The Devil’s Business

Why 80s and 90s movies were the real Devil’s Advocate

How do you imagine The Devil? You know, the physical manifestation of evil and mankind’s collective sins? Whether you believe in Christian theology or not you will have some conception of what the devil looks like. Most people assume it is a ‘He’ for instance, which stands to reason given that men are responsible for most wars, murders, rapes, etc. But beyond simply his gender, how do you imagine him? Contemporary interpretations tend to fall into two camps: the red horned demon or the charismatic angel, but ol’ Lucifer wasn’t always seen this way. In Dante’s Inferno for instance the ultimate evil at the centre of hell is an ice-producing machine with three faces, chewing on the souls of Judas, Brutus and Longinus. For whatever reason though we have settled on either the Tim Curry from Legend look or Robert de Niro from Angel Heart look. Both versions have long, storied and complicated histories but the corrupted, ugly version seems to have been developed in the middle ages as a concoction of different demons from various places and eras such as Babylonian and Canaanite, whereas the more human, sly and — dare I say — ‘sexy’ version was solidified by John Milton in Paradise Lost. These iterations are an interesting juxtaposition as, depending which we prefer, they seem to illustrate our thoughts and feelings about what…