Live evil
Meghan Hicks
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Coffin Joe continues his bloody search for the perfect lady love
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Despite hard luck and persecution, Brazilian director José Mojica Marins completes his Coffin Joe trilogy with Embodiment of Evil
In one of this year's Fantasia spotlights, Brazilian cult/horror director José Mojica Marins will be presented with a lifetime achievement award. Best known for his Coffin Joe trilogy, which started with At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul back in 1964 (and the character has appeared in other films), Marins only completed his intended trilogy last year with Embodiment of Evil.Zé do Caixão (or Coffin Joe, as he's best known in North America) is a malevolent undertaker who sports head-to-toe black garb, complete with cape, and grotesquely long fingernails that curl at the tips. Zé, whom Marins says first came to him in a nightmare in 1963, lives for the sole purpose of finding the perfect female specimen to bear his male heir - and he'll maim, rape and kill to get what he desires.
Embodiment of Evil begins with the release of Zé from jail, where he has lived for the past few decades. It is clear from the beginning that reformation was not part of his time served - he's back with more depravity displayed on screen than ever before (and believe me, there are a few things you haven't seen).
From the beginning of his career, Marins, who directed and starred in each of the Coffin Joe films, has been a target of censorship. On top of this, his productions have been plagued with unfortunate circumstances that perpetuated the so-called "Coffin Joe curse." For these reasons, it has taken over four years since the release of This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, the second
Coffin Joe film, to complete the third instalment.
"I was very intensively persecuted during the dictatorship government that we had in our country," Marins. "They said that my horror movies had [a] hidden political message, which I still haven't discovered. I had problems with the church, with censorship, and bad luck that accompanied me for more than 40 years. Three producers that tried to make my film died..."
Though he was finally able to make his film, censorship is still a main obstacle: "I would like to go even further in my films, but unfortunately I need to control myself [so as] not to create enemies." Though, when it comes to Marins, it's hard to say what "further" would entail.
Although Embodiment of Evil is now finished, Marins would like to continue Coffin Joe's story if given the opportunity: "I still hope... that a producer might let me do the continuation of Embodiment of Evil and that possibly I will reach an appropriate ending. The title of the film would be Seven Wombs for a Devil."
Embodiment of Evil
At the Fantasia International Film Festival, Hall Theatre (Concordia University)
July 25, 9:10 p.m.
Surprisingly great article on José Mojica Marins...too bad you dumped it in the Web exclusive! dead zone instead of puting it in print where it belonged! Anyways, to get back to my point, José Mojica Marins is one of the great legends and genre forerunners that kids today just don't appreciate or know about. Genre cinema today is reduced to a soup of torture porn, bad remakes and overproduced adaptations, there is in fact very little originality to be found today and I can say this without doubt because having absorbed much of this year's Fantasia many of the films screened have the fingerprints of previous works all over them. José Mojica Marins' body of work is unlike anything you've ever seen and sure, to today's more sophisticated audiences it might seem tame it is nevertheless unique. I can't say that his latest, Embodiment of Evil, is as extreme as one might hope it would be but won't deny that it is entertaining gory madness. The editing and pacing of the film were clunky as all hell but the stuff Marins came up with in the movie were inspired and fun. For old school horror purists only.
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By the way, the man gave one of the best Q&A sessions Fantasia's had for a long while.
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Pedro Eggers
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