To hell with Max

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Movie
German title To hell with Max
Original title The Devil and Max Devlin
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1981
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Steven Hilliard star
script Mary Rodgers
production Jerome Courtland ,
Steven Hilliard Stern
music Buddy Baker ,
Joseph Dubin
camera Howard Schwartz
cut Ray de Leuw
occupation

To hell with Max (original title: The Devil and Max Devlin ) is an American fantasy - comedy by Steven Hilliard Stern with Elliott Gould , Bill Cosby and Susan Anspach in the lead roles, that of Walt Disney Pictures was produced.

The film received controversial reviews for a Disney film; on the one hand because of the subject of the film, on the other hand, because Bill Cosby was atypically an evil character. Disney took this and three other films as an opportunity to form Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures (and later buy Miramax and 20th Century Studios ) in order to produce and release films for an older audience.

action

Max Devlin is the seedy landlord of a slum in Los Angeles. He's running away from angry tenants who found out he owned the building. Eventually he is killed on a bus and goes to hell, which resembles a corporate office. There he meets the soul manager Barney Satin, who is one of the devil's henchmen. He offers Max to free him if he brings him three souls of young people in return. Max agrees and will be brought back to life. Since Barney is keeping his soul, Max cannot see himself in the mirror. Barney also gives him limited magical powers. If Max is successful, his soul will be freed. Alive again, Max begins his assignment and Barney, whom only he can see, often comes by to check his progress and to mock him.

Max's targets are Stella Summers, a high school dropout and aspiring singer; Nerve Nordlinger, a student who wants to be popular; and Toby Hart, a child who wants his mother Penny to be happy again. Max influences their lives by signing a record deal for Stella, teaching Nerve to ride a motorcycle after school, and spending time with Toby while he helps Penny at daycare. Max begins to take care of the three and finds his decency again. He even falls in love with Penny but has trouble getting the kids to give up their souls. Stella refuses to sign the contract as she believes Max wants more than 20% as a manager, Nerve is focused on training due to an upcoming race, and Toby refuses to sign before Max marries Penny.

In the end, Max succeeds in getting all three signatures, whereby their personalities immediately change for the worse. After Max and Penny's wedding, Barney appears and announces that all three will die after midnight and that Max can go on with his life but is still doomed. Angry about the lie, Max wants to destroy the contracts and is taken back to Hell by Barney, where he threatens him with greater agony if he destroys the contracts. Knowing he's doomed, Max throws the contracts into a nearby fire, but is brought back to life.

Max believes he is still damned and says goodbye to Nerve and Stella, but finds out that their personalities are back to normal. When he says goodbye to Toby and Penny, he is overjoyed that he can see himself in the mirror and assumes that because of his self-sacrifice he is no longer damned and Barney is defeated. He looks up at the sky and thanks him when he goes to a concert by Stella with Penny and Toby.

production

In 1973, Jimmy Sangster wrote a screenplay for a horror hammer film called The Fairytale Man, starring Vincent Price as the dead actor who collects the souls of children for the devil. However, the producer Harold Cohen , who had already produced two television films based on Sangster's scripts, did not manage to raise enough money for the project. Sangster bought back the rights and sold them on to Walt Disney Pictures . Ron Miller , the studio director, then hired Mary Rodgers to rewrite the script, as she had written the script for Crazy Friday (1976), which was one of the studio's most successful films of the decade. The title was changed to The Devil and Max Devlin , both to show the influence of Faust as well as to prove that the studio's films aren't just aimed at children. In the process, the theater was replaced with motorcycle racing and music (although Rodger's father, composer Richard Rodgers was famous for it) and the devil wanted not only the souls of children but also those of adults.

It is the second of two Disney films that Elliott Gould made after crash landing in Paradise . Coincidentally, there was a reference to religion there too.

Bill Cosby had previously turned down offers from Disney because it was rumored that minorities were not welcome there. He and his wife, Camille, raised concerns about a black person playing the devil, but Bill Cosby accepted the role as it was already played by whites. The film was shot on Soundstage 3 in Disney's Burbank studio. So many butane stoves, dry ice and smoke machines were used for the underworld set that the temperature rose to 38 ° C, so that the crew could only spend a limited amount of time there. Part of the scene in which Max Devlin goes to Hell contains material from The Black Hole (1979).

Soundtrack

In addition to the music by Buddy Baker , the film also contains two songs composed by Marvin Hamlisch and sung by Julie Budd: "Any Fool Could See" (text: Allee Willis ) and "Roses and Rainbows" (text: Carole Bayer Sager ). They appeared as a single on A&M Records and Buena Vista Records in the United States and the United Kingdom, but did not reach the charts. Neither the soundtrack nor the singles were released on CD, but Julie Budd recorded the title track in 2005 for her album The New Classics .

reception

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film "is neither the worst nor the best". Variety wrote: "Although the film begins well, he quickly falls on his face and does not recover again." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune evaluated the film three stars out of four positive and called him "a surprising success. The newspapers have been filled with stories commenting on the demise of Disney magic, but 'The Devil and Max Devlin' shows evidence of someone living on the Disney Burbank property in the 1980s. This is a very funny little movie. ” Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times wrote,“ Somewhere in The Devil and Max Devlin, a lively, well-thought-out script (by Mary Rogers) battles layers of Disneyfication ... Cosby has nothing in an unsympathetic premiere to expand his comedic or acting talent. ”Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote:“ It's no fun at all to watch a chubby, depressed Elliott Gould chase a group of children before he mends his heart with a last minute decision. The real problem with self-image may be with the Disney organization, which seems to be desperately looking for less harmless story material. ”In August 2019, Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an 18% rating, based on 11 reviews.

The film ranked 45th in the United States' box office for the year, grossing $ 16 million, but Ron Miller was quoted in an August 1981 article in The New York Times saying that the studio lost money with the movie. While it was one of the company's first PG-rated films designed to modernize the studio's image, it also had a negative impact as long-time supporters of the company wrote angry letters criticizing the profanity of the dialogues, claiming Walt Disney would never have allowed this. However, he actually allowed the use of the word "Hell" in the films 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians and put the location in Pluto before the court . The criticism led Disney to create new brands to post family-unfriendly material, although it took another three years to implement that idea.

It was first released on videotape in the United States in late 1981, despite Bill Cosby's increasing notoriety through The Bill Cosby Show (which began running for eight years as well as that of the one-season sitcom E / R by Elliott Gould in 1984) no further publications followed. Anchor Bay Entertainment released the film on DVD in November 2000, and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released it again on DVD in 2006.

In the United Kingdom, the video cassette release in 1987 caused little excitement as it coincided with a debate about films with bloody violence and explicit sex scenes. Anti-censorship activist Liam T. Sanford wrote a letter about the film to the surveillance authorities to identify the criteria for censorship, which in fact led to the film being censored. This was only temporary, however, as the BBFC had given it the A rating for the cinema in 1981 and the PG rating for the video cassette in 1987 and the film in 2003 for the DVD.

Although Jimmy Sangster is featured in the film's credits for the story, he himself said, “My only consolation on this matter (other than the money) was the fact that I was able to share a credit with Richard Rodgers' daughter ... that's the Richard Rodgers, who wrote all the great musicals. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Zum Teufel mit Max . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2003 (PDF; test number: 57 500 DVD).
  2. ↑ Kimberly Lindbergs: Unfinished Films: Where Can I Buy My Ticket? . Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b Howard Maxford: Hammer Complete: The film, the personnel, the company . McFarland Publishing, Jefferson, North Carolina 2019, ISBN 978-1-4766-7007-2 , p. 896, (accessed December 16, 2018).
  4. ↑ a b Jim Hill: To Hell With Bill Cosby? Disney already did that with "The Devil and Max Devlin" . Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  5. ↑ Julie Budd - Roses and Rainbows . Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  6. ↑ Julie Budd: The New Classics . Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  7. ↑ Vincent Canby (March 6, 1981). "Movies: Devil à la Disney". The New York Times . C1.
  8. ^ "Film Reviews: The Devil And Max Devlin". Variety . February 11, 1981. 20.
  9. ^ Gene Siskel (February 9, 1981). " 'Bad Timing': Shocking look at male-female affairs ". Chicago Tribune . Section 2, p. 6.
  10. ^ Sheila Benson (February 12, 1981). "Cosby, Gould in Hellzafloppin". Los Angeles Times . Part VI, p. 5.
  11. ^ Gary Arnold (February 14, 1981). "Insipid Inferno". The Washington Post . D1, D13.
  12. ^ The Devil and Max Devlin . Retrieved August 1, 2019.
  13. ↑ Box Office Mojo 1981 Yearly Box Office Results . Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  14. ↑ David Flint: Video Nasties: The Illustrated Checklist . Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  15. ^ The Devil and Max Devlin .

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