At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul

In a small Brazilian town the undertaker Zé do Caixão is looking for the perfect woman to give him a son. His wife cannot conceive, so he kills her. He attacks his friend's fiancée. He challenges the town's beliefs, its church and its dead openly, and fears no punishment. José Mojica Marins writes, directs and plays Zé do Caixão. It is accepted as Brazil's first horror film, and it produced the country's best known fictional figure. The top hat, the black cape and the long fingernails became iconic immediately; Marins really did grow those nails for years. Across the following decades the character became a fixture of Brazilian culture through sequels, comics and television. The production had trouble with censorship. Its anti religious scenes and its violence unsettled the board of the day, and Marins met the same problem repeatedly for the rest of his career. The tone is unusual too. Zé do Caixão is not a monster but a man who argues for his position and rejects religion outright. The horror comes not from the supernatural but from that confident reasoning. Who it is for: viewers curious about Latin American horror and the lesser known branches of the genre's history. Who it is not for: the resources were minimal and the technical quality is poor, and violence against women is shown directly and without adornment.