Mark Frost stars as John Jaspers, a young man whose girlfriend "Blue" (Jennifer Rope) is murdered by thugs. Now he's depressed and despondent enough to contemplate suicide - only for an enigmatic stranger, "M" (Andrew Divoff, whose performance outclasses this movie), to turn up and offer him a deal. John WILL get his revenge, but he will have to promise his soul to "M". He agrees with too much haste, and DOES get his revenge, but finds that his work is not done. "M" attempts to dispose of John, only for John to be reborn as a cartoony version of a demon (think a wrestler with a gimmick) and now possessed with incredible powers (including retractable, Wolverine-style blades)."Faust: Love of the Damned" is based on a graphic novel by David Quinn & Tim Vigil, and retains that sort of aesthetic for the film version. As a result, it's highly stylized by director Brian Yuzna ("Society", "Bride of Re-Animator"). Made in Spain around the same time that Yuznas' friend Stuart Gordon made his H.P. Lovecraft adaptation "Dagon", this movie has little to no dramatic impact. What hurts it a lot is the fact that leading actor Frost is so insipid as a hero; he's a bad actor, at least here. To be fair, though, he does seem to be enjoying himself when he's done up in demon garb. Overall, it's an amusing, disposable comic-book style horror-fantasy with a mostly European cast that ranges from passable (Isabel Brook, as the leading lady) to solid (Jeffrey Combs has one of his most normal roles as a dedicated detective) to very hammy (Fermi Reixach, as the police commissioner) to delightfully vampish (Monica Van Campen as M's sexy female cohort). Divoff towers over all with another of his captivating, soft-spoken villainous portrayals. He's quite a sight with his hair done like that, though.Yuzna once again utilizes the services of makeup effects expert "Screaming Mad George", whose work is typically outrageous, goopy, and completely outre. Appropriately Hellish visuals and a persistent heavy metal soundtrack (including Sepultura, one of this viewers' favourite bands) are also part of the mix.A fairly fun movie that kills approximately 101 minutes in well-paced fashion.Six out of 10.

There are some similarities between Faust and Spawn. I bet the comic book Faust came out first, since Todd McFarlane is known for "borrowing" stuff...this would also explain why Spawn is a terrible comic book. Because Faust is one of the worst things that has happened to this world, both the pornographic comic book and the movie I watched when I was young. While Spawn is a dumb, worthless movie, it's hard to feel offended by it. Faust: Love of the Damned is just pure evil.I will never understand why people make stuff like this. If you have the ability to make movies, why not make something uplifting? Something meaningful. Movies like "The Phantom Carriage" from 1921, or "It's a Wonderful Life". Faust: Love of the Damned is just a cheap, immoral porno movie, without any message. It's dangerous. It shouldn't even exist.Stay away from this evil filth. Watch or read something good instead. Zero stars.

Holy moly, what the heck happened here? Brian Yuzna...you're better than this! I've seen you do better than this! How did you make something this hideously AWFUL?I watched this because it has Andrew Divoff and Jeffery Combs in it. Well, at least both of them are fun to watch as always, but they're only as good as the awful material will let them be. It seriously, truly feels like they shot this from the first draft of the script, and that said draft was written by a high school dropout goth. The two leads are horrifically awful. Frost hams it up something fierce as John Jasper. Hamming is probably too generous a word. He has absolutely no idea what he's doing and uses idiotic facial expressions to fill in his complete lack of any talent whatsoever. Brook is nearly as bad, just slumming it hideously the whole way through. The makeup is awful, with Faust's outfit looking like the cheap rubber that it is. His Wolverine-knockoff claws look like flimsy plastic and bounce around everywhere. You really don't believe that he could cut through a car roof with them. The story lurches around and barely manages to stick together. The characters have no dimension to them. They do things because the script wants them to, not because it actually fits their paper-thin character in any possible way. They just do what's necessary to move things along. There's no motivation here beyond "The director and writer said to!" One minute, the lead chick loathes and fears Faust, and the next minute they start shagging. Yeah, that makes sense.Yuzna, how did you mess this up so BADLY? At least his other efforts have managed to be fun. Reanimator, From Beyond, Dagon (I know, he wasn't the director, but he was heavily involved in creative direction), etc may not have been great movies, but they were fun cult flicks. Faust isn't fun at all. It's not even so bad it's fun. It's just nigh-unwatchably horrid.How this movie won ANY kind of award other than a Razzie is something that I will never grasp even if God himself came down and explained it to me. Do yourself a favor and miss this. If you want to see Divoff being sinister, go watch Wishmaster. If you want to see Combs doing his fun hamming (and I mean that in a good way. Combs is fun to watch), go watch Reanimator, From Beyond, or The Frighteners. If you want to see something that will make you truly believe that you've wasted 92 minutes of your life beyond anything you could imagine, watch Faust.

"Faust: Love of the Damned" is a fun and gory action film with a few slight problems.**SPOILERS**Following a tense hostage scenario, Police Lt. Dan Margolies, (Jeffrey Combs) finds that John Jaspers, (Mark Frost) is the only survivor, apparently the one responsible for a mass slaughter. When Jade de Camp, (Isabel Brook) arrives and takes the case over to the Feds, and while investigating him, he begins to experience the memories of what happened to him, including meeting the mysterious M, (Andrew Divoff) who gives him a newfound sense of power by turning him into an immortal being and sets about on a path of vengeance, ripping apart those who have wronged him in the past. When he chooses to disobey M's orders and give up the lifestyle, he starts a war against him, with Lt. Margolies and Jade trying to find out why. As they finally get the clues necessary for the real reason why he has been left, they team up to stop his nefarious plans to take over the whole world.The Good News: This is a lot of fun. The effects are the main thing to be enjoyed in this. Faust's makeup and the various mayhem that ensues as our demon fighter gets busy with his wrist knives are clearly the main focus, and they do not disappoint at all. The costume itself isn't terrible. The facial makeup during the two stage transformation of Faust is excellent, and combined with his wise-cracking and frankly insane dialog delivery, brings the character to life. The rest of the costume is acceptable, as it's a rubber red "Batman"-like suit, sports "Wolverine" rip-off claws and owns a "Spawn"-like cape. Those claws are it's most striking feature and provide lots of the gore. Several have their arms sliced off, the claws pop out of almost every body orifice imaginable, several victims are burned alive, eyeballs are popped out and there's even some minor scenes that are over-the-top, including some decapitations, a couple of stabbings and a slit throat coming out incredibly gory. Not to mention the fact that there's one scene where snakes burst out of people's chests which is quite inventive and gives it a really brutal tone. There's a scene definitely worth mentioning that has to be seen to be believed. As part of a punishment, a character has her breasts and buttocks enlarged to ridiculous proportions before being melted down to a lumpy mass. She is then somehow reborn from the remaining fleshy pulp in a scene that is beyond bizarre, and is one of the best scenes in the film. The over-the-top aspects also appeal to it's sense of grandeur and scale. There's plenty of big action scenes in here that would feel right at home in a more traditional fantasy film, including a hallucination while being buried alive that is quite impressive, and several showdowns during the vengeance moments are nicely action-packed. The final encounter, held during a Satanic Black Mass, is suitably enthralling with a gigantic demon, a massive orgy, a massive amount of bloodletting and much more inside a really stand-out scene that really makes the movie. As a final trump card, it's sex and sleaze are quite sexual, including sexualized electro torture, lesbian paddle whacking in stocks, the aforementioned orgy one character performing fellation on a giant snake. It's out-there and quite sexual, and make this a really over-the-top, sleazy entertainment piece.The Bad News: This does have a few problems with it. The first problem is the convoluted screenplay. The first problem is that the story is told in a semi-disjointed fashion, with much of the key information presented in flashback. This leaves us watching characters in the early going and wondering just who they are or how they figure into the plot. Then, there's the feeling that story-wise, they tried to cram in everything but the kitchen sink. Characters seem to make random changes throughout. One starts out for at least half the film as quite sympathetic, then suddenly makes a random change to become one of the slavish acolytes. Another is able to sell their soul but then is just able to stand up and reclaim it later on, while more importantly Faust wavers between being a bad guy mass murderer and a sympathetic avenging hero without clear distinction. The biggest plausibility gap is where, after selling his soul to M, is for no particular reason suddenly able reclaim it and affect a complete resurrection from the dead. There's a stunning lack of how and why he is able to do such a thing. It tends to be that selling a soul is something that should have a total and utter finality of choice to it and it should be irreversible, which is completely lost here and doesn't make any sense at all. Even less confusing is the lack of passion to the romance. When you consider that the heroine is someone they have come back from the grave because he loves her, the failure to invest any type of passion in the relationship amounts to an almost complete indifference to the tone of the film. Even more confusing is the sense of how they come together, as every time they meet, he's either killed or about to kill someone. It's really unbelievable, and really captures what the film's flaws are.The Final Verdict: An extremely gory and sleazy action film that's a lot of fun if only confusing, this one is a really entertaining movie. It's mostly for the fans of the comic, who will love it, or fans of the previous films, and all those that find a lot of enjoyment in it's sleazy appeals are encouraged to check this out.Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Nudity, Graphic Language and several sex scenes