Tag Archives: Devil

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FAUST (1926) / FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED (2000)

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We all think we know Faust. The guy who sold his soul to the devil, right? But before there was Christopher Marlowe’s dramatization of the tale of Faust, or Goethe’s two-volume epic Faust, or Rembrandt’s etching of Faust, or Liszt or Berlioz or even Randy Newman’s Faust, there was the actual guy. The historical record finds a Johan Georg Faust born in the last 13th century who went on to become a respected alchemist and astrologer, but who may also have been an outrageous con artist, claiming the ability to reproduce the miracles of Jesus Christ. Rumors suggest that he died in an explosion, a fate which his contemporaries attested to his ties with the devil. Before the century was out, tales of his extraordinary misdeeds had begun to proliferate; one such copy fell into the hands of Marlowe, and the legend of the man who made an unwise bargain with the devil began to spread.

The price of immortality is steep. “Faustian bargain” has become common parlance, and on this very site, two different interpretations of the Faust myth are currently under consideration for eventual induction into the Apocrypha, including a Jan Svankmajer-directed surreal mix and a version of more recent vintage from Russia. Today, let’s dive into a couple more such interpretations, one attempting to faithfully deliver the classic tale with what were then newfangled tools of cinema, while the other takes what it wants from the myth to reach its own, not-especially-lofty ends.

FAUST (1926)

 

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DIRECTED BY: F. W. Murnau

FEATURING: Gösta Ekman, , Camilla Horn,

PLOT: Heaven and hell make a wager over the fate of Faust, a pious man who sells his soul to the devil to save his city from the plague. 

COMMENTS: The short directorial career of F. W. Murnau is so loaded with classics — Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, Sunrise, Tabu — that a remarkable achievement like Faust could easily get lost in the shuffle. The film more than earns its place in this august company, though, with style to burn. Though the tale is familiar and the visual gimmicks are naturally dated, there’s a freshness to this telling that sidesteps a lot of the expected reservations.

Murnau is particularly proud of his in-camera effects, and he deploys these techniques with Zemeckisian fervor. An early scene in which the devil looms over a small medieval town like the most imposing mountain would have justified recalling the film a hundred years hence, but Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FAUST (1926) / FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED (2000) →

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FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE DEVIL’S BRIDE (1974)

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Velnio nuotaka

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DIRECTED BY: Arunas Zebriunas

FEATURING: Gediminas Girdvainis, Vasyl Symchych, Regina Varnaite, Vaiva Mainelyte, Regimantas Adomaitis

PLOT: Cast down from Heaven, minor demon Pinchiukas tricks an Earthly miller into signing away his daughter.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Featuring a bumbling God, a prancy little devil, and non-stop rock and roll and orchestra, this Cold War relic bubbles over with breezy “what the Hell?” charm.

COMMENTS: I don’t always watch devil-summoned naiads pursue a hunky suitor, but when I do, I prefer them on horseback. At a slightly too-long seventy-five minutes, The Devil’s Bride catches the eye and raises the eyebrow from the start, commencing its cavalcade of song and dance with a gilded frame bounding the Lord and a host of singing cherubim. God dozes on and off, with the angels discovering the temptations of feasting, drinking, and smooching during their brief moments without supervision. Cue the music transition from the classic big blast hymnal choir. At one point, God’s thronal bell loses its clapper, and chaos ensues for just too long while he attempts to fix it. By the time he rings it to restore order, several of the Heavenly host are ripe for a fall: lady angels losing grace in go-go dance outfits, fellow angels done up in full 19th-century foppery. And we meet our anti-hero, Pinchiukas, fallen into a pond, depressed and ready to begin scheming.

Some of my confusion about the plot flow stems certainly from a regrettable lack of knowledge about Lithuanian folklore. (Some, too, doubtless from the punch-drunk mental state I was in after very little sleep the preceding night.) Are gay angels a recognized aspect of Soviet Lithuanian Catholic doctrine? Who is that incessantly aria-ing blonde on the boat who immediately falls for the homely miller? How is it the local swain so swiftly seduces—and is seduced by—the daughter? (Was it his manly-but-romantic chomping of a daisy flower head that clinched the deal)? What is up with that elaborate gold-carved window frame on the mill exterior? How about those disembodied black-elbow-gloved hands at the devil’s beck and call? And why is a devil, but not an angel or God, bound so scrupulously by legal contract verbiage?

This final question is one I have for supernatural folktales more broadly. Suffice to say, the questions raised are as superfluous as any answers that might be furnished by a more illuminated viewer.

Despite stalling out on occasion, and despite the repetitiveness of every one of the songs, The Devil’s Bride is a romp that borders on the madcap, particularly thanks to leading man Gediminas Girdvainis as the little devil. It was pleasant to observe that, confused though I was about the occult mechanics, the portrayal of “evil” was ultimately sympathetic. Ne’er shall I forget his pomp and ridiculousness on the day of his wedding, with fancy chapeau, hunting-red jacket, and his sheer, skin-tight white leggings. Comely daughters and swains the world over, beware the appeal of the devil in tights.

The Devil’s Bride is restored and presented by Deaf Crocodile, available now in a limited edition Blu-ray, with a standard edition scheduled for a mid-September release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a 78-minute audio-visual barrage of ideas, music, and chaotic storytelling that is not for the faint of heart… feels somehow both like an Eastern Bloc Babes in Toyland style fantasy and also as if Jodorowsky made a musical… I’ll be damned if I’ll ever forget it.”–J. Hurtado, Screen Anarchy (festival screening)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ALUCARDA (1977)

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AKA Alucarda, la hija de las tinieblas; Innocents From Hell

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Tina Romero, Susana Kamini, , David Silva

PLOT: When orphaned 17th-century teenager Justine is shipped off to a convent, she meets up with the similarly motherless Alucarda— who happens to be the spawn of the devil—and soon the pair are wreaking havoc amongst the clergy.

COMMENTS: In the recent papal political potboiler Conclave, ’ Cardinal Thomas Lawrence makes the case for the critically intertwined nature of faith and doubt. Certainty, he tells his fellow cardinals, is dangerous because it nudges us toward arrogance and intolerance. “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery.”

One can scarcely imagine what Cardinal Lawrence would make of Alucarda, a film that hasn’t got a doubtful bone in its body. Given director Moctezuma’s history as an acolyte of Alejandro Jodorowsky, one might expect a certain amount of surrealism or mysticism, but this is a movie that fully believes in the devil and doesn’t find metaphor in a single damn thing. When a satyr cavorts with young girls, communion with Satan can be the only goal, and when you meet the story’s lone skeptic, a doctor who stakes out a position firmly in favor of science and reason, you can be sure that he will learn a harsh lesson in demonic possession and will drop his rational pose at a moment’s notice. Your sense of the film’s credulity is very dependent upon your willingness to believe that biblical evil lurks nearby awaiting its opportunity.

That amusingly unambiguous tone drives the film’s central performance, the teenaged, born-to-be-bad Alucarda herself, who exudes a nervous wild-eyed energy, desperate to win the favor of her potential new playmate Justine, and irrepressibly eager to start being naughty. (Romero, in her 30s, is an impressively convincing youth. Her counterpart, Kamini, is… not.) She’s like a toddler in her emotional purity, which gives her quest to upend the stodgy righteousness of the convent a potent charge. Unfortunately, that single-mindedness serves other characters less well, like the upright, uptight Father Lázaro (Silva, in his final role) who leads a round of self-flagellation to fend off bad thoughts, or the host of nuns whose performances must be reductively but accurately described as histrionic, writhing and shrieking in turn. The world of Alucarda is devoid of nuance, which is a time-saver, but makes the proceedings less engaging.

If there’s one word that sums up Alucarda, it’s “impatient.” Moctezuma aspires to the wildness of Argento or the eroticism of Rollin, but you get the meat of those filmmakers without any of the sauce. It’s mere minutes from Alucarda and Justine meeting a goat man to that same demon leading the two girls in a nude blood ritual, and a full orgy in the woods is just around the corner from that. Moctezuma is in such a hurry to get to the good stuff there that he dispenses with all of the build-up that makes the shock and gore so entertaining. Alucarda is a horror film without suspense, like frosting without cake or sex without foreplay.

As a delivery system for horror conventions, Alucarda is an impressively efficient machine, but that makes it more like a highlight reel or a series of clips on TikTok than like a real film. What it really needs is a little uncertainty, some sense of mystery to give it depth. As it is, Alucarda is like faith without doubt, which some among the religiously inclined might tell you is not faith at all.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This movie is just plain weird… The story is really shallow (girl meets girl, girls worship Satan, everybody dies) and simplistic.” – Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizarro

(This movie was nominated for review by arlecchinata. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Alucarda

Alucarda
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LIST CANDIDATE: FAUST (1994)

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DIRECTED BY:  Jan Svankmajer

FEATURING:  Petr Cepek

PLOT:  A grim “Everyman” is lured to a decaying theater and prompted to re-enact an adaptation of the Faust legend, with the lines of reality and fiction frequently skewed.

Still from Faust (1994)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Svankmajer offers a strange and twisted version of the famous story with little in the way of exposition or explanation. Humans interact with claymation figures and life-size puppets, the scenery changes without warning from theatrical sets to real-life exteriors, and mysteries and ambiguities abound. While the foundations of the Faust tale are definitely there, they’ve been contorted and disguised into true Svankmajer surrealism.

COMMENTS:  I haven’t actually read any of the multiple versions of the Faust legend (most notably adapted by Christopher Marlowe and Goethe), so Svankmajer’s film was my introduction. The wordless opening depicts a sullen middle-aged man who is given a map with a red dot. After some strange happenings in his apartment, he decides to follow it and ends up in a dark theater populated by a silent crew and an array of stop-motion oddities. For reasons unknown, he dresses himself up as Faust and begins reading the script aloud, eventually making his way to a stage facing a recently-assembled audience. He gets stage fright and abandons the costume and stage, but continually finds himself back in character, summoning the devil’s demonic aid Mephisto, signing away his soul, and generally making a black magical mess of things. His real life merges seamlessly with his performance, as he switches back and forth between puppet form and human form, painted backdrops and the streets of Prague.

What makes Faust so puzzling is the lead character’s complete refusal to question what is happening to him—the viewer is in the dark for the entirety of the film, left to either coax out some explanation for the events onscreen or abandon any attempt at making sense of things (I opted for the latter). Our Everyman is compelled to act out the legend, with demonic apparitions and mysterious sights appearing in both the “stage” version and his supposedly real life, casting a dreamlike shadow over all of the proceedings. Two silent and conniving fellows follow him around, manipulating his actions without clear motivation. Like a more horrific Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the protagonist seems lost and aimless until he is speaking pre-penned lines out of a Faust script, eventually becoming the character he speaks for simply because there is little other choice. His strange experience is revealed to be cyclical: a host of unassuming “Everymen” have surely fallen prey to Faust‘s allure.

Regardless of the story’s meandering, perplexing structure, the imagery alone is enough to captivate any weird viewer. A clay baby forms itself out of an hourglass and proceeds to evolve through all the stages of life; huge wooden heads roll down a mountain path and assemble themselves into puppet forms of an angel and a devil; a restaurant table inexplicably spouts wine; a host of puppet royalty drowns in a painted sea; Mephisto takes on the eerily sculpted appearance of Petr Cepek when he speaks; a team of ballerinas harvest hay in unison; a human man gets down and dirty with a wooden devil disguised as a female puppet. It’s all there, and more! Along with, of course, Svankmajer’s noted ear for terrific and often unsettling sound effects.

It’s weird, it’s confusing, it’s imaginative: Faust transforms a familiar tale into a strange and compelling dream. The words remain true to the source material, but all of the visuals are wonderfully bizarre and often without precedent.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Svankmajer introduces a dark, squishy, perversely surreal world: It’s part Lewis Carroll, part Kafka, part David Lynch and absolutely not American… Using stylistic elements that he’s developed over 40 years of film making — live action and stop-motion animation, wooden and clay figures, grotesque imagery and vivid sound effects — Svankmajer creates the warped, disturbing logic of a bad dream.”–Edward Guthman, San Francisco Chronicle

Faust : Lesson Faust (1994) DVD Jan Svankmajer, Petr Cepek

Faust : Lesson Faust (1994) DVD Jan Svankmajer, Petr Cepek
  • Format: DVD
  • Language: English
  • Subtitle: Korean, None (All removable)
  • Region: Region 0/All (1/2/3/4/5/6)
  • Running time: 97 min
  • Remove/Choose Subtitles? Click “subtitle” button on your DVD player remote Press the subtitle button and the options will pop up on the screen. No Sound? Click “audio” or “language” button on your DVD player remote Actual covers of the item that you will receive, Click the image to see it large. All our products are examined and registered by KMRB (Korea Media Rating Board) This is region free item and playable any types of DVD player.
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