Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadaver (This Night I Will Possess your Corpse)

“Lucas evokes the Nietzschean moral underpinnings of Marins’s influential black-and-white work—maggots, spiders, buxom babes, and all.”—Village Voice

Alongside collaborations with Captain Beefheart, Jeff Buckley, Lou Reed, and John Zorn, vanguard New York City–based guitarist and composer Gary Lucas has created a series of outstanding scores he performs live with films. Lucas joins us to perform his original music for the 1967 Brazilian cult horror classic Esta noite encarnarei no teu cadáver (This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse) by the director, screenwriter, and actor José Mojica Marins, popularly known as Coffin Joe. An underground folk antihero, Coffin Joe went on to inspire a spate of comic books and even popular songs.

Lucas’s solo guitar score creates a haunting, symphonic accompaniment that’s closely synced to the shocking images of the film, a dark morality tale pitting Marins as Coffin Joe against the forces of a pitiless and seemingly godless universe. The absolute incarnation of Evil, Coffin Joe is on the prowl in the outskirts of São Paulo in search of the Perfect Mate by which to generate the Perfect Son and will think nothing of maiming and killing anyone who gets in his way. Weaving in and out, Lucas’s effects-enhanced guitar deftly complements the original soundtrack and dialogue in Portuguese (subtitled in English) to enhance your overall experience of this wackily macabre and amazing film.

The bewitching score, which has brought new attention to Coffin Joe worldwide, has been avidly endorsed by Marins himself, who notes: “I have always maintained that music is a totally essential tool to horror films…and Lucas’s score penetrated the soul of the film…I definitively hope we can collaborate again!”