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Film / At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

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At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is a 1964 Brazilian Horror film, directed by José Mojica Marins. It's said to be the very first horror movie made in Brazil, and also the debut of horror icon Zé do Caixão/Coffin Joe. It is the first film of a trilogy that would continue with This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967) and Embodiment of Evil (2008).

In a small Brazilian town, the creepy and violent gravedigger Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) is feared by the locals. Coffin Joe lives with Lenita, who can not deliver a son to him. Obsessed to have a child, he harasses Terezinha de Oliveira, who is the fiancée of his friend Antônio de Andrade, and kills Lenita with a spider simulating an accident. Then he drowns Antônio and rapes Terezinha expecting to have a baby with her. Terezinha commits suicide but does not accuse Coffin Joe in his letter. The inspector Barretos cannot prove that Coffin Joe is the killer, but on the Day of the Dead, the local gypsy warns him that the dead will take his soul to hell.


This film contain examples of:

  • Big Bad: Coffin Joe, a Creepy Undertaker seeking a bride.
  • Bullying a Dragon: A client on the bar thinks he can stand up to Coffin Joe as he harasses a poor waitress: he winds up brutally whipped like an animal.
  • Dark Is Evil: Coffin Joe wears a dark costume and is definitely very evil.
  • Dub Personality Change: A minor example in the English subtitles, as the main credits show the old fortuneteller wishing the audience a terrible evening, when in the original audio, she was merely saying that was a terrible evening for them. It doesn't help that she's not supposed to be evil at all.
  • Driven to Suicide: Terezinha commits suicide after being raped by Coffin Joe.
  • Event Title: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
  • Eye Scream: Courtesy of Coffin Joe's nails on poor Dr. Rodolfo.
    • Coffin Joe himself is on the receiving end of this in the end; after being haunted by visions of spirits he killed, he runs into a cemetery, where Antônio and Terezinha are buried, and overwhelmed with guilt, doubt and fear, he's found with his eyes bulging out of his eye sockets. Whether that was caused by despair and suggestion or by supernatural interference is left to be wondered.
  • Fortune Teller: An old Romani lady appears in the credits, warning the audience against watching the film, ansd laters appears in the film receiving Antônio and Terezinha, and again trying to warn them against what's coming to them (all while a very skeptical Coffin Joe watches it). She also warns Coffin Joe about what's coming for him as commeuppance for his crimes, and he later starts seeing her predictions come true, impressed and disturbed by his own guilty.
  • Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death: At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
  • He Knows Too Much: Coffin Joe is suspicious that Dr. Rodolfo know something about his involvement in Antônio's murder and Terezinha's suicide, so he gouges his eyes with his fingernails and burns him to death.
  • Hollywood Atheist: Coffin Joe is an atheist and has the deepest contempt for any kind of religion. His philosophy is that the only certainty in life is blood lineage, which he's obsessed with keeping, and sees an obstacle in his wife's sterility and his current target being his friend's fiancee.
  • Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Starts on Good Friday, ends on Day of the Dead.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The appearance of spirits and supernatural sights to an impressed Joe might be either supernatural manifestations or violent hallucinations of his guilty mind for his crimes.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Everytime Coffin joe is about to attack someone, there are closes on his eyes, with red veins pulsing and showing his feral side being released.
  • Straw Misogynist: Coffin Joe has shades of this, as he often harrasses women, looks down on his own wife for not giving him a child and claims that she needs no cares because of that and eventually kills her for that, and brutally beats up and rapes his friend's fiancee when she resists his advances.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Antônio is the only man in town who dares to be friends with Coffin Joe. How does Joe thank him? Killing him so he could seduce his wife.
  • Villain Protagonist: Coffin Joe is the main protagonist and the plot of the film (and all of his movies) is about his journey to find the woman who can give him a heir.

Alternative Title(s): A Meia Noite Levarei Sua Alma

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