- Director: Brian Yuzna
- AMG Rating:
- Genre: Horror
- Movie Type: Superhero Film, Supernatural Horror
- Themes: Heroic Mission, Devil Worship, Deal With the Devil
- Main Cast: Mark Frost, Isabel Brooke, Jeffrey Combs, Junix Inocian
- Release Year: 2001
- Country: ES
- Run Time: 98 minutes
Plot
A man goes to hell and back to avenge the death of the woman he loves in this over-the-top horror story. Troubled artist Jaspers (Mark Frost) is depressed and considering suicide after his girlfriend, an illegal alien, is killed by thugs. Before he can go through with it, Jaspers is visited by a mysterious man calling himself M (Andrew Divoff). M, which is short for Mephistopheles, is an earthly emissary of the Devil, and along with sexy Claire (Monica Van Campen) and devious Dr. Yanamoto (Junix Inocian), he leads a Satanic cult called the Hand. M and his companions persuade Jaspers to join the Hand, and soon Jaspers and other members of the Hand wreak vengeance by staging a mass murder against the men responsible for the death of Jaspers' lover. But Jaspers finds he quite likes ritual murder, and his enthusiasm leads to sloppiness that gets him arrested; he also becomes involved with Claire, which makes him very unpopular with M. As police detective Margolies (Jeffrey Combs) and psychiatrist Jade de Camp (Isabel Brook) try to get some answers about Jaspers' strange and deadly behavior, Jaspers begins to transform himself into a demonic beast in a desperate battle to defeat M before M can kill him. Faust, Love of the Damned was the first feature from the production company Fantastic Factory, formed by American filmmaker Brian Yunza and Spanish financier Julio Fernandez; the film was shot in Spain with an English-speaking cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideReview
Goethe's epic Faust has been made into more than 50 films, but this certainly must be the only one featuring a scene in which a woman's breasts inflate around her until her face is barely visible above the quivering flesh. Clearly, this one is based on a (very) graphic comic book series, not a confusing, wordy, literary roadblock. In this case, the Faust of the title is a nutcase who winds up with The X-Men's Wolverine razor hands and, near the finale, realizes 1) he's not a minion of the Devil sent to cut up innocents; he is the Devil and 2) bad guys make far more satisfying targets. Once Mark Frost dons the red rubber devil garb and turns into a version of Him from The Powerpuff Girls, he becomes more superhero than monster, which rather confuses the protagonist/antagonist tension that's required for a satisfying resolution. Not that this matters to kitchen-sink director Brian Yuzna, who is going for the same arch and camp franchise possibility he stumbled onto with Re-Animator; the story is spliced up like the ingredients in a Cobb salad -- the very definition of "meandering" (flashbacks will do that, you know). On the other hand, horror fans will find much to their liking if they can get used to a demon who spits out very funny one-liners like, "I make such a mess when I play," as he stands amid the gore of a freshly butchered victim. The editing is so stroboscopically kinetic it makes The Crow look like slow motion. Check your brain at the door and eat up this grisly eye candy.~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide
Cast
Mark Frost Isabel Brooke - Jeffrey Combs
Junix Inocian
