FAUST LOVE OF THE DAMNED 2000

 FAUST LOVE OF THE DAMNED 2000

 

“Faust: Love of The Damned” was released in 2000, and is a movie based off the comic series of the same name. At the time of the movie, the comic hadn’t finished, the last issue wouldn’t come out until 2015. I’ve read through the entire comic, finishing in early 2024, but it wasn’t until March of 2026 that I finally watched this movie. 

I originally heard about the “Faust” series back in October of 2023, when I went to see the cover band “Morbid Tales”, which had Speed and Christian of Herakleion, Sammy Duet, and Ben Falgoust. Before they were to go on stage, I was talking to Ben Falgoust, and I asked him what his first tattoo was. He told me it was the one on his back, this huge piece based off of the series Faust. Because of him, I got into the series, and was even inspired to get a tattoo myself, as a result. Strangely enough, it seems that quite a few people from that New Orleans/Louisiana scene liked the comic series, Benjamin, Sammy Duet, and even Dax Riggs. There’s a picture of Dax from the early Acid Bath days wearing a “Faust” shirt. 

The tattoo on my leg is inspired by one of the end scenes of the comic, where they’re summoning the big snake creature. I had my tattoo artist recreate it into a more Japanese style Ouroboros thing. The original art by Tim Vigil had around 9 heads I believe, but I wanted mine to have 7. To me, “7 is a number in magic” to quote the band Shocking Blue. It’s funny though,  in a way, Benjamin Falgoust is the reason why I got that tattoo to begin with. I still think about the conversations we’d have before and after his shows. He changed my life, to put it simply.

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To me, the most interesting part of the “Faust” series is the art by Tim Vigil, and not the story by David Quinn. I had seen some ratings in the past, that thought pretty low of the movie, but I had this naive hope that it wasn’t that bad. Unfortunately, I was wrong. 

The movie is pretty bad. 

Much of what makes the movie bad is the writing, because it’s so cheesy and lame. It has this late 90’s Gen X “edginess” to it, that I was never a fan of, even back when I was a kid. There’s something so distinctly Gen X about the way this movie is shot, from the “I’m so cool” dialogue, to the shoehorning of what was likely that director’s favorite music. 

The idea of the movie is that, the main character John Jaspers made a deal with M, Mephistopheles, after his girl friend was killed. This is something depicted in the movie only, and not in the comics. In the comics, Jaspers has a very different story, and was brought back to life by M. He was given these wolverine-esque claws that are used to kill actually bad people who commit crimes. In the movie, this plot point isn’t around, and Jaspers is just made out to be some crazy guy that likes to slice people up. 

In the comic, Jaspers was in love with his psychiatrist, Jade. She is the main reason he’d fight people and slash them up, because M’s henchmen would often kidnap her. In the movie, Jade is more like a side thought, and doesn’t become a love interest until the second half of the movie. This choice makes the pacing odd, and nearly adds nothing to the film. Making her a love interest later in the movie detracts from the plot, as it seemed like a poor way to have someone to care about Jaspers. 

I found their dynamic to be oddly portrayed in the movie, as one of the first scenes with them has Jade offering a crayon to Jaspers, like as if she was offering some sort of feral animal food. The idea was the Jade would use music/art therapy to help her patients, Jaspers being one of them. The movie portrays this in such an embarrassing way, I couldn’t help but cringe. In the comics, Jaspers is an amazing artist, that has severe mental issues, this barely converts over to the movie, where the only time he’s seen painting is in the beginning scenes when the girlfriend is killed. In the comics, you’d see parts of the padded room to have drawing on them, but in the movie, all they did was draw some scribbles. It was laughable. 

I found much of the psychological dialogue to be trite, and embarrassing. Jaspers would complain to Jade, basically saying things like “she wouldn’t understand”. This is something that I feel was around in many Gen X era movies, where the brooding, misunderstood man would be “saved” by the pious intelligent woman, usually through sexual healing. As a woman, these type of plot points make me roll my eyes, because they’re often written from the standpoint that women have to save men from their emotional turmoils…like as if men are incapable of saving themselves? It’s hackneyed, and unrealistic. Why is it a woman’s job to sift through the deep emotional turmoil? Why do we have to get the brunt of the work, without any of the reward? 

Various other parts of the comic are changed for the movie, such as Margolies being a detective for the police, instead of a journalist in the comics. Jade, Jaspers, and even M, have different hair colors than what’s depicted in the books. This isn’t bad, though I found it interesting how M was made to have bleached white hair for the movie. I wondered what the idea behind that was. One of the biggest changes was how at the Satanic ritual thing near the end of the movie, the monster summoned was a giant worm thing. In the comics, they summoned, or created, a werewolf type thing. From some of the trivia I read about the movie though, I think this might have been due to technical restraints. It might have been easier to create a worm than a werewolf. 

There were some parts to the comic that stayed in the movie, such as certain pieces of dialogue. They also obviously tried their best to recreate the costume that Jaspers had, and I do give them credit for it! Granted, I don’t understand why they made his costume to be a flesh thing that he morphed into. Off the top of my head, I don’t think Jaspers would physically morph. It was comical to me, how even his cape was flesh too! Another choice I don’t understand, though I guess it was done for the sake of comedy. 

They also kept in the plot point about Jade being a victim of incest, and the “Smooth Man”. This is something that I believe wasn’t revealed in the comics yet, when the movie came out in 2000. So that tells me that David Quinn likely had an idea about how the story would go for a long time. I found it interesting that, if someone were a fan of the comics, and watched the movie when it came out, they’d be seeing an early end to the series. 

The movie ends with the ritual being vanquished, and the plot point of Jade not being able to have kids is slightly brought up. But this was done in a strange way. They have her say that her womb wasn’t “useable” or something to that note, after the incest she went through as a child. This was once again, an odd choice to go about it. First of all, it’s said in passing so quickly that it doesn’t seem like an important plot point. Secondly, such wouldn’t be necessarily be true in real life. 

What’s interesting, is that in the comics Jade wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant, as she had-had a hysterectomy at some point in time, not that it was ever explained how or why. The comic series ends with her magically turning up pregnant though, despite the fact that she wouldn’t have a uterus to carry the baby. This doesn’t happen in the movie, but I assume that’s because it came out over a decade before the series ended. 

Overall, I thought that the movie was pretty bad. I can’t imagine that this would make much sense to anyone that hasn’t read the comics before. Even as someone that has read the whole series, the movie doesn’t make much sense to me. I feel like it was more of a “proof of concept”, as opposed to creating something that was actually good. I enjoyed the Sepultura song that kept playing through the movie though. 

I give this movie 3 slimes.

My video: https://youtu.be/wHxeMCmHXFE