Lucifer Appearances
The idea of Lucifer is a sort of extention to the biblical concept of the devil... it's a storytelling extrapolation. an exercise in character building; because if the devil existed, then just who IS this guy? Obviously if I was going to just name off appearances of Devils in popular media... well we'd be here forever. Instead, I'm specifically looking for instances where the Devil appears not just as a monster, but as some sort of actual person. These are all wildly different from each other, but you do start to see trends. Often the Devil is intensely charming and clever. Sometimes he's a physical threat. He often delights in his torments, but sometimes he's more sympathetic. Here's a bunch of his appearances that stand out:
One of the first film appearances of Lucifer, or in the case "Mephisto', is the 1926 silent film Faust, an adaptation of the german folktale. He's played by the very first Oscar winner ever, Emil Jannings (for 1927's the Way of All Flesh). It's worth noting that Emil was the only German actor to ever win the lead actor Oscar... and would go on to work in pro-nazi propaganda films. So... yea. Evil.
1941's The Devil and Daniel Webster was another retelling of the Faust tale. In this one Walter Huston plays 'Mr. Scratch'. Huston is another actor that would go on to earn an academy award for his work in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre which was directed by his son, the legendary John Huston.
the 1943 comedy Heaven Can Wait, based on the stage play Birthday, features the character 'His Excelency' played by Laird Cregar.
1946's Angel on My Shoulder is a fantastic sort-of gangster fantasy movie featuring 'Nick'... a devil dealing with the souls of gangsters and pitting them against each other. He's played by one the great stars of the golden age of cinema, Claude Rains.
Alias Nick Beal is a mash-up of the Faust tale and a classic Noir thriller. Ray Milland plays 'Nick Beal', who the protagonist deals with and then has to outwit.
Oh man.... 1957's The Story of Mankind is SUCH a gonzo movie. The devil or "Mr. Scratch" is debating against Ronald Coleman's 'Spirit of Man' for the future of humanity before a intergalactic high tribunal. The cast of this is insane; the Marx Brothers, Hedy Lamar, Peter Lore, Cesar Romero, Dennis Hopper... it just goes forever. But mostly, Vincent Price gets to play the Devil. Perfect.
1957's Up In Smoke was another retelling of the Faust tale. What makes this one relevant is that it's part of the long-running Bowery Boys film series. At 48 movies, this is the longest-running film series of all time. Here 'Mr. Bubb' is played by Byron Foulger.
Yet another Faust retelling, the 1955 broadway musical Damn Yankees and it's subsequent 1958 film adaptation again include a humanized take on the Devil... this time named 'Mr. Applegate', and played in the film by Ray Walston of My Favorite Martian fame.
The 1961 movie The Devil's Messenger is an anthology featuring vignetes from the Swedish horror series 13 Demon Street, but it also included new content featuring screen legend Lon Chaney Jr as Satan.
The appearance of personifications of the Devil during tellings of the life of Jesus never really paint the character in a sympathetic light, but they still stand out in the way they always have a very humanized take on the idea. In 1965's George Stevens epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. a figure called 'The Dark Hermit' appears throughout, played by Donald Pleasence.
Any conversation about humanized takes on the Devil simply HAS to include the character George Spiggott in the 1967 comedy masterpiece Bedazzled by Stanley Cook and Dudley Moore. This is another retelling of the Faust tale, this time with Cook playing a 60's take on the Devil... and is one of the funniest movies ever made.
This depiction of the devil really doesn't qualify for my own criteria; this isn't a humanized take on the character. Quite the opposite, it's probably one of the least human, most monsterous takes on Satan to ever appear on film. Still, I love this movie so much and it stands out as such a seminal take on the Devil that I can't not include it. 1968's Rosemary's Baby is one of the greatest horror movies ever made.
The 1975 made-for-television movie Satan's Triangle is one of the first movies to show the devil deliberately changing forms and appearing as different people. Doug McClure and Alejandro Rey both appeared as the character, but Kim Novak's portrayal of the devil marks one of the first times the Devil has ever appeared as a woman.
This is a weird one, but I think it qualifies. the 1978 sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica featured a two-part story called 'War of the Gods', featuring a supernaturally powerful character called Count Iblis (which is the Islamic name of the devil) Classic Star Trek would often feature godlike characters claiming to be ancient Greek Gods and the like, but Battlestar was the first one to bring in a character that was actually meant to be the Devil He was played by Patrick Macnee; John Steed from the Avengers.
the 1980 TV series Fantasy Island's enigmatic Mr. Roarke was always a scarily omnipowerful presense, but twice on the series we actually met his nemesis Mephistopheles played by Roddy McDowall, who was always vieing to claim Mr. Roarke's soul.
1981's The Devil and Max Devlin is a weird one. Not just because it was one of the movies that lead Disney to start using other production companies to release movies with more adult themes, but also because beloved family-friendly comedian Bill Cosby played Barney Satin; a very humanized version of the Devil... and then appeared in his true form at the end of the movie...
The fact that we ever thought Bill Cosby was too family-friendly for anything is just... ergh.
The fact that we ever thought Bill Cosby was too family-friendly for anything is just... ergh.
The Devil's appearance on a few episodes of the 1984 series Highway to Heaven is really fun, because he's depicted as a very traditional monsterous devil right down to his pitchfork and cape; but he's played by beloved horror movie mainstay Michael Berryman. It's pretty much impossible to not love any character Berryman plays, no matter how monsterous.
Here's a character we've done before in GND, but there can be more than one version of the Devil... more than one version of Death already appeared in the same comic afterall. Tim Curry's Lord of Darkness from 1985's Legend has to be one of the most iconic performances in his already iconic career, and even though he's clearly monsterous, he brings tons of personality to the role.
People sleep on 1986's Crossroads, but it's a great watch. Robert Judd plays 'Scratch', a personification of the devil responsible for the birth of rock music, that Ralph Macchio has to defeat. It's like a musical version of Karate Kid but with demonic guitar battles.
1987's Angel Heart is a neo-noir psychological horror movie that is most famous for having to cut content to dodge an X-rating. The character played by Robert DeNiro, Louis Cyphre, isn't specifically stated to be the Devil, but I mean... watch the movie.
The Witches of Eastwick is a great movie, and it's awesome how George Miller (of Mad Max fame) was taking potentially problematic stories and making feminist movies about female empowerment even way back in 1987. Jack Nicholson's Daryl Van Horne is one of the best takes on a humanized devil that's ever been on film, and watching him lose to Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer is just great.
Lucifer Morningstar's 1989 depiction in the pages of Sandman, the amazing ongoing comic series from DC's Vertigo imprint, is the reason we're actually here. Writer and gift-to-all-of-us Neil Gaiman invented this complex but sympathetic spin on the biblical Lucifer who went on to appear in his own series. It's noteworthy here that, when presented with the challenge to make Lucifer the most beautiful, effortlessly cool man on Earth, Gaiman's only note to artist Sam Keith was 'David Bowie'.
This one doesn't really qualify since by the end of the 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation 'Devil's Due', the character of Audra (supposedly the true devil from every world in the galaxy) is revealed to actually be a con woman, but still. Watching the crew of the enterprise square off against a character that actually seems to be Satan herself (just like how the classic Enterprise crew was constantly meeting ancient gods of Earth) was a lot of fun. She was played by TV regular Marta Dubois.
The Yugoslavian comedy We Are Not Angels from 1992 is actually quite a cult hit, and features an angel and devil battling over whether the protagonist will take care of his pregnant girlfriend or not. the Devil is played by Srđan Todorović
Needful Things is a classic Stephen King story that was made into a 1993 film starring Max von Sydow as Leland Gaunt. The movie's premise... the devil selling cursed items from his shop, has pretty much become a trope all on it's own.
Lucifer appears in the 1995 horror-thriller & Christopher Walken vehicle The Prophecy. He's meant to be intense and threateningly attractive, and they achieved this by casting a pre-Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen.
1997's The Devil's Advocate is one of those movies that really earns it's place in it's last twenty minutes or so. I used to audition for stuff by doing Al Pacino's lines from his end-of-the-movie tirade. His character John Milton (points for the Paradise Lost reference) is pretty much just Al Pacino shouting.... but honestly I think that's a pretty fair guess as to what the Devil actually sounds like.
While depictions of the devil actually show up a LOT in classic animation, it was always some sort of monster. The first cartoon I found that really decides to make Satan a character is South Park. he showed up in the very first season in 1998, taking a dive in a boxing match against Jesus, but went on to be a major character in the long-running series, where he's... actually kind of a nice guy?
1998's Brimstone is one of the dozens, maybe hundreds, of potentially cool series green-lit by Fox and then canceled before it had a chance to find it's footing *coughfireflycough*. In this case, it was a story about a murdered detective charged by the Devil to find and return 113 lost souls to hell. Lucifer is played by John Glover.
The Powerpuff Girls (also from 1998) was one of my favorite cartoons of it's era. It featured a villain called simly 'HIM'... a sort of otherworldly effeminite omnipowerful devil figure that was absolutely terrifying. He was voiced by Tom Kane.
I LOVE End of Days. I had a poster of this 1999 movie in college. It's basically the last great Arnold Schwarzenegger action romp, this time pitting him against best possible bad-guy: Satan himself, as played by Gabriel Byrne who is clearly just having a great time. Of all the ways to defeat Satan during the end times, why has no one ever thought to just shoot him until he stops moving?
One of the most fun takes on the Devil in animation has to be the Robot Devil from Futurama, voiced by series mainstay Dan Castellaneta. In the world of Futurama, robot hell is a literal place that literally exists, and the literal Robot Devil will literally make literal devil's bargains with you. Why did someone BUILD this?
You might not thing that the 2000 Adam Sandler movie Little Nicky would bring a lot to the mythology of Lucifer, but it has some weird curveballs. Nicky's dad is Satan, played by Harvey Keitel, but he's the SON of Lucifer, played by Rodney Dangerfield.
The 2000 remake of classic Bedazzled doesnt quite have the comedic brilliance of the original, it's still totally enjoyable thanks almost entirely to the charm of star Brandon Fraiser. The devil here is updated and played by Elizabeth Hurley, who seems to have a grand time vamping it up all over the place.
2004's The Passion of the Christ, like the Greatest Story Ever Told, includes a depiction of a humanized Devil appearing to Jesus. Unlike that movie, however, this one is deeply, deeply unplesant. Director Mel Gibson's penchant for hating jews, women, minorities and... basically everybody is all over this thing. Satan is played by italian actress Rosalinda Celentano as an androgynous figure. She's creepy, sure, but knowing what we know about Mel's opinion of women, I'd just as soon not try to unpack what he was saying.
This is a VERY cool addition to this list, because in some ways it's an alternate take on the Lucifer this post is actually about. John Constantine is a DC/Vertigo comic character just like Lucifer and the characters from Sandman, and so when the 2005 movie Constantine starring Keanu Reeves was released, it was, in a way, an adaptation of the same source material. The movie fameously bears little to no resemblance to the comic, but is also recognized for being a great story in it's own right. A completely different Lucifer appears played by infamously threatening Swedish actor Peter Stormare in what might be the best five minutes of screentime ever.
The Fallen was a 2006 TV miniseries based on novels by Thomas Sniegoski about a high-school kid who discovers he's a human-angel hybrid. This all sounds pretty generic, except that Lucifer, who is featured heavily in the series, is played by a just-finished-with-Malcom-in-the-Middle, still-two-years-out-from-Breaking-Bad Bryan Cranston.
This is another time I'm breaking my own criteria, but only because the source here is SO good. In 2006 during the height of the excellent Russel T. Davies years of Doctor Who, we got the two part episodes The Impossible Planet & The Satan Pit. I really don't want to get too deep into what happens in these episodes, but they introduce an entity called The Beast. Awesome stuff.
2007's Reaper was one of those TV shows that dissapeared from the air RIGHT before everyone realized how entertaining it was. Centering on a 21-year-old kid who discovered that his parents sold his soul to the devil and now had to work capturing escaped souls, it freatured a fantastic take at the role of Satan by Ray Wise. In fact, as best as I can tell, the writers literally just cast Ray Wise and then congratulated each other on a job well done, because the character is pretty much perfect.
2007's Ghost Rider is a pretty fun, harmless take at a superhero movie a year before the entire genre was shaken up by 2008's Iron Man. Marvel's take on the devil, Mephistopheles, is played by a very well-cast Peter Fonda.
2012's The Devil's Carnival is the second outing of the creative team and cast behind Repo! the Genetic Opera, and features Lucifer telling stories from Aesop's Fables. He's played by writer Terrance Zdunich, who also played the Graverobber in Repo!
In the last season of the British fantasy series Being Human, it's established that the Devil has been trapped on Earth for a century in the body of a pensioner named Captain Hatch. He's played by Phil Davis.
This qualifies, I think, if only because it shows how pervasive some of these character tropes can become. The 2014 episode of Rick and Morty 'Something Ricket This Way Comes' is a send up of the 1993 movie Needful Things. The character of Mr. Lucius Needful, a pastiche of Max von Sydrow's character from the original movie, is voiced by Alfred Molina.
Netflix 2019 series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is downright gleeful in it's depiction of hell-fueled soap-opera nonsense, and it is insanely fun for it. For the first season Satan appeared regularly as a giant goat-faced demon monster, but as his relationship with Sabrina expanded, we started to see his human form, played by Luke Cook
Of course, 2019's Good Omens features another version of Satan. While on the surface it's another giant CG monster, it's also a sly little bit of character work as he's voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.
HERE we go. This is why we're here; the 2015-and-still-going TV series Lucifer is a very faithful adaptation of the character as he appears in the Vertigo comic, layered in with a pretty competent serial crime drama. Evidentally, the producers were very aware that they'd never find anyone as perfect as the original character basis, David Bowie, so they actively persured actors with a different look, which is how they landed on the almost criminally handsome Tom Ellis.