Faust

source: Faust

Moviecut—Faust

Faust: Love of the Damned

...really, really stupid, ugly and bad. If your idea of a fine ol' cinematic experience is seeing puppety, rubbery, crappy monsters, unfathomably bad acting, and (the biggest horror of this film) a peroxided Andrew Divoff in a caftan, then this movie is for you! Boy, it's got it all! Honestly, much maligned Ed Wood never made a film this wretched. It's got lots of Europeans playing Americans (accents so thick you could cut them with a knife); it's got a lead with the screen presence of moist balsa wood; it's got poor ol' Jeffrey Combs, who really needs to break ties with Brian Yuzna. Combs actually has acting chops and deserves better than to guzzle Divoff's big yellow snake (I'm not being smutty here; the poor guy does just that). Oy, this movie. I can't say it didn't hold my attention, but it was that kind of stunned, "What the hell possessed them (get it?) to make such a lousy movie?" Where are Mike and The Bots when you need them?

"You are the most perfect disciple I've ever had," M declares at the end, suspended over the Homonculus pit. Um, Jaspers killed like a few dozen people, and he sucked as a disciple. I mean, one of the snapshots on M's bureau showed M with Hitler. Jaspers was better than Hitler as a disciple of evil? I suppose after taking so much from this film, it's nitpicking to call attention to this one dumb detail. But it stood out for me. I enjoyed the film in some ways, and I didn't hate it entirely. There were times when it was compelling. Cheap special effects and cgi, but that's standard fare these days. I would recommend this film because there were moments when its gore quotient made me sit upright and in complete surprise. Also, there were some unexpected twists. Enjoy! But "best disciple"? Hmmm.

Yes, it's a strange movie. Yes, I still don't know if I like it: Divoff was right as M, I liked him. The plot place for Van Campen's character was right, too, although her own dubbing (to spanish) was bad bad bad. Mark Frost was Jim Carrey in a Gore movie but I liked his Faust part of the role. The psychiatrist character and actress are the most defined and well worked ones. The FX were right (wonderful make-up, specially the Van Campen-turns-into-DesireWoman one: horny at the beginning and more disturbing as it went on). But the mix of bad acting, Spawn-theft plot and bad worked scenes and connections didn't leave me clear one thing: did I like this movie? I don't know...