The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Devil (or Satan, Lucifer and Beelzebub) is a figure that is regarded as the prime source of evil in Judaeo-Christian mythology. According to Biblical mythology, Satan was an angel who was cast down from Heaven after leading a rebellion against God. He inhabits Hell, commands all demons and has dominion over the souls of the damned in the afterlife. In popular depiction, The Devil has horns, cloven hoofs and often red skin or glowing eyes.
The Devil is constantly of influencing/tempting human beings to do evil and manipulating events to bring individuals to a loss of faith or innocence. One of the most common appearances is in Diabolical Pact stories in which an individual sells their soul to The Devil or one of his agents for some boon only to frequently find themselves trapped by literal or contorted interpretation of the wording of the agreement.
There have been a large number of depictions of The Devil on screen from the silent era onwards. These range from light comic treatments to the 1970s occult cycle where The Devil is attempting to give birth to a child. There have even been treatments that try to rationalise The Devil in terms of science-fiction explanations.
One of the films from the heyday of the Filipino exploitation cinema fad. John Ashley makes a pact with the Devil,up in another man’s body and periodically turns into what is a werewolf in all but name
Dreary film in which Vincent Price is a magistrate who is haunted by a manifestation of The Devil for his witch persecutions. The publicity falsely tried to sell this as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
A mind-boggling oddity – a slapstick comedy Western where there seems no limit on how nutty things are allowed to go, including characters venturing to Heaven and Hell
Classic film and one of Roman Polanski’s finest works, the comically paranoid story of a housewife who increasingly comes to believe that the child she is pregnant with was fathered by The Devil
Trilogy of Edgar Allan Poe tales from three European directors. Roger Vadim’s opening episode drags but both Louis Malle and Federico Fellini deliver standout works in their respective segments
The third and in the opinion of many the best of Hammer’s Quatermass films in which Nigel Kneale introduces a conceptually wild array of ideas about Martians, race memory, psychic powers and The Devil
British comedy made with an acerbic bite featuring Dudley Moore as a hapless loser who makes a pact with Peter Cook’s Devil to win the love of his life but has the wording of each wish contorted around on him
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
Ingmar Bergman comedy in which The Devil sends Don Juan to tempt a vicar’s wife. A minor Bergman entry where he seems unsuited to directing comedy and allows his usual weighty philosophical preoccupations to intrude
An early Roger Corman film that stirs a fascinating mix of elements involving hypnotic regression, witchery, time travel and appearances from The Devil
Laughable Irwin Allen film that conducts a tour of human history via stock footage as Vincent Price’s The Devil holds a heavenly tribunal to judge humanity for inventing the atomic bomb
One of the forgotten comedies from UK’s Ealing Studios, this rails against the evils of the then new medium of television where The Devil contrives to make people miserable by getting them to watch tv
One of the films from the 1940s fad for light afterlife fantasies in which mobster Paul Muni is sent back from Hell by The Devil in the body of a respectable judge to create mischief
An entry in the 1940s light fantasy films in which compulsive womaniser Don Ameche arrives in the afterlife where he tells his life story to The Devil
This was Hollywood’s first film featuring an all-Black cast, a musical in which enjoys from both Heaven and Hell come down to engage in a war over a man’s soul
Beautifully pure-hearted French Wartime allegory set during the Middle Ages about The Devil who has sent out envoys to tempt mortals into damnation via affairs of the heart
Classic film about a lawyer arguing in court to save a man who has sold his soul to The Devil. On screen, this is turned into a highly entertaining sentimentalised Frank Capra-type film about American greatness
A classic of the German Expressionist era about a poor student who sells his shadow to The Devil, only to have it become a malevolent doppelganger. As with much of the work to emerge from this era, the film manages directorial effects that still look amazing today
F.W. Murnau’s version of the classic tale of an aging scholar selling his soul to the Devil for youth and love is one of the most fabulous pieces of pure cinema to come out of the German Expressionist era
Fascinating artifact from the silent era. One of the original Italian muscleman films in which the titular strongman is whisked down to Hell where efforts are made to seduce him into staying
A bizarre pseudo-documentary from the silent era that claims to recount a history of Satanism and witchcraft. Much of the film’s thesis is spurious but the results are facsinating
An extraordinary find, the first ever feature film, a depiction of Dante’s Inferno and a descent down to visit the damned in Hell conducted with an incredible ambition for the time the film was made
An early Georges Melies whimsy only a few minutes long in which The Devil appears and causes mischief