Faust: Love of the Damned

 

Faust: Love of the Damned

2000

Director-Brian Yuzna

Cast- Mark Frost, Isabel Brook, Jeffery Combs, Andrew Divoff, Monica Van Campen

            

   This film was based on the Tim Vigil comic of the same name. In the 80s, in response to the success of books like Watchmen and characters like Wolverine and the Punisher, the comics industry rushed to make darker and grittier characters. At the same time, the rise of the comic book store made it possible to widely distribute comics that would never be Code approved and sold in your local grocery store. Faust, the comic, is a direct product of that era and this movie would probably have been more shocking if it had been made about 10 years earlier.

            

     This is the story of John Jaspers who sells his soul to the devil (played by Andrew Divoff looking very Billy Drago-esque) for the power to take revenge upon his girlfriend’s murderers. John then becomes a tool of Mephistopheles who uses him as a sort of hitman. John eventually breaks his deal and runs, drawing a beautiful psychiatrist (played by Isabel Brook) and a veteran cop (played by genre legend Jeffery Combs) into his dark and bloody life.

           

    Brian Yuzna, who directed Bride of the Reanimator and Return of the Living Dead 3, brings his sense of humor and gore. The most memorable scene in the film is where beautiful nymphomaniac Claire (Monica Van Campen) has her intangible characteristics made into tangible reality when she is transformed into a giant set of breasts with a face.

  There are a few good gore scenes, but the film relies too much on cheap CGI and the demonic transformation of John Japers, which is supposed to look like a dark super hero, complete with cape and cowl ,but instead it looks like a Gwar version of Wolverine.

 The highlights are sexy Monica Van Campen who is in various stages of undress throughout the film and Jeffery Combs who provides a solid performance as always. The film isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. Fans of the comic or fans of Jeffery Combs will want to see it. Everyone else should only watch it if you can accept it for what it is; a B grade fantasy with gore and lots of gratuitous nudity.