Director: José Mojica Marins
Starring: José Mojica Marins, Magda Mei, Nivaldo Lima, Valéria Vasquez, Ilídio Martins Simões
SYNOPSIS
Zé do Caixão (roughly translated as Coffin Joe) is an cynical, amoral gravedigger who holds a strange hold over the Brazilian village in which he resides. He dismisses all of the superstitions and religious beliefs of the locals and thinks nothing of tormenting them by breaking their morals rules and traditions.
He does, however, have one overriding concern - since he doesn't believe in an immortal soul, he needs to have a son to continue his bloodline and thus achieve some kind of permanent legacy. He kills his wife, who is infertile, and then sets his sights on the local women, leaving death and destruction in his wake. But, there might be more to the ghostly warnings of a local gypsy woman than he realises...
REVIEW
Coffin Joe is one of those cult figures I've heard about many times but have never experienced before now, and what better way to be introduced to his work than his horror début? The first of an official trilogy (followed by This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse and Embodiment Of Evil, though there are many unofficial sequels with the same character), this actually represents the first ever horror movie produced in Brazil.
As such, it has a strange feel to the proceedings. Made on a very low budget, you can see some of the restraints that Marins was under to not go too far out of the mainstream (supposedly his later movies get very bizarre). You can also see the heavy influence of European and American cinema of the time, most especially Hammer and AIP. There's also some padding - some sequences go on way too long, especially monologues from the gypsy woman that start the film then continue at various points while Joe wanders round town with potential victims.
That's not to say that it's not accomplished, however. Marins manages to bring some uniquely Brazilian flavour to his work, especially during early sequences where he cackles while eating a leg of lamb on a holy day where meat is not allowed (and later forces a poor peasant to do the same). There's also a surprisingly high level of gore for a 1964 movie - at one point, a finger is cut off with a broken bottle, later eyes are gouged out, all on screen (albeit in black & white).
Overall, it's a decent movie that promises an interesting career and one that I'm looking forward to catching up with in the near future.
I managed to catch this over at archive.org, but it's also out on DVD. I have the official trilogy coming on DVD now, though, and I'll review them as I watch them.
7 / 10
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