An Horror Underground Icon

Marins was born in São Paulo, on March 13, 1936. His parents, of Spanish origin, were circus artists. He always loved comics and movies. His father became a cinema manager, which allowed the boy to develop his imagination in the dark of the cinema. At 12, he won a camera. He never stopped filming. Some of his artisanal films were even shown to paying audiences, which covered "production" expenses. At the age of 17, he founded the Companhia Cinematográfica Atlas. Recruiting actors he tested with insects and other animals, he discovered that his vocation was in eschatological terror.

Adventure western and drama. José Mojica Marins did everything, throughout his career as an actor and director. But it was the terror that made him famous. It is one of those cases where the character overcame the author. Zé do Caixão in Brazil, “Coffin Joe” in the USA. Who doesn't know the sinister figure with long, curved nails? Even when his films stopped being successful - the last, the best produced of his career, was below expectations - the aura remained intact. People still stopped him on the street, wanted to take pictures, asked for autographs.

In 1958, he launched his western caboclo, A Sina do Aventureiro (Adventurer’s Fate). Six years later, “My Destiny in Your Hands” appeared, following the adventures of five children who fall on the road, fleeing their parents. The leader of the group sings, and the film follows the trend opened by the so-called golden nightingale, the Spanish child actor Joselito, who sang like no one else. In 1963, finally, it was time for “At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul”. Marins repeatedly told the story of the genesis of Zé do Caixão. The character was created by him on October 11, 1963. Marins had dreamed, a terrible nightmare, of a figure that dragged him into a hole.

Seeking to reproduce his affliction, he created Zé do Caixão and gave it this name based, as he said, on the legend of a being who lived millions of years ago on Earth and who became light, returning, like light, much later, to the home planet. The curious thing is that Marins was not satisfied with his own voice. He sensed that Zé do Caixão needed a special timbre just as he has a birth date; the character had a voice actor - Laércio Laurelli, who voiced a then popular Italian actor, Mario Carotenuto. Criticism fell to death, and so it continued in the following films. The public took on Zé do Caixão The recognition began abroad, even though Glauber Rocha, an icon of cinema in the country, was a pioneer in recognizing that there was something in that Zé do Caixão.

Josefel Zanatas is the character's real name. Amoral and nihilistic, he acts as a funeral director. He is an obsessive unbeliever who does not believe in God or the Devil, but considers himself superior to others and seeks the perfect woman to conceive the perfect child. This perfection is never physical - it is a mental concept. For the visualization of Zanatas / Zé do Caixão, Marins was inspired by Max Schenk, protagonist of Nosferatu, by FW Murnau, from 1922. The character continued appearing in 1967 “This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse” and in 1968 “The Strange World of Zé do Caixão” plus The Trilogy of Terror and The Awakening of the Beast.

In 2008, and with the help of friends, he concluded the trilogy that started with “At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul” and that continued with “This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse” with “Embodiment of Evil” that had a budget of R $ 1 million (220,000 US$), the highest in a film by Zé do Caixão, which was entitled to chic costumes, created by the stylist Alexandre Herchcovitch. Marins was invited to the Venice Film Festival and presented his film - of course - at midnight.

Despite his fame, he never made much money from the terror. He became a folkloric figure, embarked on several genres (even porn). He presented Cine Trash on Brazilian TV, commanded “The Strange World” by Zé do Caixão on Canal Brazil. Many scholars believe that José Mojica Marins was not just a visceral name of the most popular Brazilian cinema. Due to his production methods and the connections at Boca do Lixo, he would also have been decisive for the emergence of marginal cinema.

Source: "O Estado de Sao Paulo" newspaper.