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José Mojica Marins (1936–2020) created and personally portrayed Zé do Caixão — known internationally as "Coffin Joe" — a top-hatted, long-nailed undertaker whose nihilistic quest to father the "perfect" child made him Brazilian horror's first and most lasting icon. Marins wrote, directed, produced, and starred in À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul, 1964), widely considered the first horror film made in Brazil.
Working under a military dictatorship with strict censorship, Marins's films directly challenged religious and moral orthodoxy, pairing genuinely unsettling imagery with philosophical monologues about fate, free will, and mortality delivered by Coffin Joe himself. The sequel, Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (1967), expanded the mythology and the surreal, almost hallucinatory dream sequences that became a hallmark of Marins.
Coffin Joe became a genuine cultural phenomenon in Brazil, appearing in comic books, on television, and in public appearances, which blurred the line between Marins and his creation for decades. For international collectors, Marins offers a horror tradition almost entirely outside the European and American genre lineage — a distinct, self-made mythology built by a single filmmaker over an entire career.
