That reminds me…the series The Collector - about a man who’s supposed to collect souls (because he is one himself) damned for making deals with the devil, but brokers another deal with Satan - to get a chance to help the poor schmucks redeem themselves before they can be forcefully dragged to Hell - has an interesting Satan.
He appears in a different form every episode.
He’s been a little girl, a cab driver (played by Blu Mankuma, much to my delight), a pizza delivery boy (white stoner looking kid), a vietnamese gangster, an old chinese lady, a 3-card monte dealer, and a bunch more that I can’t remember offhand.
When dealing with Morgan (the Collector), he threatens, taunts, and otherwise annoys him. Occasionally when Morgan gets close to redeeming someone, he’ll occasionally pull something to mess it up - offering to extend the deal, or trying to convince them they can’t fix things, etc - sometimes he’ll just sit back and watch, or he’ll just try to make Morgan give up. Sometimes he’ll even appear to take it well when Morgan succeeds.
…but memorable. One of my favourites. I love that film…but it gets no respect, I tell ya.
The other is Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer in Sandman (Haven’t read the )Lucifer spin-off so can’t say how well he’s done there)
My worst is the devil in the Arnie movie End of Days - not Gabriel Byrne, he’s cool, but the CGI satan at the end. Also cgi-Satan in Spawn. Maybe it’s CGI-satans generally?
In comics, The First of the Fallen in Hellblazer (I’m thinking specifically of Rake at the Gates of Hell here) and Lucifer in Sandman (from Season of Mists onwards) are both great favourites of mine. The First’s speech in Rake at the Gates of Hell is one of my favourite sequences in comics ever.
In film, Viggo Mortensen’s devil in Prophecy was the one I came here to mention. Not much to add there.
One thing many devil portrayals miss is that the devil isn’t nearly as scary if he’s repelling. He’s supposed to be beautiful. You’re supposed to be able to see the appeal. What I’d really like to see is a really handsome male movie-devil, physically strong but with slim rather than bulging muscles, moving like a cat, scarily intelligent, constantly smiling slightly as if he knows something you don’t, and just oozing sex from every pore. I’m thinking Jude Law with black hair.
Priceguy, the author Taylor Caldwell had the Devil portrayed as an attractive man in one of the short stories that make up the book Grandmother and the Priests. A priest experiencing a crisis of faith is confronted by Satan. Later, describing him, he says he wasn’t afraid because he reminded him of well-born friends from his days at university, young, well dressed, urbane, and so on. Actually, another story in the same volume had a similar Devil, and it’s his hearty, amused laughter that recieves prominent mention. Both of the men who faced these devils mentioned that if he appeared with horns, tail, and a pitchfork, we’d run screaming away, and so the evil one appears in the guise most appealing to us.
I’m not going to argue it – it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie – I just didn’t consider the identity of a character whose name is a heavy-handed pun on Lucifer to be a spoiler.
If the Devil’s going to get me for it, can he look like Viggo please?
So it seems that the movie intended it as a secret, whether you figured it out right away or not. I did too, ftr, but with spoilers in Cafe Society I err on the side of caution. Example: Would you place what happens to Professor Lupin’s character in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in a spoiler box? I would.
Not that it matters - I was mainly busting your chops about posting the same thing I did ten minutes later.
