Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Movie Review: Faust: Love of the Damned

Jeffrey Combs gets a rare chance to play a good-guy in this movie, and for a long time it looks like his character will survive the movie ok. But this is a Brian Yunza movie, so the seasoned viewer knows that Jeffrey will eventually be driven crazy and horribly slaughtered. That’s the way it turns out.

Shot in Europe, Europe-for-America, it’s supposed to be Detroit or something. There is a beautiful subway station with a cheapie cardboard “Uptown” sign. They ran out of money for the demon, rejected somehow the first version, so the one they got may be a disappointment to some very demanding non-fans. For we the converted, it’s all good, all the way nuts, Wolverine claws and all.

Great bad-guy in this movie, “M,” get it? Mephistopheles. He has a great lieutenant too, kind of pretty, big-leg woman who likes to party, DTK, she’ll fuck you silly but keep an eye out for the knife, it’s coming. She’s disturbingly involved in Jeffrey’s disturbing end. M has quite a temper. When Big-Leg-Chick gets snotty, he turns her into a Volkswagen sized blob of all tits and booty with a face, and bodily fluids shooting from primary and secondary sex organs.

It ain’t Bergman; it ain’t Ozu; it ain’t even “From Beyond.” The boom-mike shows up in the frame a couple of times, and it’s lit like a soap opera. But it’s a pretty cool hundred minutes. It’d be better with the right smoke.

In a movie where large groups of people are frequently getting horribly dismembered, a’ la “Sword of Vengeance,” the last twenty minutes or so really run away with it, a murder orgy. Everybody dies, including the giant, snake-like demon conjured by the rite in which poor Mr. Combs meets his grotesque end. The only one left at the end is a good-guy chick, a sympathetic character, maybe the only one in the movie, who’s left to cry alone.

No stars, but “A” for effort and “N” for nuts.

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