DVD Review: Fantastic Factory Presents ‘Faust: Love of the Damned’

Faust: Love of the Damned (2000)
Distributor: Arrow Video
DVD Release Date (Fantastic Factory boxset): 18th April 2011
DVD Release Date (Individual): 9th May 2011
Directed by: Brian Yuzna
Starring: Mark Frost, Jennifer Rope, Jeffrey Combs, Andrew Divoff
Review by: Keri O’Shea

This is one of the harder reviews I’ve had to write in a while because, even after taking a day to think it over, I feel so sorry that I disliked this movie. I really wanted to like Faust: Love of the Damned much more than I did (Brian Yuzna! Jeffrey Combs! Sleazy rituals!) However, every time I started to have fun viewing it, something would come along to detract from that. The most unequivocal thing I can say about Faust is that it’s a flawed experiment, and an unusual choice for Arrow Video to re-release considering their thus-far sterling selection of classic horror.

Based on the controversial comic book of the same name, we see the fate of one John Jaspers (Mark Frost), a guy who sold his soul to a mysterious individual called M (otherwise known as Mephistopheles) so that he could avenge himself on the people who killed his girlfriend. Thing is, M didn’t tell him that he would be literally taken over by his new-found killer instinct: in fact,  M explains, until something comes along to replace his nihilistic bent, Jaspers must go on killing on M’s behalf. We encounter Jaspers shortly after he’s dispatched a banquet hall full of diplomats, thus bringing himself to the attention of Lieutenant Margolies (Combs) and Dr Jade de Camp (Isabel Brook) who both want to get to the bottom of this case, and the now-catatonic guy responsible for so many murders. Dr de Camp uses music to unlock wounded psyches and she gets lucky with a familiar metal CD: soon Jaspers is talking. He recounts how, despite all his unwitting crimes, he successfully exercised free will during his last murderous spree, in so doing thwarting M’s plans for him. He’s now in danger. M doesn’t want him to get in the way of a very important Walpurgisnacht ritual he’s got lined up, either: guys who transform into savage, flying devils have a habit of scuppering the best-laid plans. Dr de Camp becomes the love interest, Mephistopheles must be stopped, and so on.

You know what this film reminded me of? The Mask. This is a horror version of The Mask: there’s the transformation, the same gurning, the same one-liners, only here we have some occult material thrown in – or “mystic bullcrap”, as the sadly-underused Combs puts it – and some sex scenes.  The film is energetic, it seems to be self-aware, but it deals with its clumsily-explored themes and clunky dialogue by simply whirling the viewer along at an uneven pace, throwing up various bits and pieces of plot devices and then dashing along to the next. I know it’s a comic book adaptation – I wasn’t expecting a treatise on free will here – but the film would not have suffered for having a better handle on its many plot elements. After all, if you’re going to use child rape as a way of moving the action along, it pays to consider what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. You should also remember that when you use plot devices such as these, it makes it problematic for the audience to just kick back and treat the movie as a romp.

Admittedly, it’s not all bad – I’m not a fan of the original comic, but you can definitely see that this is a comic book adaptation. With its grisly set pieces, caricatured characters and sinister cityscapes, it’s easy to imagine this in four colours, and femme fatale Claire (Mònica Van Campen) is good fun, providing the film with most of its female flesh. I’m a sucker for Satanic ritual in horror cinema, too, so I was definitely diverted by these scenes. Sadly, the decent moments are lost in a fug of piecemeal music video stylings and achingly trite catchphrases. Faust: Love of the Damned is too messy to be as much fun as it should be, and that’s a shame, considering what we know Yuzna can do.

Editor’s Note: as well as being released individually on May 9th, Arrow are releasing Faust: Love of the Damned as part of the Fantastic Factory Presents, a boxset highlighting the work of Brian Yuzna’s Spain-based production house The Fantastic Factory. Other titles in the set are Yuzna’s Beyond Re-Animator, Jack Sholder’s Arachnid, and Paco Plaza’s Rosamanta: The Werewolf Hunt. Look out for our reviews of all of these in the near future.