of the nightmarish nastiness to follow, over which the actors' names appear in wobbly capital letters. 
   As with the first movie, This Night – the longest of the trilogy at a patience-testing 100+ minutes - gives the impression of a Bunuelian cock-snooking at religious/papal authority, only ultimately to come down on the side of the 'angels'. Even worse, this time the swaggeringly demonic Zé actually repents as he faces death, sinking to the bottom of a soupy, Ed Wood-style mist-wreathed swamp alongside the bones of his victims.  

   Zé devotees had to wait over 40 years to discover that – guess what! – the climax of This Night was as much of a cheat as At Midnight. Zé rises from the depths (impersonated by an eerily convincing young doppelganger, reportedly recruited via YouTube) in flashbacks near the start of Embodiment of the Devil. Preceded, somewhat incongruously, by the logo of Twentieth Century Fox – perhaps Rupert Murdoch felt like doing a favour for a fellow indefatigable, convention-busting septuagenarian – this final chapter in the Zé trilogy sees the perennially top-hatted, black-clad, long-fingernailed coffin-maker (and, indeed, coffin-dodger) on the loose in 21st century Sao Paulo, having served a forty year sentence for his heinous misdemeanours.
   Mojica Marins wastes no time asserting Zé's topicality, making him a somewhat unlikely defender of the favela against the depradations of gun-wielding cops who might well have stumbled out of Elite Squad (even if these veteran plods look like the dads or even the grandfathers of the trigger-happy young bucks from Jose Padilha's morally-tricky Golden Bear winner.)
   Zé, you see, has always had a quite genuine (and non-sinister) soft spot for children – whom he regards as uncorrupted, pure beings to be protected at all costs. Indeed, the trilogy's most notable example of remorse from Zé comes when he realises that he's dispatched a pregnant woman and thus inadvertently caused the demise of an unborn foetus.
   Taking full advantage of relaxed censorship restrictions, Mojica Marins revels in Zé's messianic sadism in this full-blooded, full-colour third instalment. He's never been that much of a writer, nor anyone's idea of a great director, but he's clearly improving on both fronts with the passing years. And his thespian skills have also advanced even as his physical powers have diminished. 
   As befits the title, Mojica Marins holds proceedings together with his glowering dark charm – even when it's far from clear what's going on and why. And this time, for once, the climax doesn't see Mojica Marins either endorsing religion or making Zé endure the indignities of recantation. Indeed, whereas At Midnight and This Night are let down by their frustrating finales, Embodiment actually becomes more satisfying as it goes along. Mojica Marins makes judicious use of clips from the earlier two movies - a technique that gives a real sense of a developing mythology – and fades out with the young Zé's haughty visage, flickeringly superimposed upon his own lightning-sundered gravestone.
   Of course, if any of us know anything at all about Zé do Caixão, it's surely that death - no matter how terminal things may seem - is never really really really the end.

Neil Young
7th/8th July, 2009

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AT MIDNIGHT I WILL TAKE YOUR SOUL : [5/10] : í€ meia-noite levarei sua alma : Brazil 1964 : 82m (timed – video projection)
THIS NIGHT I WILL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE : [5/10] : Esta noite encarnarei no teu Cadáver : Brazil 1967 : 109m (timed – video projection)
EMBODIMENT OF THE DEVIL : [6/10] : Encarnação do Demí´nio aka Embodiment of Evil : Brazil 2008 : 94m (timed)

Triple-bill rating : [7/10]

all seen at ICA, London – 4th July, 2009 – public screenings ( £5 each)

second opinion / further reading : Christoph Huber, CinemaScope

BBFC notes:
ENCARNACAO DO DEMONIO – EMBODIMENT OF THE DEVIL is a subtitled Portuguese-language horror feature about a demonic undertaker, convicted for a series of killings forty years previously, who is released from prison only to resume his grotesquely murderous ways in a search to find the perfect woman to continue his bloodline. The film was passed '18' for strong bloody violence and horror.
   The film takes a deliberately excessive approach to its portrayal of violence which includes scenes of torture, dismemberment and cannibalism. The consequences for the victims of the main character's actions are painful and gory, with many of the scenes lying within the conventions of the extreme horror genre. The nature of the violence and the bloody images sit alongside the kind of horror most recently offered – and passed at '18' – by films such as those from the SAW and HOSTEL series, providing a focus on 'the infliction of pain or injury' and some of the 'strongest gory images' which are not permitted by the Guidelines at '15' and which secured the '18' category for the work.
   Although both men and women count amongst the victims of the strong violence in the film, there are scenes in which there is some dwelling on female nudity in conjunction with the violence on display. The Guidelines state that, even at '18', 'the Board may also intervene with portrayals of sexual violence which might eg eroticise or endorse sexual assault'. It was felt however that, on balance, the violence perpetrated by the main character had no overt sexual charge and nor did he appear to derive sexual stimulation from his actions, but rather the nudity was part of the film's exaggerated 'exploitation horror' style that did not require intervention at the adult category.
   The film also contains strong language.
   This work was passed with no cuts made.
   The main spoken language in this work is Portuguese.