Encarnação do Demônio

After 40 years in prison, Coffin Joe is released - and he's back on the streets of Sao Paulo to find a woman who can give him the perfect child, in his search, carnage ensues!

I have never seen a COFFIN JOE film until I saw EMBODIMENT OF EVIL, but I will now. Embodiment has elements of so many films, and it's done in a very good way. All the special effects are very good, a lot of the torture is real - no doubt about it! Hooks going through human flesh, lips getting sewn together, it's all here...a bit like SAW-but better! Then there's the eerie ghost figures of Joe's past coming back to haunt him, very stylishly done.

All in all if you are a fan of horror, and don't mind subtitles, give EMBODIMENT OF EVIL a go, even if you hav'nt seen any of the others it does'nt matter.

Well worth a watch - 8 out of 10.

"Nails grow even after death."

I wholeheartedly enjoyed the previous two installments of the Coffin Joe Trilogy, so I felt obliged to watch this one as well. The film takes place forty years after the previous one, when Coffin Joe is finally released from prison. Upon release, his goals are the same: kill petty humans and create the perfect offspring.

Even after all this time, José Mojica Marins remains true to his original films. Despite the serious gap of time between the last two films, Embodiment of Evil maintains the same style as his other ones and has a classic cult horror type of vibe. The writing is wonderfully disturbing, and this film strengthens Coffin Joe's character, something I didn't expect.

On the other hand, I feel the franchise itself was damaged with this. It relies on the success of the other two movies to drive it forward, as we see Coffin Joe repeatedly haunted by the black-and-white ghosts of his past. Embodiment of Evil hardly lives up to the mastery of the previous two installments, though it tries very hard. There's a purgatory scene that's okay, but it hardly compares to the hell scene in This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse. There's also a straight twenty minutes of torture porn which doesn't seem to fit well with the rest of the trilogy.

In comparison to the other two, this one is definitely the weakest. Embodiment of Evil has some good moments, and it's a worthwhile watch to round out the trilogy. That said, it relies too much on the grotesque and not enough on the main character that defined the originals.

I was at the Canadian Premiere of Embodiment of Evil during Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival. The introduction alone was worth the price of admission as the co-screenwriter Dennison Ramalho, dressed in a leather straight-jacket, introduced the director and star, Coffin Joe himself, José Mojica Marins, who was wheeled onstage by three gorgeous, fetish-wearing goths in a shroud covered container that was unveiled to be an open coffin.

Embodiment of Evil is the third in the Coffin Joe trilogy, the first two films being À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (1964)... aka At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul and Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (1967)... aka This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse.

Zé do Caixão, the Coffin Joe character is a combination of showy horror host, comic-book magician (specifically Mandrake the Magician) and depraved, sadistic serial torturer and murderer. A gravedigger, he wears a top hat, black cloak and has supernaturally long fingernails. A fierce atheist who denies the existence of both Heaven and Hell, Coffin Joe is obsessed by his search of the perfect woman with whom he can mate and continue his bloodline, preserving his eternal blood in a son. Joe's definition of a perfect woman is one that, like him, has no fear. To identify her, Joe uses the most diabolical tortures possible and those who fail his tests die in the most hideous and painful manner possible.

Fantasia programmed the two previous Coffin Joe films back in 1999 and brought José Mojica Marins from Brazil to present them. While by no means the only people who can take credit, the Fantasia team must share the blame for reintroducing the world to Zé do Caixão.

I am not a fan of torture in horror films. What makes the Coffin Joe films palatable to me is the barely veiled metaphor of Coffin Joe trying to free Brazil from its imprisonment - chained by fear of violence from the military dictatorship and superstitious fear of the Roman Catholic Church. Nothing that Coffin Joe did or could do could ever be as evil or perverse as the way that the Junta and the church conspired to enslave Brazil and Brazilians. Coffin Joe is like a Pied Piper for freedom, offering a path filled with pain and for many, death, but promising at the end of the road a freedom that neither government nor church can take away.

Embodiment of Evil begins with Coffin Joe being released from an insane asylum where he has been confined for the last 40 years after his crimes in the first two films. (Amusingly, his hunchback assistant Bruno has been waiting for him for all these years.) Coffin Joe exits to a world both completely different from the one that he left and eternally the same. There is very much a sense that Coffin Joe is a man from a time that has past while simultaneously a prophet whose time has come.

Coffin Joe's quest is both easier and more difficult than it was in the past. Easier because he now has disciples, the children and grand-children of those who heard his message in the sixties. And a new generation of women unshackled by fear gives Coffin Joe an embarrassment of choice to be his perfect woman.

His quest is more difficult because the barriers of fear and superstition still exist. The metaphor still works: fear of a violent military has been replaced by the fear of a corrupt and violent police. The superstitious fear of the church remains although its grip has weakened. The biggest change is that everyone is haunted by the sins of the past. The new Brazil is built on the bones and blood of the old Brazil and everyone (including Coffin Joe) is haunted by the ghosts of that past.

For Joe, this is a revolting development. As a man whose entire life is built on a denial of the existence of a life after death, ghosts are an abomination. Coffin Joe works even better as a metaphor for the new Brazil, futilely denying its' bloody past, like Lady Macbeth trying desperately to wash away the bloody spot.

Embodiment of Evil, like all the films in the Coffin Joe trilogy, is not a film for the squeamish. The images of pain and torture are all the more horrific since many of them are real. (Apparently for many in the Brazilian fetish community, being tortured by Coffin Joe is a badge of honour.) What can't be denied is that his vision is a unique vision of horror that speaks to those who will listen as clearly today as it did in the sixties.

I've been an avid horror/exploitation fan for nigh on thirty years, and aware of the work of José Mojica Marins for twenty five of those, and yet this is the first of his films that I've actually seen. What the hell was I thinking? If his other stuff is anywhere near as bats**t insane as Embodiment of Evil (and the flashbacks in this film indicate that they might be) then I've been missing out on some seriously messed up movies.

The belated third film in Marins' Coffin Joe trilogy (the other two being 'At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul' in 1963 and 'This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse' in 1967), Embodiment of Evil sees the director once again growing his fingernails and donning top hat and black cloak to reprise his role as amoral gravedigger Josefel Zanatas (AKA Coffin Joe) who is released from prison after 40 years to continue his ambition to sire a perfect child. To achieve this goal, Joe enlists the help of a hunchback named Bruno and several other sadistic minions, who help him to abduct a series of potential mates, who he 'tests' for suitability by subjecting them to horrific acts of torture.

Marins, a man who clearly hasn't mellowed in his old age, directs and acts with gusto, relishing every nasty moment with sadistic glee, presenting every act in lurid gruesome detail, and throwing in some mind-bending surrealism for good measure. Shocking hellish visions; an endless parade of scared, naked women, broken, humiliated and ravished by Marins' perverse madman; whipping, flaying, branding, gouging, and scalping: the violence on display is depraved and extremely graphic, made all the more unsettling by the very probable use of performers for whom body modification and pain are no strangers; when hooks are inserted into a man's back before he is hoisted into the air, it looks all too real, as does a later scene in which a woman's lips are sewn shut!

To be honest, I still can't believe I bought this film on DVD from my local car-boot sale (they looked like such ordinary, decent folk as well...).

Released after 40 years of imprisonment, Coffin Joe (Jose Mojica Marins), with the help of his faithful henchman, Bruno, returns to his quest for immortality through an abominable offspring. This time, Joe and a small band of dedicated followers must battle a wicked police force, a maniacal priest, and a pair of blind witches! Not surprisingly, much bloodletting, nudity, and hideous death ensue. Will Joe finally get what he desires / deserves?

EMBODIMENT OF EVIL sums up everything, culminating in a carnival house of horrors. Marins pulls out all the bloody stoppers, making Coffin Joe a true figure of pure eeevil! A final, unspeakable triumph...