Embodiment of Evil

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.

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...

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.

"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 failed poor old Coffin Joe. His movies seem like they would be custom made for my needs: they're low budget, foreign-language movies that have clawed their way to the top of the heap of such flicks based on the strength of their imagery and the indelible presence of the man himself.

The trouble is his movies always lose me. I don't know if it's due to lack of plot, obscure narrative, or poor pacing. I just always lose interest while waiting for something to happen. They have their images, but little else, and this finale to the series is no exception - in fact, with the benefit of a bigger budget, it may have images to trump all the others, including a descent into hell Joe takes which looks like the inside of an intestine, and empties into a legitimately horrifying scene some rather graphic cannibalism.

The film just never took me along for a ride. It's the kind of thing where you keep one eye on the screen, one eye on something else, and wait for an interesting scene. It's missing the glue to link these together.