Word: beelzebubs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some playwrights, like Shel Silverstein in The Devil and Billy Markham, presume that Mr. Scratch has nothing to teach mankind: the sensible response is to spot the fiend's tricks and escape perdition. Other dramatists, like David Mamet in Bobby Gould in Hell, recall that Beelzebub is a fallen angel and reckon he must be something of a moral philosopher. Both authors seem to think nothing could be more instructive than a sojourn in Hades to enhance the remainder of a life back on earth. They give that opportunity not only to the title characters of their...
...women crave, fear, pity, hate. He is, in other words, a man. In public, he snores like a boar. His jokes smell, and he does too. He is, he admits with the grin of a baby Hitler, "just your average horny little devil." With a capital D. Big Bad Beelzebub. But devilry in New England is not what it used to be. Women suspected of having sex with Satan are not burned at the stake; they are snubbed in the check-out line. And in an age when even witches are feminists, a sexist like Daryl doesn't stand...
Dennis Feldman's script labors almost as hard to get Murphy to Tibet (where he must seek the abducted "Prince of Light") as it does to place him in conflict with Beelzebub's legions. But it makes little of the comic possibilities in the star's new screen situation. And Director Michael Ritchie, who can be a wonderfully cockeyed social commentator (Smile, The Survivors, Fletch), seems almost as lost as Murphy when he is back of the beyond. They are both men who need to plant their feet firmly in contemporary American reality if they are to deliver their punches...
...might be called Pop surrealism that uses classic design elements the way Walt Disney cartoons used the physiognomy of a rodent to create Mickey Mouse. For all its playfulness, however, the Portland Building is dangerous. Modern architecture is ripe for a radical change, but Graves would replace Satan with Beelzebub...