Embodiment of Evil (, ) is a 2008 Brazilian horror film directed by and starring José Mojica Marins. The film was co-written with Dennison Ramalho. It is the third installment in his Coffin Joe trilogy, featuring Mojica Marins reprising his role as Zé do Caixão (in English, Coffin Joe). The film is preceded by At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964) and This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967).
A flashback scene in the film reveals that the young Coffin Joe (portrayed in the scene by Raymond Castile) survived after submerging in a swamp at the end of the previous film. After serving 40 years in a prison mental ward, Coffin Joe (José Mojica Marins) is released to the streets of modern-day São Paulo. Immediately after his release, Coffin Joe renews his lifelong obsession to sire a male child with a woman whom he perceives to be of exceptional qualities capable of continuing his bloodline, which he feels to be "superior" above all others.
Embodiment of Evil was filmed over roughly forty days at various locations in São Paulo. Like Mojica Marins' previous films, the effects are largely performed by hand rather than provided through computer generation. The film premiered in Brazilian theaters on and screened in twenty festivals worldwide despite its poor box office performance. It won awards at five festivals, and was nominated for awards at two others.
Plot After being released from the prison mental ward, Coffin Joe is greeted at the gate by his old and loyal servant Bruno (Rui Rezende), who takes him to a secluded basement below a favela in São Paulo. As well as Bruno, the hideout is populated by four fanatics who are obsessed with Coffin Joe's history and ideas, and have been waiting and preparing for his arrival in order that they may faithfully serve him. After questioning their motives and testing their loyalty, Coffin Joe immediately orders the followers to begin kidnapping women so he can renew his murderous quest for "the continuation of the blood", his lifelong obsession to find who he determines to be a perfect woman who will bear him a son. His first victim is Dr. Hilda (Cléo De Páris), a controversial eugenicist who Bruno kidnaps. Coffin Joe tests her will by injecting her with drugs and she has hallucinations of Coffin Joe cutting off her buttock and presenting it to her after which she willingly eats it. Meanwhile, Coronel Claudiomiro Pontes (Jece Valadão), a fervently Roman Catholic police captain who holds an old grudge against Coffin Joe for blinding his eye, and Father Eugênio (Milhem Cortaz), a mentally unstable priest (the son of one of Coffin Joe's past victims, Dr. Rudolfo in At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul) learn about Coffin Joe's release, and decide to join forces to seek Coffin Joe and kill him once and for all.
On his first night, Coffin Joe starts to be haunted by ghostly visions of his previous victims, including Terezinha and Lenita from At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, and Laura from This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse. However, he convinces himself that they are just his imagination although they continue to haunt him throughout the film. He later singles out a young gypsy woman named Elena (Nara Sakarê), who has also been intrigued with him since his appearance at the favela. Elena's aunts, Cabíria (Helena Ignez) and Lucrécia (Débora Muniz), knowing of his evil history, perform a ritual to protect Elena from Coffin Joe and place a curse on him. After Joe kills the two aunts, Elena offers herself to him, although while having sex with her he has a vision where he finds himself in another dimension which is a bloody, intestine-like maze. There he is met by a figure called the Mystifier (José Celso Martinez Corrêa), who takes him to an arid, surreal landscape called Purgatory. The Mystifier shows Coffin Joe horrific visions of human depravity, suffering, and perversion, as well as a female figure of Coffin Joe's death. Greatly disturbed, Joe sends his followers to quickly kidnap several more women and proceeds to torture them through sadistic ordeals to test their endurance and willingness to succumb to his perceived superiority.
When the police find Coffin Joe's hideout that night they find it deserted, except for the gruesome remains of his victims. Joe escapes through the dark woods with Colonel Pontes and Father Eugênio after him. Joe arrives at the closed amusement park, Playcenter, where Joe kills the policemen, but is wounded by Father Eugênio, who impales Coffin Joe through the heart with a large crucifix. Although relieved thinking he has killed Coffin Joe, Father Eugênio is immediately pursued by shadows and the voice of Coffin Joe as he leaves the amusement park. As Father Eugênio leaves, Elena appears. She pulls the crucifix out of Coffin Joe, removes her clothes and has sexual intercourse with him. The final scene takes place at Coffin Joe's funeral, where it is revealed that Coffin Joe achieved his goal in the end, as the women who survived his ordeals, including Hilda and Elena, gathered at his funeral, are all pregnant.
Cast
Production Production on Embodiment of Evil spanned six years, including Dennison Ramalho re-writing the script with Mojica Marins. Despite Mojica Marins stating that Romalho would be a "worthy successor", Romalho convinced the director that Coffin Joe should be the center of Embodiment of Evil.
Mojica Marins' son, Crounel Marins, served as assistant director.
The actual filming took place over roughly 40 days, during which actor Jece Valadão died of kidney and breathing problems. All but two of the scenes involving his character, Colonel Pontes, had been filmed prior to his death, though a new character had to be written into the film to maintain continuity. Filming began on November 4, 2006, and concluded on December 20, 2006.
Embodiment of Evil was shot on location in São Paulo, with the sequence which includes Coffin Joe's death being filmed at the Playcenter amusement park. A sewer in Santana had been chosen as the location for the scene involving the naked Iemanjá, but was ultimately abandoned due to not being able to control the lighting. The Purgatory scenes had to be filmed in one day on location in a sand quarry in Itaquaquecetuba due to budget constraints. This gives the location of the sand quarry.
Leny Dark filmed the scene involving 3000 cockroaches, during which she had to be transported to the hospital as one had entered her ear canal. In addition to the cockroaches, the film utilized 30 to 40 slugs, 20 spiders, 10 rats, 6 snakes, 3 lizards, and 2 bats. There were 650 extras employed, 180 of which were involved in a single scene.
Crew members on the film were sometimes unable to stay throughout the filming of an entire scene. The pig from which Jannete Tomiita steps in the movie had been killed the day of filming that scene, which had to be shot multiple times because she slipped in the blood exiting the cadaver. An actress using the pseudonym Milze From Hell had her lips sewn shut on set without anesthesia; the scene was filmed as a continuous shot with no cuts. Manoel Garcia Salvado Neto, whose nickname is Freak Garcia, said enduring the four hours of makeup to cover his tattoos was worse than the scene he was filmed in - which also took four hours - where he was suspended from the ceiling by multiple hooks puncturing his back.
Chubb Limited's Brazil branch, along with Brüder Consultoria, designed the insurance policy that covered the film in the event of extra expenses or other material loss, including any expenses caused by illness, injury, or death.
Nara Sakarê, whose scene in the film involves corpses dripping blood onto her and Mojica Marins while the pair are engaged in intercourse, was confirmed to be pregnant several months after the filming ended.
Costumes for Embodiment of Evil were designed by David Parizotti and Alexandre Herchcovitch. Parizotti used recycled materials in making the costumes of Coffin Joe's servants, using tire rubber and heavy canvas. Herchcovitch considered the construction of Zé do Caixão's outfit to simply be refining, having a specialist make the top hat, and making the suit from cashmere wool and the shirts from fine cotton. José Celso Martinez Corrêa taught a fashion design workshop during which the 40 students made the pieces of his costumes. The costume budget was R$15,000.
Embodiment of Evil marked the first horror film for André Aburamjra, who created the music alongside Márcio Nigro. The soundtrack consisted of 19 songs, which were made available through MySpace.
Time gap between films
In April 1967, announcements regarding the coming production of Embodiment of Evil through Mojica Marins' production company Produções Cinematográficas Ibéria run out of an abandoned synagogue in Brás resulted in approximately 100 "poor young women" arriving to audition. Initial rounds of tests administered by Mojica Marins included participating in a simulated wake and being subjected to spiders, rats, frogs, and owls, but eventually evolved to kissing a real human skull, walking through a cemetery after midnight, eating a live cockroach, and hitting Mojica Marins in the face with an armadillo tail whip. Afterward, the Public Entertainment Division (DPP) claimed that Mojica Marins didn't have a permit for the auditions, claiming that they were instead rehearsed performances. In response to a second notice regarding the need for a license, Mojica Marins announced a second round of auditions for August 11, 1967. More than 150 people turned out, including John Herbert, who left the debacle, furious, when a dentist was expected to extract one person's teeth using pliers without administering anesthesia. The DPP inspectors arrived shortly afterward to shut everything down. On August 14, Mojica Marins and his attorneys were informed that he could not continue testing nor begin filming until he obtained additional permits. Nine days later, Mojica Marins recorded a television interview in which he stated he was then filming Embodiment of Evil.
, in October 1967, went to Mojica Marins to discuss another film for the franchise, but the project owner, Augusto Pereira, refused, leaving Mojica Marins and Galante to work together on Trilogy of Terror and shelving Embodiment of Evil. In 1979, Mojica Marins stated that he intended to run advertisements in São Paulo once again to start casting for Embodiment of Evil.
When asked about the length of time between films, Mojica Marins stated that he had been able to return to making movies as a result of receiving R$500,000 from Governor Geraldo Alckmin in 2003. This was not, however, sufficient to fund the film, and Mojica Marins secured another R$1,000,000 from President Lula. More specifically, the Brazilian dictatorship had imprisoned Mojica Marins. When he was eventually released, the original producer died. The next producer to sign on to the project died of throat cancer before investing any funds. A budget of R$1,500,000 procured through Ivan Novais, producer of Occult City, fell through when he died on the first day of filming in 1998.
In addition to financial considerations, Mojica Marins faced the censorship of the dictatorship which had required changes to the ending of This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse. Mojica Marins' work in pornography over the interim decades resulted in critics expressing scorn for his work, and the censors' continued to disapprove of his films as a result of his focus on pushing social taboos.
To canonically explain the more than four decade gap between films two and three of the trilogy, Conrad Editora published a graphic novel titled Prontuário 666 by and , and boasting eight illustrators. Released in September 2008, it revealed Coffin Joe's real name as well as providing details on the experiments conducted on other inmates while he was imprisoned.
Previous incarnations