Embodiment of Evil (2008, Synapse Blu-ray) Review
Director: José Mojica Marins
Cast: José Mojica Marins, Rui Resende, Jece Valadão, Adriano Stuart, Milhem Cortaz
Synapse Films / Region A / Unrated / Color and B&W / 1.85:1 Widescreen / Portuguese DTS-HD 5.1 and DTS-HD MA 2.0 / English subtitles / 94 minutes / BUY FROM TLACULT
Extras: Making of Embodiment of Evil – Featurette / Footage From the Fantasia Film Festival Premiere / Original Theatrical Trailer
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In 1963 filmmaker and Brazilian TV personality José Mojica Marins unleashed Josefel Zanatas aka Coffin Joe into an unsuspecting public. The film was À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma or At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul as it is known in English. The main character, Coffin Joe, is an undertaker, who dresses in a long, black cape and a high top hat and believes that in order to make the perfect, immortal child, he must find the perfect woman and impregnate her. Since his wife is unable to have children, this means he must kill her and move on to other prospects. The next installment of the Coffin Joe trilogy is the 1967 This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver) where Joe, after surviving the events in the first film, continues his quest for the perfect woman to carry his satanic seed. By this time his past deeds have begun to catch up with him in the form of visions and nightmares of Hell and ghosts of his victims.
Finally, some 40 years later (in real time and in the movie’s timeline) Marins returns as the man in black with a mad hard-on, ready to impregnate any and all women, hoping that she will be “the one” in Encarnação do Demônio aka Embodiment of Evil. This time we meet Joe as he is reluctantly being released from prison after some thought he was long dead from drowning (he was) at the end of the last movie. He is met by his long faithful hunchbacked servant Bruno as he leaves the compound and it’s not long before they are up to their old tricks. With the help of a few new servants, CJ embarks once again on his e-veel quest. While minding his own business (you know, finding chicks to rape and shoot his old, fat load into) he raises the ire of the local authorities who have now heard that the bastard is in town and looking to score. Looking for suitable baby incubators and fighting off the po-po can make a man a little testy so of course Joe does a little torturing and killing along the way while being visited by ghosts and having more visions of Hell.
While this third film in the trilogy doesn’t stray from the formula of the first two, it didn’t fail to amuse the shit out of me. Marins is a very competent writer and director with an eye for sublime visuals and crazy, sleazy carnage. One of the women who actually wanted to be CJ’s baby-mama was fed her own ass, literally, after he sliced off her butt-cheek and crammed it in her mouth to test her mettle. That along with the woman being released from a giant pig carcass that she had been sewn up in and freaky sex in a torrent of blood made me giggle like a gore-soaked schoolgirl. To top off all of the outrageous goings-on, no one will ever make me believe that there wasn’t real skin piercing happening. In one scene a man has huge hooks skewered into his back as he is yanked off of the floor and hung by his back flesh, and in another a woman’s mouth is literally sewn shut and you can actually see the needle and string as it slides through her pouting puss. I know real when I see it, and that shit was real. It was like watching a scene from the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow.
I was pleasantly surprised that I would like Embodiment considering how long it’s been since the other films were made. I wondered if the character would stand the test of time. While coming off as a little cheesy with his out of date clothing style, satanic persona and old guy gut, Coffin Joe won me over with his charisma and Marins’ marriage to the role. He relished playing the part so much that he chewed up every scene he was in. With his steely, hypnotic stares and evil laughter, the e-veel man in the black top-hat stole my heart but thankfully didn’t mistake me for a potential baby-maker. Synapse Films did the movie a great service by releasing it in HD so you can see every last atrocity and hear every last blood-curdling scream in pristine clarity. And if you don’t have a blu-ray player, have no fear, the blu-ray combo pack comes with a DVD in tow. So pick this awesome fucking film up and enjoy the ass chopping, baby making good time.
