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.
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
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
Deliriously frothy and enjoyable George Miller film with Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer as three witches who conjure forth Devil figure – Jack Nicholson in full barnstorming mode
Director Bruce McDonald and writer/star Don McKellar make an hilariously eccentric road movie as McKellar takes a trip down the title route with a dead body while pursued by The Devil
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
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
Standout film about angels warring on Earth that dispenses with any cutsie depiction of angels. Several sequels followed.
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer offers up his wonderfully bizarre part-live-action, part-Claymation interpretation of the classic story of Faust and his pact with The Devil
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
Alexander Sokurov, the director behind Russian Ark, turns to the classic story about a man who sells his soul to The Devil. A very different version than we are used to that takes place in an earthy, cluttered Mediaeval world
One of Walter Hill’s finest films that sets out in search of the soul of blues music, featuring a superlative performance from Joe Seneca as an aging bluesman who wants back the soul he traded to The Devil for success
One of the best and most underrated Dean R. Koontz adaptations, which creates eerie atmosphere out a town where the residents have disappeared due to what is revealed as a uniquely different creature
In his first film, Neil Jordan adapts an Angela Carter story that retells Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf film that becomes a fascinating swim of fairytale and sexual allegory
Melies Cinemagician is a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The show was a live performance involving a score composed especially for the event, displays of conjuring tricks and a magic lantern show. The same year also saw […]
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
An Italian-made homage to/parody of Fantasia offering an anthology of animated tales. This is witty and more adult in tone, yet perfectly charming and delightful in its own way
The last great film from Mario Bava, an exquisitely dreamy giallo/haunted house film that had the ignomity of being butchered and made into an Exorcist copy when it came out
Dazzling mash-up of 1940s film noir and the horror genre. One of the most beautifully filmed of all horror films, Alan Parker creates a bygone world with a visual sensuality that constantly edges over into the fantastic
Fascinating film set during Puritan witchery as men travel into the woods to confront a witch, this has many similarities to Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Made by an historian who makes everything authentic to the era
A Woody Allen film in which he plays a writer on his way to receive an award. The film drifts in and out of a series of vignettes and stories he has written, including a number of fantastic interludes, with highly amusing effect
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
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
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
Clever concept of five people trapped in an elevator where one of them is The Devil. One of the better films to come out under the much debased name of M. Night Shyamalan who lends his name as producer
Despite a premise that sounds more like the punchline of a lawyer joke – The Devil (Al Pacino) is a high-price lawyer in New York – this is lushly produced, played seriously and with surprising theological depths
This wouldn’t be a Terry Gilliam if it wasn’t cursed by bad luck – the death of star Heath Ledger. It’s the most Gilliam-esque film in some years where Gilliam and his designers leap off into deliriously madcap surrealism
A standout Swiss-made film, an exceptionally well written work about a pact made with the devil by a mediaeval village that unleashes a plague of spiders and other curses upon them
Fine film that deserves wider recognition with Jeff Goldblum as a man in an asylum who claims to be The Devil
A film based on true-life serial killer Ed Kemper. Director Chad Ferrin made the terrible Pig Killer, a true crime film that got everything wrong about its subject. Here however Ferrin gets it right and makes one of his best films yet
A witty afterlife comedy, a modernised retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice where Chad Lowe drives down the highway to hell to rescue his girlfriend
One of the less successful, nevertheless underrated John Carpenter films where he pays tribute to Nigel Kneale in a conceptually mind-boggling mix of deviltry and quantum physics
Lars von Trier returns to finish off his haunted hospital saga The Kingdom after a 25 years absence, despite the death of several principals, and again milks the same darkly hilarious vein
Scottish director Lawrie Brewster, a promising newcomer on the genre horizon, has obtained the rights to revive the Amicus Films name and conducts a strong homage to the studio’s signature anthology film
Cultishly bizarre, deliberately offbeat and wacky film that was made as a vehicle for the band Oingo Boingo. More a film you admire for its determination to be strange than anything else
Roman Polanski makes a return to Rosemary’s Baby territory in this work with Johnny Depp as a rare book collector on the trail of an occult tome. Polanski great a great sense of sinister forces surrounding Depp but the film reaches an unsatisfying ending
Film where recovering addict Balthazar Getty is dragged into an underworld of vice by mysterious stranger Peter Weller
After a disastrous reboot of the Hellboy franchise, Millennium Media get it right, employing the comic’s creator on script, taking the series into wild directions with Hellboy up against Appalachian folk horrors
Follow-up to Lars von Trier’s haunted hospital mini-series The Kingdom. The story is continued, although the plot seems rickety and either drops elements or veers off on other tangents as though it is being made up as people go along
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
A darkly funny Hal Hartley film set on the eve of The Millennium as Jesus Christ wanders about Manhattan having doubts whether to unleash the Biblical Apocalypse
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
A strong and imaginative horror/Western hybrid set aboard a train before the realisation that it is travelling to Hell. Deft characterisations and some tight, electric confrontations make this work well
Film set in a small 19th Century Orthodox Jewish village struggling to deal with the modern world, featuring Noah Taylor as a fool troubled by visions of The Devil
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
A theatrical release spun off from tv’s cult absurdist/scatological show. Not as sophisticated as later seasons of the tv series but with a raucously wacky bite that is frequently hilarious
Modernised version of the classic journey though Hell conducted with cardboard puppets – a uniquely appealing experiment peppered with a number of biting contemporary jibes
An early Roger Corman film that stirs a fascinating mix of elements involving hypnotic regression, witchery, time travel and appearances from The Devil
Enigmatic Manoel de Oliveira film that may be about wife Catherine Deneuve making a pact with The Devil to dispose of the woman husband John Malkovich is attracted to. Or maybe not
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
TV movie that copies Rosemary’s Baby as closely as copyright will allow with Belinda J. Montgomery encountering Satanists and the realisation she is the devil’s daughter
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
South Korean horror film that generates a more than effectively creepy atmosphere. The downside is that you reached the end of the show with no clear idea what is going on and why things are happening
A mind-boggling surrealist retelling of the life of Jesus (where the role has been cast with a woman). Crammed with strange imagery and symbolism. Very off the beaten track
Low-budget film that absorbs you in an intensive headspace as family members visit a reclusive brother who claims to have The Devil locked in the cellar
Osama Tezuka is a cult figure in anime and manga – what is less well known is that he also made adult animation. This, about a woman’s temptation by The Devil in mediaeval France, is a mind-boggling array of psychedelia and eroticism
An early Georges Melies whimsy only a few minutes long in which The Devil appears and causes mischief
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
This seems a variant on the plot about a cult pursuing a child for their purposes but expectations soon get twisted on their head in interesting ways
TV mini-series based on the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett novel that spoofs The Omen and Biblical End Times prophecies. The series is very close to the book as though it didn’t want to edit any precious gag
Film adaptation of Marvel Comics’ demon superhero emerges as better than it had the right to be. The risibility of the image of a motorcycle-riding demon hero is made to work through some vivid and way-out effects
Early film from Danish director Anders Rønnow-Klarlund. This starts out as a plague outbreak drama and then does a bizarre mid-film twist to become a possession film
Alec Baldwin’s financially troubled modernised remake of The Devil and Daniel Webster comes to the screen as a compromised vision
Akiva Goldsman, a screenwriter who has laid a trail of devastation through the genre, attempts to film a classic fantasy novel that has aptly described as unfilmable, resulting in a curtailed story that works in individual scenes but is mostly a spawling patchwork of fantasy elements and a romance that never seems to spark
The fourth of The Prophecy films about war between angels, the first to be made without Christopher Walken with Sean Pertwee as a detective in Bucharest who is drawn in
The Monk is a sordid classic of 18th Century Gothic literature, filled with crazed lusts and Catholic guilt and damnation. However, in the hands of French director Dominik Moll, all the tortured sexuality has been watered down and the story stuffed as a costume drama
Anodyne adaptation of a weaker Stephen king novel about a curio shop that sells objects that cause people to become obsessed and in so doing wreaks havoc throughout a small town
The Hallmark tv mini-series version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is lushly produced but tends to plod when it should come to life as fantasy
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
Mel Gibson wants to give us a film that shows Jesus’s suffering leading up to the Crucifixion but has taken it to such an extreme that he has actually created a Torture Porn film that gives the Saw and Hostel franchises a run for their money
A very disappointing film adaptation of Todd MacFarlane’s cult comic-book where all of the moody darkness emerges with one-dimensional effect as little more than The Punisher with horns
A mishmash of Alien copy and supernatural serial killer film set in a drowned future London with a script that makes no real sense. The film’s buddy cop relationship starring Rutger Hauer does have its amusements.
A clone of Donald Trump battles The Illuminati and the Egyptian god Anubis on Mars before travelling to Hell to sort out The Devil. The sheer dementia of the premise alone has one sitting down to watch
An entry in the gonzo killer shark film fad from Mark Polonia, this has some undeniable amusement to its title mash-up as a team go in search of Noah’s Ark, which somehow has killer sharks involved
Film spinoff of the rock parody act headed by Jack Black. This emerges like i>The Blues Brothers recast with Cheech and Chong and delivers some occasionally surreal and amusing gags
Blumhouse production where Finn Jones moves to a small town and finds the portrait of the town’s founder is a ringer for him
A bizarre Italian film that recounts the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and then follows on from their banishment from Eden and into the wilderness where they encounter dinosaurs, cavemen and wild beasts
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
Not an adaptation of Bram Stoker but an anime based on the Marvel comic-book Tomb of Dracula (the same title that gave birth to Blade)
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman makes a rock musical about a war between a gaudily exotic Heaven and Hell. A full-length expansion of Bousman’s earlier short film
A variant on the Pact with the Devil story as a rock group conduct a Faustian deal with Malcolm McDowell’s Devil, leading to their meteoric rise to fame and debauchery
Did we need a prequel to the events of Rosemary’s Baby? The original one of the defining classics of the horror genre. Under producer Michael Bay Apartment 7A is just more IP churn
Strange Disney tv movie in which widow Linda Hamilton moves to a small town where the people seem able to do magic
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
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
A horror film about the life of Jesus as a child. That’s not quite what we end up getting but it is enough to give this a bizarre freakshow appeal and get this site watching. Behind that though, this is surprisingly traditional
A muddled allegorical redemption drama with Eric Balfour sentenced to a maximum security prison where he is haunted by hallucinations
Adaptation of DC’s Hellblazer comic-book that gets the Hollywood treatment where all of the character’s background and look has been thrown out and the part badly miscast with Keanu Reeves
The second film from Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia, a comedy poking fun at Biblical End Times prophecies. Quite a promising idea that eventually dissolves into a caper comedy
This has an insane plot about Satanists stealing the Shroud of Turin to clone a body to incarnate The Devil and a priest possessed by the archangel Michael wading into action with a glowing sword
Jason Connery directs a film that draws upon the basics of The Keep about soldiers venturing into a tomb in Iraq where they awaken a great evil housed there
Darren Lynn Bousman, the director best known for the Saw sequels, makes a musical about a circus set in Hell through which three damned souls pass, enacting updated versions of various of Aesop’s Fables
Film set in a police interrogation room in the afterlife where two attorneys argue over whether a dead man should be saved or damned
A very lightweight made-for-tv comedy where a nerdy teen signs a pact with a desperate agent of The Devil who offers him cool and the girl of his dreams
This is a video-released sequel to the Don Bluth animated film with dogs again returning from the afterlife. This is churned out with passable effort
Classic 1970s haunted film – at least the ending reveals otherwise. While most haunted house films focus on creating spooky atmosphere, this has been designed as a copy of The Omen driven by a series of bizarre novelty deaths
Troma film that ventures back into their regular bad taste territory. This often feels like a film that never coheses into a particularly clear idea of what it is trying to do, possibly the result of six different directors
An Alexandra Aja adaptation of a Joe Hill novel that comes with a diabolical glee as Daniel Radcliffe develops a set of devil horns and finds everyone confessing their deepest secrets to him
One of the few flops that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made, a broad satire where Burton is a Devil figure who escape from an asylum, leaving a trail of bodiesas he makes his way up to control the presidency
A lightweight comedy in which nerd Steve Levitt makes a pact with The Devil to have the perfect male body but soon comes to regret his decision
Christian film in which Sean Patrick Flanery is a recovering rock musician who fights to rescue his girlfriend from the clutches of a music promoter who is the Ant-Christ