Giving the Devil His Due

Finalist, 2021 Bram Stoker Awards (Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction)

The first collection of essays to address Satan’s ubiquitous and popular appearances in film

Lucifer and cinema have been intertwined since the origins of the medium. As humankind’s greatest antagonist and the incarnation of pure evil, the cinematic devil embodies our own culturally specific anxieties and desires, reflecting moviegoers’ collective conceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and salvation. Giving the Devil His Due is the first book of its kind to examine the history and significance of Satan onscreen.

This collection explores how the devil is not just one monster among many, nor is he the “prince of darkness” merely because he has repeatedly flickered across cinema screens in darkened rooms since the origins of the medium. Satan is instead a force active in our lives. Films featuring the devil, therefore, are not just flights of fancy but narratives, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes calling into question, a familiar belief system.

From the inception of motion pictures in the 1890s and continuing into the twenty-first century, these essays examine what cinematic representations tell us about the art of filmmaking, the desires of the film-going public, what the cultural moments of the films reflect, and the reciprocal influence they exert. Loosely organized chronologically by film, though some chapters address more than one film, this collection studies such classic movies as Faust, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Angel Heart, The Witch, and The Last Temptation of Christ, as well as the appearance of the Devil in Disney animation.

Guiding the contributions to this volume is the overarching idea that cinematic representations of Satan reflect not only the hypnotic powers of cinema to explore and depict the fantastic but also shifting social anxieties and desires that concern human morality and our place in the universe.

Contributors: Simon Bacon, Katherine A. Fowkes, Regina Hansen, David Hauka, Russ Hunter, Barry C. Knowlton, Eloise R. Knowlton, Murray Leeder, Catherine O’Brien, R. Barton Palmer, Carl H. Sederholm, David Sterritt, J. P. Telotte, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Introduction: Giving the Devil His Due
Regina M. Hansen and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock | 1

The Sign of the Cross: Georges Méliès and Early Satanic Cinema
Russ Hunter | 15

Murnau’s Faust and the Weimar Moment
Barry C. Knowlton and Eloise R. Knowlton | 27

Disney’s Devils
J. P. Telotte | 42

What’s the Deal with the Devil? The Comedic Devil in Four Films
Katherine A. Fowkes | 58

His Father’s Eyes: Rosemary''s Baby
David Sterritt | 71

From the Eternal Sea He Rises, Creating Armies on Either Shore:
The Antichristology of the Omen Franchise
R. Barton Palmer | 86

The Weird Devil: Lovecraftian Horror in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness
Carl H. Sederholm | 103

Narration and Damnation in Angel Heart
Murray Leeder | 120

The Devil’s in the Details: Devilish Desire and Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock | 136

Agency or Allowance:
The Satanic Complications of Female Autonomy in The Witches of Eastwick and The Witch
Simon Bacon | 149

“Roaming the Earth”: Satan in The Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ
Catherine O’Brien | 161

Lucifer, Gabriel, and the Angelic Will in The Prophecy and Constantine
Regina M. Hansen | 178

Advocating for Satan: The Parousia-Inspired Horror Genre
David Hauka | 191

List of Contributors | 207

Index | 211