José Mojica Marins: An American Cinematheque Tribute

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is thrilled to celebrate the legacy of José Mojica Marins and horror icon Coffin Joe (Zé do Caixão) with a three-film tribute showcasing the chilling cinematic exploits of “Brazil’s national boogeyman.” A key figure in his homeland’s cultural pantheon, Coffin Joe’s reputation abroad has grown thanks to the efforts of horror junkies to bring his films, television programs and comic books to a wider audience. His black top hat, suit and cape have made him instantly recognizable, and those eerie Nosferatu-esque fingernails have haunted the nightmares of generations of horror fans.

Conceived and portrayed by actor-writer-director José Mojica Marins, the character made his debut in Marins’s 1964 feature film AT MIDNIGHT I’LL TAKE YOUR SOUL. Marins worked independently and with few resources, shooting in black-and-white and casting his acting students in on-screen roles. Marins was proud of what he called his “handmade cinema,” which incorporated influences from Welles, Hitchcock, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and he pointed to Charlie Chaplin’s sad-eyed characters as an inspiration for Coffin Joe. Indeed, eyes receive special attention in Marins’s work.

In Marins’s horror classic AT MIDNIGHT I’LL TAKE YOUR SOUL, filmed just before Brazil’s military dictatorship took power, Coffin Joe, a psychopathic undertaker obsessed with immortality, will stop at nothing to sire a son. His search for the “perfect woman” to bear him a child brings death and destruction to his community—but he learns that tangling with dark forces has a supernatural price.

Coffin Joe continues his murderous hunt for the perfect woman in the 1967 sequel, THIS NIGHT I’LL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE. He seduces the beautiful Laura, to the ire of her father, the local colonel. Even a nightmarish confrontation with the Devil isn’t enough to dissuade Coffin Joe from his maniacal quest. The Brazilian censors, however, were: Marins was forced to alter the film’s ending so that Joe repents and accepts God as his savior.

Named to Abraccine’s Top 100 Brazilian Films list, Marins’s 1969 genre-bending, countercultural exploitation flick THE AWAKENING OF THE BEAST mixes things up. The pseudo-documentary follows a group of researchers investigating the causes of perversion, with Marins himself featuring as an expert on depravity. In a delightfully trippy sequence, the experimenters give four volunteers LSD and have them stare at a Coffin Joe poster.