Just a few days before Halloween, we come to the second installment in the Zé do Caixão series. While it’s about on a similar level of quality overall to the last one, I found this entry to be a little more interesting and inventive, especially one notable scene that I’ll definitely want to talk about. I don’t want to give too much away at the beginning here, but needless to say, there’s still plenty of Zé vileness in this film to satisfy those that liked the first one. Let’s talk about the story.
Following on from At Midnight, Zé apparently survived his encounter with the spirits and recovers in a hospital for a while. He’s allowed to go free after, you guessed it, “a lack of evidence.” Zé sets up residence back in his home village, and even gets himself a classic hunchbacked servant named Bruno. The two set about kidnapping several women from the village and test them to see which one is “worthy” enough to conceive Zé’s son. One woman, Marcia, seems to be unaffected by the horrors they’re all subjected to, so Zé decides to keep her and kill the rest in a snake pit. However, just as he’s about to approach her for conception, she rejects him, too distraught with his vile acts. Interestingly, he lets her leave, as he apparently knows that she’s fallen in love with him and won’t rat him out. Meanwhile, one of the women in the snake pit swears that she will come for Zé from beyond the grave. The next day, Laura, the village colonel’s daughter, seems to take an interest in Zé, and Zé in her as well. He tells her to meet him at midnight, which she does, despite the efforts of her father and brother. Laura’s views remarkably line up exactly with Zé’s, and she’s ready and willing to sire the son he has longed for. Later on, her brother offers to buy out Zé’s properties for a large amount of money in exchange for him leaving the village and, by extension, Laura. Zé appears to agree to this, but as you’d expect, this is just a ruse to capture the brother and kill him off. As an added bonus, they get the woman he let go to help them frame Truncador, the colonel’s muscle, for it too. Things seem to be going well for Zé, until he learns that one of the women he killed in the snake pit (the one that was cursing him) had been pregnant. This devastates Zé, who is disgusted by the idea of harming a child (they’re someone’s blood lineage, after all). These guilty feelings culminate in a horrific nightmare, in which Zé gets dragged to hell and sees the ghastly tortures that its inhabitants are subjected to. He even comes face to face with the devil and is shocked to see that Satan looks just like him. Zé desperately tries to hold on to his anti-religious beliefs, even when he wakes up again, but it’s clear that this experience has affected him. At this point, both the colonel and the villagers are fed up with Zé and his cruel and heinous actions and are ready to take him down by any means necessary. I’ll stop the recap here so that you can see how it all turns out. Let’s move on to my thoughts.
For the most part, this film isn’t too different quality-wise from the first one. The style and effects are still rather low budget, and the writing is still very pulpy and simple. However, I did get the impression that they were trying to step their game up, at least a little bit, with this one. Zé’s hell nightmare is strikingly twisted and impressive for a B-movie: it’s in color, there’s various body parts (and sometimes full-on people) sticking out of the walls, Marins pulls double duty as both Zé and Satan, etc. It’s definitely the kind of scene where, if you were watching this movie late at night and were fading in and out of sleep, you’d be freaked out by just the sheer dementedness of it all. Of course, that’s not to say it wouldn’t also be impressive to someone more awake, as I thought it was very memorable. It’s just that it hits that right level of B-movie strangeness that’ll throw off anyone that isn’t ready for it. In general, the imagery and effects in this film, while still low budget, are a little more effective than the effects from Midnight. There wasn’t really a moment where I laughed at the fakeness or anything, they were just mostly solid effects for a film of this nature. We still have the classic real tarantulas, like the first film, and now with the addition of real snakes too. Plus, we have a decently made scene of dead people reaching up from their graves to drag Zé down into the burning depths. Again, none of these are mind-blowing, and the grabbing scene was obviously shot on a set, but they work for a B-movie, and are certainly better than anything you’d see in an Ed Wood film. In terms of the story, I did find it interesting that we got to see Zé grapple with guilt and a conflict of his principles. In the first film, while he was scared of the spirits that gave him his just desserts, we never saw him in any state of remorse for his evil acts. However, in this film, when he finds out that he killed an unborn child, it clearly has an effect on him, so much so that he has the hell nightmare because of it. Granted, the remorse is still only being shown based on his own messed up ideals (as in, he’s not at all sorry for killing the pregnant woman, just the baby inside her, because blood lineage is everything to him), but it is still an interesting place to take his character. It’s even more so when you see what happens at the end, which I really don’t want to spoil for you, so I’m going to try to dance around this while still getting my point across. Basically, there’s a change in Zé at the end of the film, and one that sort of ties in with the guilt he was showing before. Honestly, it doesn’t tie super well together and comes across like it was added in at the last minute…and that’s because it was. The censors at the time forced Marins to alter the ending to something more to their liking, so it comes across as rather tacked-on or forced. Now, you could also see it as the last act of someone desperate, and more specifically how people can change so easily when they are desperate, but I don’t think that idea really works here. It could have worked if that was the original intention and they had executed that in a way that made that idea clear, but this was a forced change and definitely feels like one. I don’t have too much more to say about this film, since, as I said, it’s about on par with the previous one, so much of what I had to say about that one carries over to this one. The last thing I’ll say is that it was also interesting this time around to pair Zé up with his “perfect woman,” one who lines up with his ideals and sensibilities almost exactly. It’s an uncomfortable reminder that these sorts of twisted worldviews aren’t just relegated to one bad guy, and that there’s people that will willingly put themselves in subservient relationships for the cause of these worldviews. Anyway, that’s pretty much all I have for you on this one, so I’ll wrap things up here.
In short, if you liked Midnight, then you’ll probably like This Night just as much. Apparently, there is a third installment in this series called Embodiment of Evil, but I won’t be looking into that one. I mainly wanted to cover the two “classic films” for the Halloween season, and my schedule only allows for two reviews a month anyway. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t watch that one too, as I’d wager it’s probably at least worth seeing if you like these two films. Don’t quote me on that, though. Well, until next time, I hope you all have a safe, fun, and happy Halloween. Spend some time with Zé do Caixão, and I’ll see you all in November.