Encarnação do Demônio

"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'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...).

Embodiment of Evil is the third in José Mojica Marins' Coffin Joe / Zé do Caixão trilogy. In them all Marins plays the said anti-hero who is an atheist grave-digger who antagonises the folks who live around him. In the first two movies his antics were restricted to a small village but in this latest instalment he his released from prison and immediately starts wreaking havoc in São Paulo. So the scope does seem to be a little bit wider and the budget does seem to be noticeably larger. I am guessing that cinema fashion had finally found Coffin Joe's type of movie in vogue in 2008. In the past ten years or so there has been an increase in horror films that focus on sadism and torture. Well, it has to be said that this was precisely the kind of thing Marins was doing in his Coffin Joe films back in the 60's. So the resurrection of the character forty years later sort of makes sense.

The first two films in the trilogy were At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964) and This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967). Both were pretty extreme for their time in terms of sadism but both also were generally pretty weird with elements of surrealism thrown in for good measure. With Embodiment of Evil there is no way on Earth you could say that Marins has mellowed out. In fact, this latest instalment is up there with all the latest sadistic horror films in terms of sheer grotesque depravity and excess. However, what sets it apart from most of those is the demented imagination on display. In amongst the sadism is a twisted imagination and many striking visual moments. It wouldn't be a Marins movie without this. So, in the end, this is a very worthwhile end to the trilogy and one that will certainly be appreciated by Coffin Joe aficionados as well as those who like the more visceral side of the horror genre.

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.

Embodiment of Evil (2008)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

After forty years in prison, Josefel Zanatas (Jose Mojica Marins), aka Coffin Joe, gets released and goes right back to his old ways of trying to find the perfect woman to give him a son. While Joe searches out the best woman, he's haunted by ghosts from his past while a vigilante police Captain is in hot pursuit. EMBODIMENT OF EVIL was a highly anticipated film as pretty much every trash fan in the world went nuts when they hear Marins was bringing back his cult character. Whereas the first few Coffin Joe movies went for surrealism and strangeness, this one here instead goes for non-stop violence and gore. There are a few scenes here that would make countless torture/porn movie turns their head in fear. I mean, how many movies can you think of where they torture a woman by pouring hot cheese on her and then letting a rat go to work? The violence here is often quite graphic and it even goes towards some sexual violence including a really brutal scene where there's pretty much a cannibal orgy going on where women are biting off a certain part of the male anatomy. It should go without saying but only the strongest of stomachs will be able to handle this movie so the majority of people should just stay away. Marins has no problem getting back into his Coffin Joe performance as he's certainly fun to watch here and looking a lot like Orson Welles. The rest of the cast fit their roles just fine as well. EMBODIMENT OF EVIL does lack in regards to its story as it seems to drag out in spots and there's no question we've seen this type of thing many times before. I wish a little more had been done with the character returning but fans of gore and violence should at least be entertained by that.