A Devilish Good Time
The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge is heading south this month—way south. The legendary repertory house is kicking off a series called Dead of Winter: Satan on Screen, which ranges from comedy to horror to drama in its selection of titles that in some way feature Beelzebub. The creative lineup includes Damn Yankees, Toby Dammit, and Deconstructing Harry, in addition to such Criterion titles as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales (January 20), Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (January 24), and Benjamin Christensen’s silent work of horror, Häxan (January 23), perhaps cinema’s earliest Satanic epic, which is being shown in the 1968 reissue version titled Witchcraft Through the Ages and narrated by William S. Burroughs. Check out this fiendish clip from the film. (That is Christensen himself playing Lucifer.)