À Meia-Noite Levarei a sua Alma (1964)

The cornerstone of Brazilian one-man horror industry José Mojica Marins's filmography, this finds the director-writer star assuming his alter ego of Zé do Caixão, a long-nailed, melodrama-bearded (and hatted and cloaked) undertaker who is the most untouchable hateful man in a small rural community, where he is given to bullying crimes like taking a broken bottle to the hands of those who withhold his poker winnings, jabbing out the eyes of the doctor, exerting his will in Lugosi-like 'hypnotic stare' close-ups whenever anyone dares stand up to him, or jamming a crown of thorns taken from a bust of Jesus into the cheek of a publican. The point made at elaborate length is that Zé, unusually for a horror villain, is a blasphemous atheist whose lack of belief in the spiritual means he is obsessed with ensuring his immortality by extending his bloodline. He disposes of his barren wife via chloroform and spider, then drowns his best friend in the bath so he can have a shot at the man's fertile fiancé, who reacts to being raped by Zé by hanging herself. Apart from all this, Zé enjoys ostentatiously eating legs of lamb on meat-free Holy Days, ranting at the absurdity of human belief and sneering at the cringing peasants who cross themselves when he defies God. The only person who stands up to him is a sorceress who can cackle on his level and eventually turns out to be right when, on the night of Day of the Dead, the spirits of Zé's victims (or maybe his imagined versions of them) rise from the grave to hound him to death for his sins.

If Marins hadn't made sequels and follow-ups, this would be a one-of-a-kind item – a black and white splatter version of a typical Victorian melodrama (maybe that passed for cutting edge in Brazil in 1963?) with a dastardly baddie who outdoes Tod Slaughter in reprehensibility and, at the end, even competes with the great ham in a panicky mad scene as negative image or strangely fringed ghosts loom. It is genuinely brutal – the cameo snippets under the credits that introduce the cast include the leading lady's face being pummelled to bloody pulp – and apparently without any trace of intentional humour (except maybe for the woman playing the witch), but the shrieking ab-dabs wear a tad thin before the fade-out.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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