At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

1964 [PORTUGUESE]

Horror

18
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 69% · 6 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 69% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.9/10 10 4407 4.4K

witch peasant

Plot summary

Zé do Caixão is an undertaker in a small Brazilian town, searching for the perfect woman to bear him a superior child. Unable to conceive with his wife, he kills her and sets out to find someone else.

Director

José Mojica Marins Photo
José Mojica Marins

Top cast

José Mojica Marins Photo
José Mojica Marins as Zé do Caixão
Magda Mei Photo
Magda Mei as Terezinha
Nivaldo Lima Photo
Nivaldo Lima as Antônio
Valéria Vasquez Photo
Valéria Vasquez as Lenita
720p.BluRay 720p.WEB 1080p.BluRay 1080p.WEB
755.21 MB
1280*934
Portuguese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 22 min
Seeds ...
754.87 MB
1280*964
Portuguese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
29.97 fps
1 hr 21 min
Seeds ...
1.37 GB
1480*1080
Portuguese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 22 min
Seeds 15
1.37 GB
1434*1080
Portuguese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
29.97 fps
1 hr 21 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by chaos-rampant

Dark Night of the Soul

This is my first forray into the wonderful world of Coffin Joe, and having read about Marins and his films was still not enough to prepare me. Not because "At Midnight..." is a great film by any set of conventional standards; it's a low-budget affair and it looks like it. What really makes it compelling is how passionate it is in all its blackly surreal glory.Coffin Joe (Ze Do Caixao) is the atheist, unscrupulous undertaker of a small, religious community somewhere in Brazil. This set-bound place is more of a (at times too) convenient playground for Marins to explore his dark fantasies than any sort of realistic community. Its inhabitants are mere props to be abused, scoffed and laughed at. A sizeable guy who dares to stand up to him gets whipped in the face. His sole preoccupation is to find a woman worthy to bear him a son and thus "continue his bloodline". Coffin Joe strides through this fictional (and perhaps symbolic in Marin's mind) world, mocking the superstitious villagers, defying god, Satan and the dead, sometimes all of them together in a matter of minutes. If "At Midnight..." is set apart from every other horror movie of its time, it's because the morbid, macabre imagery (skulls, plastic bats, cobwebs, tarantulas; you know the drill) is undercut by a Nietzche-esquire atheism that bites. At times it's as if the whole movie serves as nothing more than Marins' soapbox, his way of venting against the conservative and religious. How much of what Coffin Joe declares in the film are meant to be serious is anyone's guess. However it's exactly the fact that it works so well on a camp level (like a blasphemous Ed Wood flick) that redeems the film from all heavy-handedness.In that aspect, and as far as what one would expect from an early 60's horror movie, "At Midnight..." is both avant-garde in its own micro-budget, often crude but unashamedly enthusiastic way and surrealistic. Mandatory viewing for fans of cult movies and I hear the sequels are better which I'll have to see for myself.
Reviewed by ferbs54 7 / 10

Somebody Get This Dude A Nail Clipper For Xmas!

The Brazilian film "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" (1963) features a character who is a strong contender for the most hateful, obnoxious, despicable, slimy and loathsome creature in horror movie history. He is Ze do Caixao, a name that, loosely translated from the Portuguese, means Coffin Joe, and he would go on to become a wildly popular figure in Brazilian culture over the years; kind of like an amalgam of Baron Samedi and Freddy Krueger. As played by the film's director, Jose Mojica Marins, Ze is quite unforgettable. Bearded, caped and top hatted, he bullies and browbeats the inhabitants of his small village, and does away with those closest to him, all in his sick pursuit to father a son and continue his bloodline. Perhaps most shocking, in the largely Catholic country of Brazil, he is a taunting atheist, who eats meat on Good Friday and even forces others to do the same! No living person seems able to stand up to Ze. But the unliving...ah, perhaps that's another story.... Filmed on the cheap, this picture still works marvelously, featuring as it does many scenes of casual and brutal violence (wait'll you see what Ze does to his barren mistress), some interesting FX (I love that glittery ghost!), fairly intense acting (especially by Marins and that gypsy witch), and a very freaky score (wails, screams, echo effects, etc.). One scene in particular is very fine; the one in which Ze rails against heaven and hell during a thunderstorm and drunkenly demands that God and all spirits do him harm. Pretty intense stuff. Anyway, that gypsy woman, at the film's beginning, warns us NOT to watch this picture, as it will make us suffer, but I'm glad that I stayed with it. And oh...a modern-day interview with Marins is included on this DVD. If you want to see something REALLY scary, take a look at his fingernails!
Read more IMDb reviews

12 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment