At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

I was enthralled with Coffin Joe again as I finally watched At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. I had first heard of Jose Marin's and his character through James Rolfe and his Halloween offerings of Monster Madness (I believe it was number 3, but I could be wrong). Shortly after that, I rented This Night I'll Posses Your Corpse and was not disappointing. All the rumors about Coffin Joe and his depravity were true.

I had always meant to watch the original entry in the series, and with a recent sleepless night in Singapore, I had my chance to have my own midnight screening. Believe the hype kids, Joe is one nefarious figure. Raping, murdering, encouraging suicide, eating meat on sacred days and disrespecting god and the dead, Coffin Jose doesn't care about anything save for having a son to continue his wicked bloodline. 

Understandably, everyone is terrified about what Joe will do next and that includes the audience. We're all cued that he's going to do something dastardly when his eye's become bloodshot, but even without that we know he's going to fly off the handle in most of his interactions because that's all he knows. Suffering from a bit of arachnophobia myself, I think the one that hit me the hardest was when he tortured and killed a girl with a large spider. Wouldn't expect anything less from this abominable fiend. 

My only gripe with the film is that the climax is a bit of  a let down. If any character in terror cinema deserves a horrific comeuppance it's Joe and it would have been nice to see it drawn out a bit more. I'll have to find time to re-watch Posses Your Corpse and peep the other films in the series. I would  recommend this classic bit of Brazilian horror cinema to any horror hound, as it features one of the genres most heinous bogeyman.

3 caskets out of 5.

p.s. I watched a video where Joe is hanging out with the band White Zombie, who are fans of him too. So he has that to add to his resume.