Arrow Video
Blu-ray Release: January 16, 2024 (as part of the Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe collection)
Video: 1.37:1/1080p/Black & White
Audio: Portuguese LPCM 1.0 Mono
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Run Time: 82:16
Director: José Mojica Marins
An unholy undertaker named Zé do Caixão (José Mojica Marins) searches for the perfect woman to propagate his bloodline. (From Arrow’s official synopsis)
Despite producing a significant number of motion pictures since the early 1900s, Brazilian filmmakers didn’t really touch upon horror movies until well into the 1960s. Unlike their Italian and Spanish counterparts (who also got a late jump on the horror genre), early Brazilian horror wasn’t a boom associated with multiple directors and performers. Instead, it was a relatively self-contained movement associated largely with one man – José Mojica Marins.
The son of a failed bullfighter-turned-theater-owner, Marins began making movies at a young age, but struggled to complete feature projects, due to a combination of internal creative clashes and external tragedies. He finally scored a hit with At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (Portuguese: À Meia Noite Levarei Sua Alma, 1964) – an EC Comic-inspired brew of blasphemy, religious dogma, Nietzschean nihilism, toxic masculinity, and local mysticism that was steeped in shocking violence and sexual perversion, the likes of which Brazilian and, in many cases, world audiences had never seen before.
For At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, Marins invented the screen alter ego known as Zé do Caixão, loosely translated to Coffin Joe in English-speaking countries (Coffin Zé would be a more direct translation, for the record). Through Coffin Joe, Marins became a Cryptkeeper figure who could vicariously enact wild acts of cruelty and criticize religious hypocrisy and political shortfalls, albeit in an extravagantly over-the-top fashion. Marins played a version of Joe in 13 features and shorts from 1964 to 2018 and was eventually all but indistinguishable from the character in his public life. Between stints as a filmmaker, he also created a grueling acting school, built a small film studio, appeared in comic books, had a perfume line, attempted to enter politics, and acted as a local tastemaker, hosting a horror-themed TV show in his Coffin Joe garb, like a Brazilian Svenghoolie.
Marins’ popularity waxed and waned following various controversies, banned status, and revivals over the years. His influence outside of Brazil and the Portuguese-speaking world remained obscure until some time in the 1990s, when international cult critics and fans rediscovered his work and brought it to the attention of the Fangoria crowd, early internet communities, and eventually mainstream filmmakers, like Tim Burton (White Zombie even sampled him for the intro of 1995’s “I, Zombie”). Marins passed away in February of 2020 at the age of 83, but remains Brazil’s most recognizable horror personality, as well as one of Latin America’s most influential filmmakers.
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is, in many ways, the most accessible of Marins’ Zé do Caixão movies. Assuming that the viewer can navigate the oddities of low budget filmmaking and outsider art, it more or less follows established B-horror conventions from a foreign point-of-view. Its gritty, Latin version of largely American genre traditions sort of match what Italian and Spanish horror filmmakers were attempting during the early ‘60s, albeit on an even lower budget and without the benefit of prebuilt castles to use as backdrops. It even has a relatively straightforward plot.
That said, it is still a truly singular vision of horror show hullabaloo that plants the seeds of Marins’ increasingly outrageous projects to come and, of course, introduces his alter ego, who, in this earliest incarnation, Joe/Zé is more of a bully than a force of evil. Kind of a Scumbag Dracula. The level of sexuality and violence isn’t groundbreaking (it was made post-Hammer horror and Herschell Gordon Lewis), but still pushes the boundaries for the early ‘60s. What was likely more shocking to Brazilians at the time was the relentless, grinning sacrilege.
Video
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul was a bootleg favorite for many years and I believe had its first official VHS release via Something Weird Video, when they ushered almost every available Marins horror film onto North American home video during the ‘90s. The first stateside DVDs came from defunct studio Fantoma, who released At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul alongside This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse and Awakening of the Beast as the Coffin Joe Trilogy. There were other releases in other countries, including the UK, Australia, and Brazil, but the next relevant stateside release came from Synapse, who released standard definition DVDs of both At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, claiming that the 35mm scans of the original negatives they had on hand weren’t good enough for an HD release and that the films would likely never hit Blu-ray. Apparently, Arrow Video found a way.
Each film in Arrow's Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe collection (aside from Embodiment of Evil) begins with a version of the following text:
2022 4K restoration executed at Cinecolor Brazil lab with the support of Arrow Films and under the supervision of Mojica’s last producer, Paulo Sacramento. Digital restoration done from the 35mm image interpositives (printed in 1996) and a 35mm print supplied by Cinemateca Brasileira. The audio files were restored from the preexisting telecine of a 35mm print.
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul sets the stage for the set with its tidy, but soft overall look. The print source prevents fine texture and grain (cinematographer Giorgio Attili also struggles to keep some scenes in focus), making it weaker than some of the other titles in the collection, but the gradient range is still stronger than the super-harsh DVDs and the footage itself has been cleansed of most major damage (some scratchy moments and vertical lines survive), all without overloading the 1.37:1 image with DNR and other digital tampering.
Audio
At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul is presented in its original mono Portuguese and uncompressed LPCM sound. The pre-movie title cards also tell us that the audio files used on most of these discs were taken from preexisting telecine scans of a 35mm print. Again, this disc sets the stage for the other films in the set, at least the earliest ones, with a mostly clean track that nevertheless suffers from understandable inconsistencies. I believe that the film was shot with only limited sync’d sound (if any), so a lot of inconsistency can be blamed on dubbing and foley, while others are just a case of high volume levels distorting the tracks. The music is credited to Salatiel Coelho and Hermínio Gimenez, though I don’t know if they composed cues specifically for the film or not.
Extras
Commentary with José Mojica Marins, filmmaker Paulo Duarte, and film scholar Carlos Primati (in Portuguese with English subtitles) – As far as I can tell, this archival track hasn’t previously been available for English speaking audiences (edit: it appears to have been recorded for release with a Brazilian DVD via Cinemagia). I’m also not quite sure when it was recorded. Duarte and Primati may be well-prepared to moderate (and they do ask some valuable technical questions), but their presence is almost an afterthought, as Marins is an almost nonstop anecdote machine, consistently describing his artistic intent, recalling behind-the-scenes stories, contemplating Coffin Joe’s psychopathy, and basically narrating the on-screen action whenever the discussion threatens to lag.
Coffin Joe's Sadean Underworld (12:10, HD) – During 2023 video essay by film scholar and author of Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure, Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film (McFarland, 2011), Lindsay Hallam explores shared themes from Marins’ work, Coffin Joe’s philosophy, the politics of ‘60s Brazil, Nietzsche’s concept of the übermensch, and the Zé do Caixão series’ larger connections to Sadean philosophy, leading to comparisons to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Italian: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, 1977).
Damned: The Strange World of José Mojica Marins (65:18, HD) – I can’t remember where I first saw this 2001 documentary, but I think it was paired with airings of some of the Coffin Joe movies on TCM or IFC. Either way, it was co-directed by André Barcinski and Ivan Finotti, and became a vital source for all things Marins in the early days of his American/European re-discovery. It includes interviews with the man himself (most recorded for the doc in 1999), friends, family, and colleagues, as well as archive photos, a tour of the old neighborhood, and footage from the films, from behind-the-scenes footage, and from Marins’ public appearances.
Bloody Kingdom (8:55, HD) – This 16mm short historical drama by Marins (shot in 1948, released in 1952) has no surviving audio elements, so it is presented with an informative director's commentary.
The Adventurer's Fate (Portuguese: A Sina Do Aventureiro, 1958; 12:49, HD) – An excerpt from one of Marins’ Brazilian westerns. This one is presented with sound, but is in understandably rough shape.
My Destiny in Your Hands (Portuguese: Meu Destino Em Tuas Mãos, 1963; 15:55, HD) – Another excerpt from another of Marins’ pre-Coffin Joe works. This one is a domestic melodrama and includes a fully animated credit sequence and an almost shot-for-shot recreation of the bell tower-ascending sequences from Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958).
Two theatrical trailers
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