One of the first horror movies ever produced to completion in Brazil. ‘At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul’ Is a more than significant picture in terms of the time it was made and the bounderies it pushed against. Indeed, if 1968’s ‘Night of the living dead’ was seen as controversial for a scene of a daughter hacking at her mother with a trowl and carrrying her entrails around (and collectively about 2 cupfulls of blood splattered out across the full runtime) Then a film featuring a molesty demon worshipper who gores first and asks questions later was always going to likely be a point of contention.

I myself first ‘experienced’ the ‘Coffin Joe’ series in the early 2010s when I got my hands on Anchor Bays ‘Coffin Joe’ collection. I never made it past the 3rd film in the series and ultimately sold the set on shortly thereafter…something I heavily regretted as the anchor bay set went out of print shortly thereafter, the price went through the roof and then news turned up that apparently the coffin Joe films were in such a rough archival state, that it would be unlikely that they’d EVER make the jump to HD…and given DVD’s decline, it was unlikely a studio would do another SD release…I figured i’d lost out on the chance to really give these films a proper appraisal.

And then about 4-5 years ago, Arrow video announced they were working on a ‘Coffin Joe’ set, that they’d managed to get ‘decent’ condition film prints of all the movies except for the first one…this one. Which was apparently in an incredibly poor state and as such an intensive restoration was going to be required in order to preserve it. 4-5 years later, I have the finished set sat on my shelf and revisiting ‘Midnight’ nearly 15 years after I last saw it, I enjoyed it more…But it has its problems…

The biggest one being its script, which feels INCREDIBLY inconsistent and doesnt seem to be structured in a conventional way…which is interesting to experience as an appreciator of film as a medium. Its terrible as someone who has to relay what this film is about and why I had issues with it.

So…the films around 85 minutes long and basically its almost entirely focussed on José Mojica Marins ‘Coffin Joe’ an undertaker in a small brazillian village who…is odd? thats the best I’ve got to explain him honestly…He makes it clear he doesnt believe in god, he laughs at the idea of demons…But he himself has SOME kind of demonic ability as, when he’s attacked or provoked, his eyes turn bloodshot red and he becomes a super agile, ultra strong killing machine.

The majority of the film follows Joe as he does such heinous acts as ‘eating meat on a holy day in front of a congregation’ or ‘cuts a mans fingers off after he refuses to give up his money when he loses a card game’. But really…this is all building to Joes ‘modus opperandi’.

Joe believes that a beings lifeblood is preserved in its lineage…Basically that, as long as you continue your bloodline and father a child every generation, you’ll be able to live on forever through the blood of your family. Hes a bachelor, living with a housekeeper who desperately wants him. But Joe is only interested in siring a son with the PERFECT woman. he wants his offspring to be the best it can possibly be.

and through the film he attempts to ‘take’ the fiance of one of his only friends in the village Antonio. After getting his fiance alone, he rapes her and explains that she will sire his son and continue his bloodline…only…that fails. and this then starts a series of events involving an old witch, several other women and an army of the undead that’ll slowly bring Joe to justice.

And this films biggest issue, at least for me? is that the script is just…SO inconsistent. A lot of these issues will sound like nitpicks, but they all add up into a whole that makes the film kind of difficult for me to outright love.

So for starters, The film is set in the present day of 1964. Joe is the ONLY person in the village who dresses like an unkempt victorian from the mid 1800’s, everyone else has nice modern suits and modern haircuts. At first it made me think ‘oh! Joe must be a LOT older than he’s revealing…maybe the bloodline stuff is literal and everytime he succeeds he LITERALLY extends his lifeline…’ But no…he’s just a semi-normal guy who hulks out when he gets angry.

The continuity is weird, the film opens with a scene of Joe smashing up his evening meal because he wants meat. which he cant have because its a holy day…so he heads out to go and find some. He also talks badly about his customers, threatening to start charging them double because he doesnt want to deal with them anymore….The issue here being, Brazil has a LOT of holy days…and its established that Joe and his housekeeper have known each other for a while…the outburst is treated as unusual…HOW? its like the film simultaineously wants you to believe that Joes been a long presence in this village, while ALSO wanting you to believe that all this strange behaviour is a new occurance… which, later plot points in the film reveal isnt the case.

Joe flat out murders half a dozen people in front of two dozen witnesses…and not one of them pulls a gun, or a knife, or ANY kind of weapon on him as self defence. I thought for a time that maybe this was supposed to be some kind of universe where guns didnt exist…But then at the end of the film, Joe goes nuts with a pistol for 5 minutes…Which raises the question…WHY did noone even THREATEN him with a gun at ANY point in this?

Continuity aside, the films structuring is odd too, BECAUSE we follow the story from Joes perspective, it means…other than one or two instances with the police, we never really get to get a feeling for our protagonists. Typically with a film like this, we’d follow a couple of protagonist outsiders who are a little creeped out by Joe as a presence. end up accidentally seeing or finding something they shouldnt and find themselves pulled into Joes world.

Here? following Joe means we just end up…watching him wander about for a bit, drink a lot of wine and murder a few folks. They try to soften Joe as a character once or twice by having him stop an abusive father from beating up his kid and by escorting a young woman home…But its kind of hard to say Joe is a ‘Complex character with good and bad sides’ whent he bad sides include rape, eye gouging, murder, and communication with demonic forces…

Dont get me wrong, I applaud the fact that the film decides to dollow the antagonist here, its an unusual but unique thing to do…I just think it could have been handled better.

Because of the continuity and structural issues, the pacings effected as well…The film feels like it opens in its 2nd act. It feels like we’ve missed something fundamental, as we pick up with Joe at a funeral thats in the middle of happening. the issues around the people around Joe simultaineously treating his deviency as a new development AND something he’s renowned for makes it feel like we as the audience have missed a key development into WHY everyones treating him as they do.

As such, it feels like the first and second act are kind of melded together for the first 70 minutes or so of the film as we kind of idle in the same gear for most of that runtime, occasionally spiking into something a bit more quicker paced when a fight scene happens. But it really only TRUELY gets interesting a more ‘high gear’ in the 3rd act…at least, in my opinion.

The scripts a bit uneven and really kind of feels like the writer wasnt entirely confident with how scripts should be structured or written. Thats not to say its inherently a BAD script, its enjoyable enough. its just that, if your coming to these films for the first time, you might find it quite a bit more difficult to just ‘put on and enjoy’ because it plays against a lot of commonly agreed formatting choices.

Contrasting that script problem however, we have frankly GORGEOUS cine and direction. stuff that would give some of the Universal monster movies a run for their money. José Mojica Marins alongside playing Joe ran direction duties on this thing and i’ll say this, at this point in the mans career, he may not have been able to write a consistent feature length script. But you better believe he can shoot a damn fine movie!

A SUPERB example of lighting here, everything is murky moody and eerie. it feels like a film thats fallen through from a different dimension. Shots are superbly composed, theres some very interesting and intricate fight sequences. a LOT of Joes character is shown through creative lighting and framing choices and the cast and crew seem to be very receptive to instruction as they give performances that utterly blew me away. They may not be saying anything particualrly mindblowing…But you better believe they’re saying it with HEART.

Equally, as mentioned. for 1964; this film is SURPRISINGLY gory. expect bloody gouged eyes, blood smatters during physical beatings, gory shots of fingers being chopped off, eye popping, EVERYONE gets covered in quite realistic blood at one point or another in this thing…which for 1964 is pretty unheard of. I mean…’Bloodfeast’ came out 12 months prior to this one with comedy ‘poster paint red’ blood and little to no ACTUAL gore…and that film got damn near condemned by the church for it…this film looks REAL…lord knows how people took it at the time….

Ultimatley; I have a complex realtionship with this first entry. it felt like a production that had a solid idea, but was uncertain on how to realize it. This would be the starting point of an (at least) 10 picture series. and a lot of franchises like this will often start a bit janky before revising what they want to be and crystalizing their idea (see: the friday the 13th movies, which took 3 pictures before they nailed the format).

So while the script was kind of a mood killer for me, the visuals, characters, performances, tone and soundtrack excelled SO much, I cnat really hate this one. its a total ‘mood’ film, one best enjoyed a few beers deep in the smokey haze of a 2am screening. rough, grim and unpleasent. its definitely a must see if your a horror or film enthusiast. but…just be prepared.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/at-midnight-ill-take-your-soul/