Embodiment of Evil: The Return of Coffin Joe, Blu Ray and DVD combo movie review
Embodiment of Evil: The Return of Coffin Joe, Blu Ray and DVD combo movie review
Directed by Jose Mojica Marins, starring Jose Mojica Marins, Cristina Aché, Rui Resende
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The "Coffin Joe" horror films have been a worldwide cult phenomenon for decades, ever since the 1960s. Or so I've read. I must confess my conundrum in that I'd never heard of them prior to popping this disc into my player, but I quickly came up to speed and thoroughly enjoyed (hm, not sure if 'enjoyed' is the proper word) this final installment in the trilogy. This reminds me a little bit of Dario Argento's "witch" triptych, what with Mother of Tears following Suspiria and Inferno so much later on. Jose Mojica Marins made At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul in 1963, the sequel This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse in 1967, and now the capper comes on DVD under the title Embodiment of Evil (Encarnação do Demônio).
Coffin Joe (Marins) is sort of a Mulai Ismail meets the Marquis de Sade meets Aleister Crowley killer character who's been locked away for decades inside a shadowy, solitary prison cell in a São Paulo asylum for the criminally insane. Finally, his freedom comes and there to collect him is his faithful "Igor" like servant who's been patiently awaiting the Master all these years. The pair go off into the much-changed world, and we soon discover that Coffin Joe hasn't changed a bit: before long, the charismatic creep has assembled a mini-cult of faithful followers who will do absolutely anything for him. What follows is a vile voyage into darkness with the goal of finding the perfect vessel for the seed of Coffin Joe… however, several ghosts from the past bar the way.
Judging from what little I knew of Embodiment of Evil (like, basically, what I saw on the DVD cover), I was pretty reluctant to commit an hour plus of my life to what looked to be yet another overhyped, under-budgeted foreign flick simply saturated in buckets of blood and not much else. Well, it would appear that you can't judge a movie by its box art.
From the opening moments I was immediately arrested by the sumptuous cinematography, the magnetic characters and spot-on casting, the level of suspense and tension, and even the acuteness of the torture-porn (usually by far my least-fave genre). In this case, the pain is taken to artistic levels, almost on par with Clive Barker's Hellraiser and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.
I could go on and on with plot (happily, it's considerable), characters (they are indeed created with depth, even the peripheral ones), and atmosphere (beautiful imagery, amazing sets, locations, costumes and appointments), and of course the gore (exquisite in its reveals and execution) — but in this case, the film should speak for itself.
If you are into the fatal flicks of artistic/sadistic autuers like Zulawski, Jodorowski, Rollin, Von Trier, and Franco, then add Marins to your list with Embodiment of Evil.
The audio and visual on the Blu-ray are outstanding — kudos to Synapse for that. As for the extras, they are OK. The making-of featurette is actually quite informative (though presented in sort of a confusing manner… I had a little trouble following the odd pace at first). There's also a theatrical trailer, and B-roll from the film's premiere at Fantasia Festival.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
Latest User Comments:
| Never heard of The Coffin Joe movies. They any good? | |
| 05-24-2011 by The Villain | discuss |