The Worst Film Ever

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It's a criminal shame that these movies are as unknown and underrated as they are, even among the horror underground. The fact that 4th- rate garbage flicks on some streaming site have over 100 reviews, while this has 24 at the time of this writing makes me sad. I get it to some degree. I was only lucky enough to discover these movies through the book HIDDEN HORROR, which introduced me to the opening chapter. They're in another language, with subtitles. They're 50 years old, at this point. They are low-budget, underground films. It's not a great surprise that so few have dived into the world of Coffin Joe, but it's still a travesty.Of course, this is a sequel, so if you are just coming into the movie, start with AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL. This movie picks up directly from the events of that fist film. Xe (Coffin Joe) is badly injured and on trial for his crimes, but within the first few minutes of the movie, we put those things aside so that Xe can begin his quest to create a perfect son. See, Xe doesn't believe in good, or god, or much of anything for that matter. To him, the pursuit of his life is to pass his beliefs and his seed on to a son, who can keep his beliefs alive. He starts this quest by kidnapping 6 women and torturing them in a sort of trial by godless game show, where the winner gets to be subdued by Xe's love. These scenes offer some of the best moments of the film, with some frightening images that masterfully play with the line between sex and violence. Xe comes to find that he needs not force himself upon some unwitting woman, though, as the woman of his nightmares shows up completely willing to turn her back on everything to be Xe's lover and the mother of his child.From there, the movie takes a few odd twist and turns, most notably with one of the greatest scenes (I'm not even kidding) in any 60s horror movie when Xe goes to Hell. It's a technicolor inferno full of Bosch-like imagery and psychedelic terror. The scene begins to set a tone in the movie where Marins (the director) start to play with the ideas of atheism and to explore Xe's beliefs, in counter to a possibly impending sense of guilt, mingled with his fear of death and leaving behind a legacy of nothing. In AT MIDNIGHT, Maris used his character as a bold, radical villain spitting in the face of the religion and politics that were dominating his country at the time. In THIS NIGHT, he goes a step further, exploring the very nature of Xe's beliefs.These movies would appeal to so many horror fans. For fans of the old Universal style of film, the look and feel of this movie is right up your alley. Taking some of the more bizarre subject matter aside, these movies would look right at home with Lugosi's Poverty Row films of the 40s. The subject matter is very 60s, full of counter-culture questioning of the standards of society, mixed with the obsession with evil that was so common in 60s horror. This is, almost, where the look and feel of WHITE ZOMBIE meets the kinetic film style of Rob Zombie. This is the kind of movie that you could watch on mute, at a party, with some metal or goth music in the background and still sit and enjoy for the sheer visionary impact of it.

As most people reading this will already know, This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse is Coffin Joe's follow-up to the excellent At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, and as good as the first film was; for my money, this one is even better! The legendary Brazilian comic book character may be cheesy, and José Mojica Marins' films may be cheap and silly; but he certainly has an eye for horror and this film features everything that made the first film great - and more! Once again, we have a plot without meaning, although there is some direction this time as Coffin Joe steps up his chase to find a woman to bear him a child. He doesn't go the direct route, however - and we get treated to scenes of torture as well as Coffin Joe preaching to his audience about the non-existence of God. The film works in spite of the ending of the first film, which is passed off by way of Coffin Joe being nursed back to health by the people he terrorises, before being cleared of his crimes on the grounds of 'lack of evidence'...even though most of them were committed in front of a crowd of people. Still, it's all in good fun! With a name like Coffin Joe, you've got to expect the man to have an eye for horror - and the director delights in packing his film with delicious horror imagery, from spiders and snakes to skulls and deformed assistants! The wayward plot once again allows the director to do pretty much anything he likes - and for a man with so many ideas, this certainly isn't a bad thing. Despite a running time of nearly two hours, Coffin Joe's film never becomes boring or trite, and just when you think that the film can't possibly deliver any more surprises; Marins throws in a delightful colour sequence that takes place in Hell! The dialogue is once again a stand-out aspect of the film, as hearing Coffin Joe preach his own set of beliefs never becomes boring and the actor clearly delights in delivering them. The eerie atmosphere is always welcome, and the fact that the film is so clearly designed for entertainment is of huge benefit to it. I'll close this review with a word of warning; do not see this film unless you've seen At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, but once you have seen said movie - this one becomes must see!

Hose Mojica Marins is definitely a director whose films are many times overlooked. His character Coffin Joe is almost like the Freddy or Jason of Brazil. "This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse" is the second Coffin Joe film. After the evil undertaker has been cleared of his crimes, he's back to causing trouble yet again. He kidnaps beautiful women and looks to impregnate one of them to start a perfect race. After the ladies get tormented by spiders and snakes he kills them, leaving only one lady. What makes this scene horrifying is the 100 snakes and spiders that the actresses had to endure. The ghost of the one women vows to return from the dead and take vengeance on him, or is it just his imagination? It's never quite clear. Coffin Joe is an angry atheist who finally finds his evil mate which is the colonel's daughter. Even after him and his hunchback assistant smash her brother's head with a rock, she still likes him. She even skips her brother's funeral to get it on with him. The film's most memorable scene is it's surreal psychedelic ten minute Technicolor vision of hell. Death takes Coffin Joe to hell and he sees people scream in agony as they are whipped and tortured. In the scene fire, brimstone and snakes surround him wherever he goes. "This Night I'll Possess your Corpse" is chilling, gory, bizarre and subversive in it's religious and social themes. It's definitely a classic work of Brazialian cinema that deserves more attention.

Following up the success of his first appearance as Coffin Joe, Mojica filmed the second part of his horror trilogy with his character. The story starts exactly where the first movie left off, with Coffin Joe surviving the supernatural attack of the first movie. Being absolved of the crimes he commited, he returns to his city, still in search of the ideal woman to bear him a perfect son, this time aided by the hunchback servant Bruno. Joe kidnaps and tests several women who may prove worthy of bearing his offspring. All of them fail, and as they are being eliminated (with real live snakes!) a curse is set upon Coffin Joe...a curse that will make the funeral agent see hell in colour! A more ambitious follow-up for the first movie, "This night" suffered cuts and alterations on its dialogues by the military dictatorship censors prior to its release in Brazil. The coloured sequence of Joe's descent into hell (the rest of the movie was shot in B&W) are a fine example of the best that Mojica's cinema has to offer: brilliant, raw ideas on a shoestring budget.