Faust

Looking to exact revenge on the gangsters who murdered his girlfriend, artist John Jaspers (Mark Frost) strikes a hasty deal with the mysterious 'M' (Andrew Divoff), exchanging his soul for supernatural abilities and a mean set of arm-mounted blades. But in his eagerness, he forgets that it always pays to read the small print before signing a contract, which in this case states that he must continue to kill for M after settling his score. When Jaspers refuses, M has him buried alive, but somehow (details a bit fuzzy here...) the artist comes back from the dead as a demonic being and once again goes looking for retribution.

Anyone looking for a faithful adaptation of the classic German legend is going to be majorly disappointed by Brian Yuzna's Faust, which is less a tragic study of moral abandonment, more a diabolical, blood-soaked, logic-free comic-book-style fever-dream packed with hokey gore, heavy metal, surreal effects and nudity. In telling his demented tale, director Brian Yuzna gives viewers lots of insanely OTT action full of severed body parts and slashed throats, while makeup artist Screaming Mad George provides some suitably weird prosthetics work (including one effect that sees a woman reduced to a giant pair of breasts and a huge ass with a face), and voluptuous actress Mònica Van Campen gets naked and has sex a lot. All of this is accompanied by a thundering soundtrack that includes the likes of Fear Factory, Machine Head and Coal Chamber.

Literary scholars will most likely be appalled by what they see; students of 'serious' horror will think it churlish; I thought it was one hell of a fun time!

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

I haven't read the graphic novel which inspired this terrible crap, so I don't know whether it's a bad adaptation, or just a bad movie. And it is a VERY bad movie! I liked Yuzna's debut 'Society' many years ago, and he produced 'Re-Animator' and some other good Stuart Gordon movies which I have a lot of time for, but this is just awful! The two leads Mark Frost and Andrew Divoff are both terrible, the script is an illogical mess, Faust's costume is absolutely ludicrous, and 'Re-Animator' star Jeffrey Combs, who plays a cop, is given so little to do you wonder why he bothered to participate. In short, there is no reason in the world to subject yourself to watching this, one of the worst movies I've seen in quite some time. Man, even 'Spawn' was better than this, and that's REALLY saying something!

Say what you will about Bryan Yuzna, the man has found a very distinctive niche in the subterranean levels of the body-horror-comedy market. Although it is superfluous to attempt a summary of this hokum, it is the sheer exuberance and vitality of its execution that you will remember. There are demonic skeletons, grotesque bodily transformations, satanic rituals, eye-popping gore and more blood-drenched T&A than you can shake a stick at. Beelzebub himself even makes an appearance in full latex glory during the deranged climax. The result is like Dario Argento swallowed an entire sheet of acid before whopping 5 grams of cheap cocaine up his shnoz bucket. Sure, it's ludicrous tripe but I can't understand how this hasn't found a larger cult audience. If it's a late night gore fest with added laughs you're after, this will hit the spot.

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...

I have to say I enjoyed this. Yes the dialogues (and much of the acting) are bad and I know nothing about Geothe's hero, Faust. All I know is that this movie got some pretty nasty FX - after all Brian Yuzna directed it! - and a heavy dose of an erotic / pervert element which I enjoyed. Still I find all this satanic stuff too silly for my tastes. And yes this costume sucked!!! As a conclusion, I liked it, nevertheless, I did't take it seriously.