Review of Faust: Love Of The Damned

Introduction

Faust is from the producer of the infamous "Re-Animator" and tells a story of vengeance - John Jaspers sees his girlfriend brutally murdered and does a deal with the devil to get his revenge.

Unfortunately for Jaspers (and countless victims), his deal doesn`t end when he`s killed his girlfriend`s murderers - he is now the personal killing machine of cult-leader M...

Video

The video is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen is of above average quality, with a crisp and stable image which is free from dirt and grain. Much of the film is set at night or in dark locations, and I didn`t see any evidence of compression problems.

The visuals consist primarily of gore with a bit of nudity thrown in for good measure. The film is quite violent with plenty of slayings at the sharp hands of Faust - we`re talking decapitation, throat cutting, people chopped up, hearts cut out etc - and there is plenty of blood flowing! In general the gore effects look pretty good, but the Faust character is laughable and really detracts from the tone of the movie.

There`s also great amusement to be had in the expanding breasts scene...

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, and like the video, forgoes subtlety and is very much "in your face". There is plenty of loud music, some of it heavy/thrash metal and plenty of effects whooshing across the soundstage - this is quite a noisy film.

Throughout all the chaos, the dialogue is always clear and understandable.

Features

The extras consist of a trailer, interviews, behind the scenes, cast notes and a gallery.

On closer inspection, there really isn`t much to the extras, none of them last for more than a few minutes, and none of them offer much of interest.

The disc is packaged in a black Amaray case which includes a folded insert detailing the 15 chapter breaks

Conclusion

Faust starts off promisingly, with slick visuals, plenty of noise and what seems to be a psychological horror story with some gruesome crime scenes etc. About half-way through however the film loses it`s way badly and turns into a (bad) comic book action horror, which borrows ideas liberally from countless other movies and can`t match any of them. Wild variations in the standard of acting don`t help - there are some very poor performances in the movie, which detracts from the few decent efforts.

This is 80`s style slasher horror made twenty years later - and about as bad as the endless dross that was churned out in the glory days of video. Good picture and sound don`t really help what is a pretty poor movie.

If you must watch it, rent it out and spend £20 on something else.