It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
Pleased To Meet You…Hope You Guess My Name.
Beelzebub…Old Scratch…El Diablo…Lucifer…Satan…
They are all names for a guy known to most of us, as…
The Devil.
Now…
Have you ever noticed…
That the Big Guy downstairs…
Has appeared in way more films…
Than the Big Guy upstairs?
And…
Have you ever wondered why?
It’s definitely not because our collective theological beliefs put more stock in The Devil’s existence than God’s…
On the contrary…
A much higher percentage of believers out there, are believing in the existence of God, and not believing in The Devil at all…
So what is it?
What makes this evil deity a more compelling character in films than God?
Personally, I think it’s a lot like when people vote for a politician because they can see themselves having a beer with them…
I mean, seriously…
Think about it…
The Devil’s probably a pretty fucking charming guy…
He’s most likely got a whole lot of interesting stories to tell, too…
I would also assume that he’s got a dark, and twisted sense of humor, as well…
And to be honest…
If I was forced to choose between God and The Devil…
When searching for a potential drinking buddy…
Yup…
That’s right…
You guessed it…
I’d choose to have a beer with The Devil.
Now…
In an effort to avoid spoilers…
And…
As long as it is not a big reveal…
I’ll tell you who portrayed The Devil in that film…
But if it is a big reveal…
Well then…
You’re on your own.
Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most underrated, and possibly even unknown to you, Movies About The Devil that you may not have seen…But should.
Angel Heart (1987) – Director Alan Parker (Pink Floyd: The Wall) pulled this dank, dirty, and desperate detective story from the depths of a Louisiana bayou, wrung it out, and hung it up to dry from a balcony on Bourbon Street for us…A still normal-looking Mickey Rourke stars as Harry Angel, a New York detective who is hired to track down an elusive former singer named Johnny Favorite…This twisted tale takes you through the soft white underbelly of the city of New Orleans…A place where jazz, blood magic, and the ultimate evil come together to make a delicious, and oh-so-spicy gumbo of a movie…It’s kind of like Shutter Island meets Oldboy, but with a dark omni-present evil force guiding the plot along with a clap of his clawed hands and a stomp of his cloven hoof.
The Devil in this one…
Yeah, I know the film is over thirty years old…But you still have to wait and see.
Prince of Darkness (1987) – One of my all-time favorite John Carpenter films here…And also in my never silent, not so humble opinion…This is the best film about the devil ever made…Here’s why…The cast of characters are primarily made of up some very scientific-minded scholars…The skepticism that they display while investigating the potential existence of the Devil…Mirrors that of the audience…So when the group begins to discover…One by one…Experience by experience…That the demonic elements contained within this story…Might not be as fictional as they thought, when they first entered this spooky old church…And when this happens…We the audience begin to suspend our disbelief, as well…Oh yeah…And be on the look out for Alice Cooper, who stars as the King of the Demonic Homeless Zombies.
The Devil in this one…
A swirling vat of green goo.
The Witches of Eastwick (1987) – This one comes from George (Mad Max Franchise) Miller…And in it…He tells the tale of three women, who are close friends, living in a small, New England community…And unbeknownst to them, these three women possess strange, supernatural powers…A fact they soon discover following the arrival of an enigmatic, and wealthy stranger…A man whose name is easily and mysteriously forgotten by those that meet him…The women are all single and begin to form individual relationships with the mysterious man in his mysterious mansion…But being close friends, the relationship waters are easily muddied and clouded by this delightfully devilish manipulator…It is too disturbing to be a straight-up comedy…Not gory enough to be a straight-up horror…But whatever this thing is…I dig it.
The Devil in this one…
Jack Fucking Nicholson.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) – This is the second installment in the immense Hellraiser series…And sadly the last to have the incredibly talented Clare Higgins portraying Julia…Ashley Laurence also reprises her role of, Kirsty, from the previous installment…In this one…We find Kirsty in a mental institution under the care of a deranged psycho…Sorry…I meant to say psycho-therapist…And this time around…It is Dr. Channard, the aforementioned psycho-therapist, who is the one trying desperately to break into Hell…And much like Kirsty’s mean ol’ Uncle Frank…He accomplishes this with decidedly evil assistance from Julia…But he also pulls it off, by using the coerced help of his patients…And once he accomplishes his mission…We the audience…See a wider landscape of what the place the Cenobites call home looks like…This one ended up being my favorite, of all of the Hellraiser movies…Not sure why, but there you have it.
The Devil in this one…
A giant free-floating puzzle box…Or if you’re into the whole brevity thing…Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth.
The Prophecy (1995) – The amazing Elias Koteas (Fallen)…Who I have had a soft spot for since I first saw him in Some Kind of Wonderful…In this film, he plays Thomas Daggett, who while studying to become a priest…Loses his faith due to a vision of things to come, and bails on seminary school…And when we find him years later, he is now a Los Angeles police detective…When a couple of celestial beings descend from the heavens…Daggett is thrust back into the moment when he left his former life behind…Dives head first into the vision that robbed him of his faith…And is shot out of a circus cannon…Directly into a cosmic power struggle…You know…The ones of biblical proportions that you’ve heard so much about…The stellar cast includes a portrayal from the perpetually creepy Christopher Walken, as the archangel Gabriel…And as Gabriel starts to fuck shit up royally…He gets discovered by not only Daggett…But eventually…He also gets noticed by a darker and more powerful force…Yeah…That’s right…You guessed it.
The Devil in this one…
Viggo Mortensen.
Constantine (2005) – This film takes a heaping helping of shit from fans and critics alike…Not from me though…Nope…I was a huge fan of the Hellblazer comics back in the day…And I will admit…That although I would not have picked Keanu Reeves as my first choice to play John Constantine…And even though the current small screen incarnation played by Matt Ryan, sure does look the part…I’m sorry to tell you, folks…Ted Theodore Logan did a damn fine job as the chain-smoking occult detective…Fine…He wasn’t blonde…Sure…He wasn’t speaking with a heavy cockney accent…But get over it, fuckers…He played it like a man with a plagued soul and a dark determination…And if you strip away all of the facade that makes John Constantine look like John Constantine…That’s the stuff that really matters…And because he brought that shit to the screen with his performance…Ol’ Johnny Utah captured the essence of the man.
The Devil in this one…
Peter Stormare.
The House of The Devil (2009) – Director Ti West has established his ability to create a throwback…Others have tried…But what separates this young filmmaker is that he does it with a prowess for the technical skills required to pull it off…Thus giving his finished product such an authentic appearance…That it could easily have been created by a filmmaker from the time period in which he honors…So much so…That in this film…There’s a good chance that you will actually start to think that you are watching a horror film from the early eighties…This one is definitely a slow burn…And like those great slow burn horror movies out there…When the burn…And also the film’s menace…Is finally revealed…Oh man…It is well worth the wait…Keep your horror fan eyes peeled for Tom Noonan… In this film…He is as ominous and creepy as he usually is…And also adds some serious horror movie street cred to the film.
The Devil in this one…
The title gave you a hint, folks…That’s right…You’re getting warmer…I think it’s somewhere in the house.
Devil (2010) – This is the only thing that has ever had anything to do with M. Night Shammalammadingdong, that doesn’t suck flacid ferret phallus…I even tried his attempt at a found footage horror, The Visit, in hopes that it wouldn’t be another typical all-twist/no-story concept…But lo and behold…All fucking twist…But this film was directed by someone else…The script was written by someone else…Shammalammadingdong’s contribution was coming up with the story that the script was based on, and producing the film…Now in my opinion…Considering how negatively I felt about his previous films…Versus how positively I felt about this film…I’m comfortable saying that this could actually be a recipe for success for him…And that looked like it might happen when he came up with a concept for Devil to stand as the first in a three part series known as The Night Chronicles Trilogy…Back in 2012, there was buzz about the second film being released in the following year…With Chris Sparling (Buried) tasked with writing the screenplay, and Daniel Stamm (13 Sins) in the director’s chair…I was intrigued, and had almost started to think that this could be a turning point for the director…A man, whose work I had grown to despise…And boy…He sure did capitalize on the success of Devil, with The Night Chronicles Trilogy, didn’t he, gang?…What’s that? You guys didn’t see the other two films in the trilogy? Mmmm…Yeah, me neither…You know why? Because the fuck-puddle never produced them…That’s why.
So anyway…The Devil in this one…
Screw you guys…I’ll never tell.
The Shrine (2010) – This is the sophomore effort of Jon Knautz (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer)…And in it…He tells the story of a troubled couple that get into an even more troubled situation…Journalist Carmen, played by Cindy Sampson (Supernatural) and Aaron Ashmore (Locke & Key), as her photographer boyfriend Marcus…Follow a story about a tourist gone missing in a rural part of Poland…They, along with a young and naive intern, head to a remote and isolated village that right away feels…Well…In a word…Wrong…We once again get a dose of Trevor Matthews (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer) turns in a menacing and intense performance as Henryk, one of the Polish locals…These fellas are trying desperately to protect a local legend…At any cost…It was great to see that Knautz continued the trend of using practical gore and monster effects, instead of CGI, in this, his second film…I gotta say…I dug this film…And am amazed by the fact that I have never heard anyone else talk about…
The Devil in this one…
An evil link of Polish Kielbasa…Nah…Just fuckin’ with ya.
I Trapped The Devil (2019) – This is the debut film for writer-director Josh Lobo…And pays some pretty clear homage to one of my favorite episodes from The Twilight Zone…In this modern version of Charles Beaumont’s The Howling Man…Matt, played by AJ Bowen (You’re Next) and his wife Karen, played by Susan Burke (Southbound)…Pay a visit to his estranged brother, Steve, over the Christmas holiday…It isn’t too long before they discover that Steve, played by Scott Poythress (The Signal), believes that trapped inside a room…In his basement…Behind a door with a cross on it…Is the Devil…And once that hard-to-swallow fact has been revealed…Everyone in that house has a reservation at Chez Clusterfuck for a nice steaming bowl of their signature Shit Stew…Despite some minor flaws in this film…I really picked up what Lobo was putting down…And I will definitely be keeping my eye on this director.
The Devil in this one…
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