THIS NIGHT I'LL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE

THIS NIGHT… is José Mojica Marins’ second film to feature the maniacal character of Zé do Caixao, or Coffin Joe as he is better known to Western viewers. There was a three year gap between the shooting of AT MIDNIGHT I’LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1963) and this film is in many ways superior to the earlier title. Indeed, many fans regard this as Marins’ best film, but I still prefer AT MIDNIGHT, for reasons mentioned in my review of that film. THIS NIGHT… is once again shot in black-and-white, but is technically superior to AT MIDNIGHT… in (nearly) all departments. The photography and direction are handled with more skill, and the fx are very impressive. However, there is very little plot in this film, where AT MIDNIGHT… had some interesting ideas and a relatively strong storyline.

The film begins with a montage of shots from the earlier film, showing Zé’s experiences in the cemetery and subsequent eye trauma. However, where it appeared that Zé had died, he had in fact survived and is recuperating in hospital, where he is visited by the police, who are investigating his crimes in the first film. They don’t have enough evidence to arrest him, and he is soon out on the streets to terrorise the town’s inhabitants once again. As in the first film, Zé searches for a perfect woman to bear his child, this time aided by a hunchback servant called Bruno. He auditions a group of women by forcing them to let big, hairy (real!) spiders crawl all over them and throws a woman into a pit full of snakes. The woman curses Zé, and this leads to one of the most extraordinary scenes in contemporary cinema, in which Zé is literally dragged off to Hell to confront the Devil himself (played by none other than... Marins). Marins’ Hell isn’t the traditional fiery purgatory, but is an icy nightmare, with walls made of human bodies and tortured souls. 

This short sequence is filmed in stunning colour and really is something to behold, especially when one takes into account Marins’ budgetary constrictions. The fx in this scene are a bit cheesy (one of the devil’s minions runs round poking people with a big rubber pitchfork that quite obviously doesn’t enter their bodies), but it is incredibly well realised. There is a constant clamouring of screaming, wailing souls on the soundtrack and the icy walls, interrupted by body parts as the snow falls in thick sheets, really do amount to a true ‘vision’ on Marins’ part. The devil as played by Marins is a campy figure - surrounded by amused-looking women he sits on his throne, laughing heartily as Zé reels about in panic. As Marins says in the interview on the disc, no-one has ever come back from Hell to tell us what it looks like, so why shouldn’t it be cold? The use of so many naked women, and the breasts and bottoms sticking out from the walls, are surprising for the time and indicate Marins’ future direction (he would make many porn films and would feature sex quite prominently in his future work).

THIS NIGHT… is certainly an important film in the horror genre, and would probably be regarded as a masterpiece by now were it made in a country whose cinema was better known in the rest of the world. The scenes in Hell are almost without precedent, only matched by Nobuo Nakagawa’s hallucinatory vision of Hell in his JIGOKU (1960), and show the incredible effects that Marins could achieve with a small budget and a dedicated, but non-professional crew. The actors in the film are also non-professionals, and the scenes featuring Zé torturing the women with real snakes and spiders are very unpleasant, and it’s clear that some of the women are genuinely panicked. Zé’s character is less well-defined in this film, so it’s helpful if the viewer is familiar with AT MIDNIGHT… allowing them to fill in the gaps in the character themselves. The film is also slightly overlong, where AT MIDNIGHT moved along at a fair pace, never allowing the viewer to become disinterested. Marins does convey a real sense of dementia and sadism in Zé this time around – whereas in AT MIDNIGHT… he was an evil blasphemer with some redeeming qualities, in this film he is simply evil.

THIS NIGHT was a great hit in Brazil, and made Marins a true star, yet he would still have trouble financing his films, due to horror's unacceptability as entertainment in Brazil at that time. The character of Zé do Caixao became extremely well known and Marins capitalised on this, appearing on TV and the radio, incorporating the character in many of his films, and writing books and comics featuring him. Marins is now regarded as an icon in Brazil, and is still going strong at the age of 71. Though he hasn’t made a film since 1994, he did recently appear in a documentary about the Zé character, COFFIN JOE: THE STRANGE WORLD OF JOSÉ MOJICA MARINS (2001).

Marins had apparently intended the story of Zé to be developed over the course of six films, but THIS NIGHT remains the second and last part of the series to be completed. Marins would go on to make other films featuring the character of Zé, but this was the only other film to feature a story in which he was the star. Marins’ next directorial work was a segment (‘Pesadelo Macabro’) for the horror anthology TRILOGY OF TERROR (1968). He then made THE STRANGE WORLD OF ZÉ DO CAIXAO (1968), another anthology film featuring three tales, the last of which features Zé trying to prove his theory that love does not exist, or has died. This last story is great, and features some amazing, gruesome gore and fx, all very convincing. Next came a sex film, and then AWAKENING OF THE BEAST (1969), Fantoma’s third and final COFFIN JOE release (for now).

DVD Specification
Original year of release - 1966
Approximate running time - 107min.
Aspect ratio - Widescreen ~1.66:1
System - NTSC (b&w with short colour segment)
Rating - Unrated
Sound - Dolby Digital Mono (1.0)
DVD release - Fantoma Film
Region Coding - Region 0 (code free)

DVD Extras
Original Theatrical Trailer, plus trailers for 'At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul' and 'Awakening of the Beast'.
Interview with Marins
Reproduction 'Coffin Joe' Comicbook

DVD Ratings (out of 5)
Picture - 4
This disc is a big improvement over AT MIDNIGHT, though it’s still fairly ropy and would look awful if compared to a modern film on DVD. The transfer is quite grainy and has a lot of ‘fades’ where the blacks lighten, but it’s certainly in better shape than AT MIDNIGHT, presumably because it wasn’t shot on bits and pieces of film. The picture is presented in rough 1.66:1 and the subtitles are very easy to read, and very well translated. The black-and-white parts look far worse than the colour sequence, which really looks great (though not as good as that in the third Coffin Joe disc, AWAKENING OF THE BEAST). By far the worst quality part of the film is the beginning, which reprises events from the end of AT MIDNIGHT. Please note that the picture ratings I've given the three discs are all high due to the nature of the films being released - they're not up to the standard of a usual '4' but are special cases.
Sound - 3
2-track DD mono, as with the other discs in the series. There’s lots of reverb and wailing, and this is reproduced to good effect, as especially in the Hell sequence when it really does envelop you. Not too bad quality, though there’s some hiss and lack of clarity. Overall, it’s very similar to the sound on AT MIDNIGHT – no worse, no better.
Extras - 4
As with the other DVD’s, we get a trailer for the film and also for the other two Coffin Joe films released by Fantoma, plus a reproduction comic book. The best extra once again though is the interview with Marins, here running to about 8 minutes in length. He talks about the making of the film and the difficulties he faced and also about how he created the film’s look. It’s only a shame that these interviews couldn’t have been a bit longer…
Overall Rating - 4
Another excellent presentation of a great Coffin Joe film, and a seminal piece of work in world horror cinema. You’re less likely to re-watch this than AT MIDNIGHT but this one will probably stick with you for longer, due to some amazing set-pieces. Fantoma have done another astounding restoration and really deserve kudos for bringing Marins’ unique films to a wider audience. If you like world cinema then you must see this film!

AKA
"Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadaver" (Original Brazilian title)
This Night I Will Make Your Corpse Incarnate
Tonight I Will Eat Your Corpse
Tonight I Will Enter Your Corpse
Tonight I Will Make Your Corpse Turn Red
Tonight I Will Paint in Flesh Colour

Alternative versions
The only other widely seen version of this film was Something Weird's VHS release which was essentially the same as this release in terms of content. It was also subtitled. I have the tape and the DVD absolutely beats it into a pulp!

 

 

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