Josefel Zanas, a gravedigger called Zé do Caixão (Beppe the Coffin) by villagers, is feared by all for his frequent and irrepressible outbursts and cruelty. Caixão is atheist, blasphemous (he eats lamb meat on Good Friday!) and violent. A true embodiment of Evil, even going so far as to mock, humiliate and torture his fellow villagers, always with a view to desecration and mockery of established religion...
Caixão is obsessed with the idea of having a child: and the attraction he feels for Terenzinia (his best friend's woman) is cause for criminal action; Terenzina's lover is the victim, followed by the poor girl, subjected by Caixão to a brutal rape...
The consequences will be unpredictable, when Terenzina decides to kill herself: but not before casting a curse on Zé...
Mojica writes, directs and acts in the lead role with a directing technique capable of producing memorable sequences, such as that of the challenge to the dead (visionary and with Reason "diluted" in the pestilential cemetery mists and obscured by the night darkness), while screaming in the cemetery his shadow looms sluggish and undulating, under the dim light of the votive candles...
Or like the long, delirious (and dementedly philosophizing) monologue -of a duration, in piano sequence, of almost 5 minutes- in which he postulates his theory on life and death, on space and time, on courage and fear: in a unity of place -space/time- that sees him locked up in the gloomy walls of a mortuary.
The film was shot in just 12 days, inside an abandoned synagogue that was transformed into a studio for the occasion...
It is philologically regarded as Brazil's first Horror and the first in a series (starring the eccentric Marins himself as Zé) that continues (with impressive changes, following the The Strange World of Zé do Caixão) until very recent years...
Already in nuce one can here find themes that the director makes his own and develops (always with visual excesses culminating in the Pasolinian meal-ante Salò and the 120 Days of Sodomy-of the prisoners forced to feed each other in the episode-connoted in the manner of Dante's Inferno-present in the Strange World of Zé do Caixão, where Marins plays the ambiguous Dr. Oaxac Odéz. Oaxac Odéz): namely, blood (with protosplatter sequences), violence and sex; the latter after torture, via tarantulas and snakes, of buxom, semi-clothed maidens (actresses chosen after adequate "sui generis" auditions)....
Obviously this is an unreleased film in our country, but it found broadcast (on March 2, 1998) via satellite on the now extinct Tele + , accompanied by another handful of films (The Awakening of the Beast and The Strange World of Zé do Caixão).
Alongside him, on Rai 3, a few months earlier the good Ghezzi (Fuori Orario) had included in the schedule Questa Notte mi Incarnerò sul Tuo Cadavere (the sequel to At Midnight I Will Possess Your Soul).
Nearly unabridged versions (judging by editing and synchronicity between audio and images) circulated with Italian subtitles.
Marins' appearances at various festivals (especially in the mid-1990s), including Italian ones, cannot be counted: at which the extravagant author always showed up with an unmistakable look (decked out like Zé and with very long nails, which he seems never to have cut!)...
One last bit of trivia about the genesis of this Mephistophelean series: following some statements by the director, it appears that the idea behind At Midnight I Will Possess Your Soul came about as a result of a recurring nightmare that haunted him, even to the point of forcing his family to invoke some sort of local sorcerer to exorcise him. The nightmare had, as a unit of place, a specific location; that is, it always took place near a cemetery, in the vicinity of which Marins encountered a black-clad figure. In approaching the gloomy figure, the director recognized his face....
Marins found the inspiration (both dreamlike and surreal, like much of his cinematography) for the first Brazilian horror film...
Review by undying1
