This is the first film I've seen by Jose Marins who is one of these weird underground film personalities from South America. Jose makes his own movies and has starred in several of them as Coffin Joe, a grave-digger cum self-styled manic messiah with dark protruding (occasionally hypnotic) eyes and disturbingly long nails (which are supposed to be real). This film is billed as a continuation of 'At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul'. Mr. Marins certainly has his taste in movie titles, doesn't he?

Anyway the movie has Coffin Joe, who strongly believes in man over God, stating pompously that immortality lies not in the spirit, but in the blood, and therefore his mission to save humanity is by creating the perfect man after mating his superior self with a woman of suitably superior characteristics. O-kay. Joe attempts to find his suitable mate by abducting random women from the town with the help of his stereotype hunchback assistant, the common factor being that they're all MILF-types with a fancy for see-through nightwear; I guess he looks for the extra-wide load-bearing hips they'll need to carry the perfect offspring. After putting them all to bed Joe introduces a horde of tarantulas that crawl over them. The one woman that doesn't scream bloody murder, he selects as his suitable mate, for her courage...which is a bit strange since Joe himself at various points in the film appears to lack in that quality. The rest are consigned to their death, this time by snake avalanche, and one of them curses Joe saying that she will 'possess his corpse'. That makes sense.

Spider-woman

A disagreement with his chosen mate over the fate of her rivals has Joe packing her off, but for very unconvincing reasons she does not tell on him to the police. He then comes across Laura, the daughter of a prominent townsman. She turns out to be the perfect amoral woman (she's even cool with the fact that Joe kills her brother by crushing his head under a big stone), and is equally thrilled about raising the perfect child that will prove the superiority of man (or at least Coffin Joe) over God.

After various other twists and turns, Joe finds his 'perfect offspring' dream unfulfilled and himself chased by a posse of angry townspeople. It is only at the very end that he 'redeems' himself by calling for the crucifix and accepting the power of God over man...at least until the next movie in the series, I guess.

For all its kvlt reputation the movie is in most parts done in a humdrum way and would have probably not garnered as much of a buzz if not for the presence of its lead star. Marins aka Coffin Joe is not a subtle actor but has a swagger that lends considerable interest to the numerous scenes of his incoherent rantings. Although Marins as director is no by no means a Mario Bava, the plain gritty black and white visuals are complimentary to his rough-and-ready shooting approach. A glorious breakout is when Coffin Joe has a vision of hell, a nightmare of lurid primary colors and textures ruled by a version of Coffin Joe dressed like Julius Caesar, with several eye-catching if also hilarious depictions of the tortures of the netherworld.

Oww!

Overall, I'd say this was a middling enterprise, often dull. I realize I'm coming mid-way into a series and therefore not in the best position to judge it, but I'm also not sufficiently enthused to look at the other installments. Maybe Mr. Coffin Joe should work some of that hypnotism thing to convince me.