Embodiment of Evil

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.

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.

I must confess to not having seen the first two installments of this Brazilian cult series (At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul & This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse). I tried renting them in Brazil, but couldn't find them.

Still, the movie is definitely fun to watch, even without prior knowledge of the story of Josefel Zanatas, the undertaker also known as Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe).

Without giving much away, Zé do Caixão is obsessed with having a perfect son, born to a perfect woman, which he likes to refer to as "the continuation of the blood". He is also a hard-core atheist and sadist.

I personally think that Zé's atheism is one of the most interesting facets of this movie. Instead of slipping through the easy path of satanism, Zanatas (almost an anagram of Satanás, Satan in Portuguese) remains a down-to-the-bone atheist, even when confronted with visions of hell and of past victims of his sadist rites. It is this that gives him his alleged superiority. He is free, as he puts it himself. Free of all belief in false (theist) morals.

This if of course a trash movie, though with much larger budget than his previous work, so one should not expect to see Hollywoodesque special effects. Yet Mr. Marins creativity is still captivating, and delivers marvelous scenes, such as that of a naked woman leaving a dead pig carcass (no special effects here, it was a true pig). Humor is also very present, and at some scenes even very experienced actors have a hard time concealing a smile.

All in all, 7 out of 10. But if you are only concerned with having fun, this movie is a 10 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'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...).