This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse

Zé do Caixão (José Mojica Marins) survives and is absolved in court from his crimes. He moves to another small town, seeking out the perfect woman to deliver his son. Zé do Caixão and his deformed hunchback minion Bruno (Jose Lobo) abduct six women from the village and he submits them to a creepy experiment, trying to find the future mother of his offspring to keep alive his bloodline. The pregnant Jandira curses him and only Marcia (Nadia Freitas) survives, but Zé do Caixão concludes that she is not a superior woman. When Zé do Caixão sees the newcomer Laura (Tina Wohlers), who is the daughter of the powerful Coronel, he concludes that she is a superior woman and adequate to deliver his offspring. Meanwhile the Coronel asks his henchman Truncador (Antonio Fracari) to hire a gang of criminals to eliminate Zé do Caixão. But the undertaker seems to have a deal with the devil and never dies. However Laura dies with her unborn son and the population joins to expel him from their lands.

"Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver" is the perfect sequel to "À Meia- Noite Levarei Sua Alma". This creepy low-budget black and white film is more ambition than the first one and blends colors in the journey of Zé do Caixão to hell. It is also supported by a good story, performances, effects, dialogs with blasphemy and gore. The contradictory conclusion with the atheist character summoning God does not spoil the film. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver" ("This Night I Will Incarnate Your Corpse")

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.

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.

Hose Mojica Marins is definitely a director whose films are many times overlooked. His character Coffin Joe is almost like the Freddy or Jason of Brazil. "This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse" is the second Coffin Joe film. After the evil undertaker has been cleared of his crimes, he's back to causing trouble yet again. He kidnaps beautiful women and looks to impregnate one of them to start a perfect race. After the ladies get tormented by spiders and snakes he kills them, leaving only one lady. What makes this scene horrifying is the 100 snakes and spiders that the actresses had to endure. The ghost of the one women vows to return from the dead and take vengeance on him, or is it just his imagination? It's never quite clear. Coffin Joe is an angry atheist who finally finds his evil mate which is the colonel's daughter. Even after him and his hunchback assistant smash her brother's head with a rock, she still likes him. She even skips her brother's funeral to get it on with him. The film's most memorable scene is it's surreal psychedelic ten minute Technicolor vision of hell. Death takes Coffin Joe to hell and he sees people scream in agony as they are whipped and tortured. In the scene fire, brimstone and snakes surround him wherever he goes. "This Night I'll Possess your Corpse" is chilling, gory, bizarre and subversive in it's religious and social themes. It's definitely a classic work of Brazialian cinema that deserves more attention.

THIS NIGHT I WILL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE is the even more fiendish follow-up to the first film. Escaping death and justice, Coffin Joe (Jose Mojica Marins) returns to his mission of producing a son and heir to his legacy of blasphemous eeevil.

Joe kidnaps 6 women, torturing them with an army of tarantulas, and subjecting the unluckiest ones to a pit of snakes. There's also a head crushing by stone slab for one particular male pest! CORPSE introduces us to Joe's hunchback henchman, Bruno. In addition, we are treated to the infamous, full-color Hell sequence, complete with suffering souls!

Once again, as with the first movie, this is a sadistic, demonic masterpiece...