Esta noche poseeré tu cadáver

The idea of going bigger and bolder when tackling the sequel to a surprise hit is nothing new, as evidenced by Jose Mojica Marins' follow-up to cult Brazilian horror classic At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. The first film managed to achieve cult status in its native country and with anybody lucky enough to see it elsewhere in the world, so director, co-writer and lead star Marins managed to bag a noticeably larger budget and used this to further explore the darkest regions of his mind. The result - the wonderfully-titled This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse - is little more than a shameless re-hash of the previous story, but as a piece of psychedelic gothic horror, it manages to outshine its predecessor in every way. At the end of Midnight, Marins' Ze do Caixao, or 'Coffin Joe', was left for dead by supernatural forces. But now he's back, and more determined than ever to find the perfect bride to carry his child.

While the villagers hid in fear of Joe last time around, they have since grown weary of his superior attitude and suspect him of the many disappearances that took place in their community. However, without sufficient evidence to bring him to trial, Joe is released to carry on with his undertaker duties and his search for the mother of his future son. Assisted this time by a hunchback named Bruno (Jose Lobo), Joe imprisons some of the village's most beautiful young ladies and tests them in order to prove their worthiness. Sadly, the test involves an army of spiders, and while one woman, Marcia (Nadia Freitas), remains calm, the others panic and are thrown into a pit to be killed by snakes. While Marcia is deemed unsuitable to bear his child, she is employed as a spy while Joe sets out to seduce the beautiful Laura (Tina Wohlers), the daughter of a local colonel who shares Joe's twisted outlook and logic.

Marins only stepped into the role of Coffin Joe when the original actor dropped out before the first film started production, but this proved to be a stroke of luck as it's difficult to imagine anybody else donning the top hat, neatly-trimmed beard and grotesque, talon-like fingernails. Joe is more cunning this time around, using his wits to frame a local strongman for the murders and to escape some violent confrontations. A curse placed upon him by one of his victims slowly drives him mad, leading to one of the film's most exceptional set-pieces. In his dreams, Joe journeys into hell, a cesspit of cruelty and torture shot in bold colour (the rest of the picture is grainy black-and-white). Bloody limbs and body parts emerge from the stone walls and poor souls are whipped and beaten continuously is a never-ending carousel of savagery. It's a nightmare that even terrifies Joe, and this segment provides a disturbing window into Marins' imagination. This second entry into the Coffin Joe series moves a mile-a-minute, offering everything from phoney-looking backdrops to smoke-machine special effects as it touches on almost every taboo imaginable, but this excess is all part of its charm, and what makes the world of Ze do Caixao so unique.

Following up the success of his first appearance as Coffin Joe, Mojica filmed the second part of his horror trilogy with his character. The story starts exactly where the first movie left off, with Coffin Joe surviving the supernatural attack of the first movie. Being absolved of the crimes he commited, he returns to his city, still in search of the ideal woman to bear him a perfect son, this time aided by the hunchback servant Bruno. Joe kidnaps and tests several women who may prove worthy of bearing his offspring. All of them fail, and as they are being eliminated (with real live snakes!) a curse is set upon Coffin Joe...a curse that will make the funeral agent see hell in colour! A more ambitious follow-up for the first movie, "This night" suffered cuts and alterations on its dialogues by the military dictatorship censors prior to its release in Brazil. The coloured sequence of Joe's descent into hell (the rest of the movie was shot in B&W) are a fine example of the best that Mojica's cinema has to offer: brilliant, raw ideas on a shoestring budget.

This sequel to At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul once again stars Coffin Joe as the devilish gravedigger. It starts off where the last film ended with our anti-hero found to still be alive, he is taken back to stand trial for his crimes and is found innocent despite the fact that he committed his misdeeds in public for all to see! Anyway he now seeks a woman to bear him a child. To achieve this he captures several girls and kills most of them. It may sound straightforward but really the story-line is most bizarre and senseless. But this is the world of Coffin Joe and nothing else can really be expected to be perfectly honest.

In my view this sequel is better than the original. There are several reasons for this. For one thing José Mojica Marins has developed as a film-maker. He seems to have a – slightly – higher budget and this is used to expand things a little with better set-pieces and a great scene where Coffin Joe descends into Hell. This sequence breaks the black and white presentation and is shown in psychedelic colours. Marins depiction of Hell is highly imaginative and surreal with much grotesquery and sadism. Additionally, the movie does seem to be paced better than the first instalment despite being twenty odd minutes longer. It's also a fair bit gorier and sleazier as well. Coffin Joe dispatches with several of his enemies in a bloody manner by axe, boulder and shoe-applied razors! He also treats a gaggle of women very badly indeed with extended scenes involving lots of big spiders crawling all over then and then a group of angry looking snakes fulfilling a similar end.

It's a wild concoction for sure. It may well be a very low budget film but Marins makes the most of what he's got. And he does, after all, remain the only true Brazilian horror director, so on that basis alone his work is fascinating in itself. Perhaps as a reaction to his country's religious beliefs Coffin Joe constantly rails against theocracy and is a committed atheist. This, alongside his unexpected love of children, is a most bizarre trait for a horror villain and provides an original subtext to proceedings. At Midnight I'll Possess Your Corpse is certainly a film for the attention of cult film fanatics that's for sure.

This sequel lacks a little of noir atmosphere present in At Midnight I will Take Your Soul. It also reinforces more Josefel "Coffin Joe" Zanatas's logics in prejudice of mistery (all spiritual or magic elements in the former movie are proved to be only his imagination and fears): he believes there is no life after death, then the only way to be ethernal is to have offspring. That is why he seeks the most perfect woman possible to give him a child, "a perfect child" or preferably "a perfect son" (she may be not only beautiful but also share his eugenics belief, have no fear, and refuse any religion). There is also why he kills those who he believes that will not generate good children, and why be cares so much about children and particularly babies and fetuses. However, two of the best filmed scenes of his career are from this movie: the curse of Janaína and the sequence from him on his bedroom until his entrance in hell. The portrayal of hell in colour, constrating with black and white cinematography in the rest of the movie, is interesting but not the best moment.

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse, the sequel to director José Mojica Marins' cult horror At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963), sees the return of amoral, blasphemous gravedigger Zé do Caixão (José Mojica Marins), who, having recovered from his seemingly fatal supernatural ordeal in the first film, and having been absolved of all past crimes, returns to his village to continue his quest to find the perfect woman to bear him a son.

Aided by disfigured hunchback Bruno (Jose Lobo), Zé abducts six sexy women, whom he subjects to a horrific trial by spider (this scene is an arachnophobe's nightmare!) to determine their suitability as mates. Only one woman, Marcia (Nadia Freitas), passes the test, but—just a little upset by the fact that the other five women are subsequently killed—she refuses to make love to Zé. He surmises that she is not the superior specimen he believed her to be, but allows her to go free.

Eventually, despite his silly cape, stupid hat, obscenely long fingernails, AND a most magnificent mono-brow, Zé somehow wins the heart of local babe Laura (Tina Wohlers), who is only too willing to have his child. But things don't go smoothly for the twisted loon: he suffers from hellish nightmares after discovering that one of the women he killed was pregnant, goes even more crazy when Laura and his unborn son suddenly pop their clogs, and is captured and beaten by muscle-man Truncador (Antonio Fracari) and his pals, before being pursued by Laura's father and a bloodthirsty mob into a swamp, where he drowns.

Several exploitative scenes of sadism and gory violence, some gratuitous nudity, and an ambitious, surreal, multi-coloured nightmare sequence all go to make This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse marginally more enjoyable than the disappointing first movie, but overall it still proves something of a chore to sit through thanks to the fact that much of its 108 minute running time consists of Zé's interminably dull ranting about the nonexistence of God and his plans to create the perfect child.