MetaChat - Your Favorite/"Best" Satan?

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15 June 2007

Your Favorite/"Best" Satan? Who is your favorite or the "best" Satan? Pacino? Nicholson? DeNiro? Or maybe "Him" from the Powerpuff Girls? →[More:]

'Kay, so I watched Ghost Rider tonight, sure, it's kitschy fun, nifty how they worked the old western comic in with Johnny Blaze... But I noticed Peter Fonda as the Devil, which prompted the question.

Me? I vote for Viggo Mortensen in The Prophecy. Just slimy, man... Perfect. (Okay, DeNiro rocked too in Angel Heart. But not like Viggo. Or like "Him," who I think is at least part Marilyn Manson.)

post by: shane at: 00:45 | 29 comments

Mark McKinney!

posted by arse_hat 15 June | 00:49

Tim Curry as Darkness in 'Legend'. Not Satan, but close.
Sting as a complete amoral bastard in 'Brimstone and Treacle'. Not really Satan, but damned close. 'Scuse the pun.
Jeff Goldblum in 'Mr. Frost'. "The price of action is colossal, and we are going to hell."
Also, what shane said re: The Prophecy.
DeNiro didn't make it for me.
Leviathan in the Hellraiser series. Not even remotely human: distant. unapproachable. unstoppable.
The only two really good bits in HellBoy: the part at the beginning where the lamp gets sucked past the Great Old One entombed in ice, and near the end where the tentacles descend from the sky.
There are others, but I can't remember right now...

posted by Zack_Replica 15 June | 01:05

"Jeff Goldblum in 'Mr. Frost'"

I would condemn Jeff to hell for that alone. Man I HATE that movie. Boringist thing evah.

posted by arse_hat 15 June | 01:17

I'm thinking Harvey Keitel in "Little Nicky."

I kid, of course

posted by seanyboy 15 June | 01:48

Saddam's luvvah!

posted by rob511 15 June | 02:03

The Red Guy from Cow & Chicken.

posted by misteraitch 15 June | 06:23

"Oh, come on Satan, it's not real!"

posted by mike9322 15 June | 06:39

Yeah, gotta go with South Park's Satan.

posted by BoringPostcards 15 June | 07:00

Jon Lovitz.

posted by ColdChef 15 June | 07:03

The sheriff character in O Brother Where Art Thou.

Understated, chilling, and almost always with fire reflected in his sunglasses.

posted by bunnyfire 15 June | 07:12

I'm the bogey man! Boo. Goldbloom as Mr. Frost is good, yes, but I like the guy who was Satan in the movie they made of the Preacher comix.

posted by crush-onastick 15 June | 07:42

I totally forgot about Tim Curry, Zack. Pretty incredible, and even more incredible that it's Tim Curry. Brimstone and Treacle is a cool film too. Darkness and light, goodness through evil, evil through goodness..?

posted by shane 15 June | 07:45

...the movie they made of the Preacher comix.

How the hell did I not know they made a movie of Garth Ennis's Preacher?

posted by shane 15 June | 07:46

John Goodman as Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink.

posted by Hugh Janus 15 June | 07:50

I vote Peter Stormare in Constantine - he seems so likeable and charming, in a slightly swarmy, this-has-to-be-a-bad-idea, kind of way.

posted by blackkar 15 June | 09:19

Well, Hellblazer at least, with some liberties. Like Constantine being an American. I tend to get my hellblazer/constantine/preacher stuff confused.

posted by crush-onastick 15 June | 09:30

which, uh, would be what blakkar just mentioned.

posted by crush-onastick 15 June | 09:31

I don't know if it was a book or a film... but there was one where the devil was a beautiful little girl dressed in white? I liked that one.

I also liked the devil in the book "Lolly Willowes" because he was a cool, rural, woodsy, Green-Man sort of devil, and quite the feminist.

... still thinking ....

Hated Pacino. Hated.

posted by taz 15 June | 09:43

taz, taz, taz, you've read Lolly Willowes? I just reread it, it's one of my favorites. It's such an excellent novel! (I also loved Mr. Fortune's Maggot, although I've not read the later coda.)

My question this last time was why make him the devil? Why not Pan or something like that? We get that weird portrait of the godly sister-in-law: "We had our example from The Christ, the grave clothes were folded in the tomb," but it struck me as strange that Lolly meets the devil, because it suggests that she's going to go to hell? Doesn't it? I mean it could have been Pan, and then the implications would have been quite different.

What do you think Townsend Warner meant by it?

posted by omiewise 15 June | 09:54

Off-topic:

Well, Hellblazer at least, with some liberties. Like Constantine being an American.

Yeah, no offense meant at all, but I just couldn't bear to watch an American John Constantine. I have all the original issues of the first (Jamie Delano-written, my favorite) Hellblazer comics, as well as the Garth Ennis ones. This, ya know, is Constantine. I'nnit? Period.

Jamie Delano rocks.

LOL!: Bio from Delano's website, worth a read:

1954: Born Northampton, UK.

1967-72: Learned to get stoned. Left school to work in local library. Read most of the books. Got Bored.

1973: Left library to work for high-street bookstore. Got stoned. Stole most of the books. Got bored.

1974: Got unemployed. Got stoned. Got bored.

1975: Drove crane and butchered trees in timber yard. Got stoned. Got annoyed with boss. Got fired.

1976: Sold paperback books to newsagents from van. Got very bored.

1978: Got unemployed again. Remembered long-standing intention to become a writer. Got bored.

1979: Got arrested for getting stoned. Got off.

1979-84: Worked in the taxi business. Got weird and became nocturnal.

1984: Got lucky. Got introduction to a comic company editor. Combined writing comics with driving cabs.

1986: Got luckier. Got partner and three step-children to keep me in touch with reality.

1987-99: Wrote a bunch of strange comic-book fiction from a smoke-filled room in rural British midlands. Enjoyed doing it, mostly.

1999: Became a grandparent. Got stoned.

1999-2003: Interspersed sporadic comic work with screenplay writing. Got very stoned in futile attempt to maintain perspective in a world where increasingly "Nothing is true (and therefore) everything is permitted".

I ♥ ♥ ♥ that, LOL.

posted by shane 15 June | 10:00

OOOH!! Lucy Butler (the Devil) on the TV show Millenium. CREEPY!
≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by shane 15 June | 10:05

omie... I think she meant to suggest that the "Devil" is as much a misunderstood and abused (and self-serving) social notion as the female role is/was. I actually kind of think it was almost as much of a "religious" novel as it was a feminist novel, with the suggestion that if "God" wants women to be this way, then maybe the devil isn't such a bad concept. But basically... that it is all social construct.

But... what a fun way of phrasing everything. I love the book. I love her devil... who gets a little bit confused and abashed at times, while remaining sort of terroriffic, but not. :)

posted by taz 15 June | 10:11

taz, I think that's a major part of the whole "Devil" mythos... Everything from society demonizing nature (beasts with horns) to Christianity taking the Pagan and painting it bad (like the Tree of Life becoming the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge, the serpent symbol of knowledge and medicine becoming the evil Garden of Eden serpent, etc.)

The female/feminist notion must be perfect tied with the devil archetype. I'd like to read that book.

And Matt Wagner's various Grendel comic series were an exploration of evil or the devil as a sort of reactionary force of aggression that arises naturally in society. Many, like this created in Yugoslavia by Edvin Biukovic and Darko Macan during the war, were brilliant.

And John Gardner's novel Grendel was a sort of sympathy for the Devil.

Etc etc...

posted by shane 15 June | 10:26

I think she meant to suggest that the "Devil" is as much a misunderstood and abused (and self-serving) social notion as the female role is/was. I actually kind of think it was almost as much of a "religious" novel as it was a feminist novel, with the suggestion that if "God" wants women to be this way, then maybe the devil isn't such a bad concept.

Wow, that's very well put, and different from how I was thinking about it. I'm passing it along to the friend I was talking about the novel with. Thanks.

posted by omiewise 15 June | 10:28

As far as the nature facet of the devil is concerned, it's worth pointing out that the Sumerian heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu ventured forth 4500 years ago not expressly to kill the ogre/devil Humbaba, but to the cedar forest to cut trees; Humbaba was the protector of the trees. It makes sense for early civilzations to fear and loathe the wilderness and its dangers, and assign the epithet of "devil" to its protector.

posted by Hugh Janus 15 June | 10:36

This is a really interesting discussion. But I have to go with arse_hat.

posted by jrossi4r 15 June | 12:32

Yeah, no offense meant at all, but I just couldn't bear to watch an American John Constantine.

off-topic: Oh none taken. That was a common refrain. However, the American Constantine was much preferable to Keanu Reeves pretending to be something other than American, although Rachel Weisz pretending to be American was okay. I don't have a lot of attachment to the old Hellblazers, so I really enjoyed the movie. Comic book movies so often are terrible, but as a movie, this one was pretty good. As the book come to life? Not really.

posted by crush-onastick 15 June | 13:05

Sam Neill in "Omen III."

Okay, yes, the movie is really craptastic, but he was kinda creepy.

posted by deadcowdan 15 June | 14:20

I also liked Peter Stormare's Satan.

Constantine would have been a LOT better if they'd just called it something else! For one thing, the name would still be available for a REAL Hellblazer film, and for another, people could have appreciated it for the enjoyable fluff it was, rather than being disappointed about what it wasn't.

posted by small_ruminant 15 June | 15:03

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