At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
1964 film by José Mojica Marins
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (Portuguese: À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma) is a 1964 Brazilian horror film directed and co-written by José Mojica Marins. Marins stars as Zé do Caixão (known in English-speaking countries as Coffin Joe), an undertaker who believes that he can achieve immortality by having a son, a concept he refers to as "the continuation of blood". The film marks the first appearance of the Coffin Joe character in media.
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is the first Brazilian-produced horror film, and the first installment of the "Coffin Joe trilogy". It is followed by This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967) and Embodiment of Evil (2008).
Plot
The film is set in an unnamed Brazilian small town. Zé do Caixão, the local undertaker who disdains religion and emotion and who believes the only thing that matters is the "continuity of the blood" (specifically his own), is looking for the "perfect woman" to bear him a son, ensuring his immortality. Since his wife Lenita has been found to be unable to bear children, Zé begins to make advances with Terezinha, the fiancée of Zé's friend Antonio. Terezinha scolds him by telling him that Antonio is the only man in her life. During a Catholic holiday, Zé, discontent with her infertility, kills his wife Lenita by tying her up and having a venomous spider bite her.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2051858. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1967 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.