Pact with the Devil (2003) User Reviews

Bad paint job

[zeppo-2 · 3/10 · 27 November 2005]

This is a modern updating of the classic, 'Picture of Dorian Grey.' As if the Oscar Wilde story was rewritten by sex & shopping book hack, Jackie Collins. There's nothing new here except for the setting, in a photo model environment instead of Victorian London.

It starts off interesting enough but McDowell as a poor man's Devil, begins to chew the scenery before too long. And sadly, Ethan Erickson doesn't have the range of acting to successfully portray the slowly morally declining Dorian.

For a study in debauchery, there's precious little shown, you would get the idea the height of decadence was dancing in a few discos on the continent. Surprising since the video I watched had an 18 certificate.

The original film version was made under far more stringent censorship rules but still was able to imply the depths that Dorian sunk to in his pursuit of hedonistic pleasures.

This is just fodder for the MTV generation, full of flash style and hip music but lacking in any real substance at all.

Watch the original or for a study in moral corruption, check out the excellent 'Alias Nick Beal' starring Ray Milland as well.

here we go again

[selenedm999 · 3/10 · 23 August 2006]

A mediocre re-telling of Oscar Wilde's classic Dorian Gray tale, the only thing about it worth watching is Malcolm McDowell.

In his typical baddie role, McDowell is gleefully diabolical and makes even the most ridiculous plot turns almost believable.

The rest of the action, while pretty enough to look at, is flawed and boring at best. I rented this on the dollar shelf, and I rented it for McDowell. I got what I paid for.

Interestingly, IMDb doesn't allow me to post less than 10 lines of text, so I'm not going to have enough to say about its cheesy acting, rehashed-into-pulp mush of a very thin plot, bad dialogue, wooden character interactions, and all-around TV-movie feel. It's the kind of movie you watch when there's absolutely nothing else to do.

My advice? Vacuum instead.

Another Picture of Dorian Gray

[wes-connors · 4/10 · 9 February 2009]

The story is familiar - recall, original novelist Oscar Wilde's "Dorian" wished his painting would grow old whilst he remain young. Like in days of old, handsome male model Ethan Erickson (as Louis) wishes for eternal youth. Then, while one of his pictures ages, he becomes the ageless "Dorian" of the title. Like his predecessors, Mr. Erickson descends into decadent debauchery. A charismatic older mentor, Malcolm McDowell (as Henry), eggs him on...

Re-titled "Pact with the Devil".

Allan A. Goldstein's updated "Dorian" alters the story in ways that become nonsensical. The main problem occurs by making Mr. McDowell's character semi-Faustian. To have McDowell in the cast, and render his character inexplicable, should be a crime. Erickson, an extremely good-looking man, is also slighted by a faltering characterization - in an early scene, he is required to pretend he couldn't imagine someone thinking he could be a pin-up boy? And, Jennifer Nitsch (as Bae) has an undeveloped, but intriguing, back-story.

**** Dorian (2001) Allan A. Goldstein ~ Ethan Erickson, Malcolm McDowell, Jennifer Nitsch, Christoph Waltz

Forever young

[jotix100 · 4/10 · 25 January 2005]

The title of the movie, as shown by Showtime, the other night, was "A Pact with the Devil". It didn't ring a bell as anything seen locally in recent years. The idea of seeing a film with Malcolm McDowell in it, and nothing else worth watching in the other channels, played a trick on us. We witnessed in horror, a remake of the Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" that has nothing to do with the classic, and much better film, of 1945.

Under the direction of Allan A. Goldstein, we are taken, where else, to the world of the super models, where beauty is only skin deep. Henry, who stands as the Devil, tempts Louis into giving his soul in exchange of keeping his good looks forever, duh! Incredibly, we watch as the picture of Louis, now renamed Dorian, ages in ways that are not realistic, at all. I mean, a few wrinkles, we could understand, but making the image in the photograph, taken by Henry, a monster, is pushing reality a bit too far.

Malcom McDowell, who is an otherwise excellent actor, lends himself to this misguided attempt to retell something that was better done before and should have been left alone by the people behind this travesty.

Watch it at your own risk.

Dorian Dreck

[Cineanalyst · 2/10 · 8 September 2018]

Apparently, this "Dorian," a.k.a. "Pact with the Devil," was a direct-to-video movie, and it shows. To call it an MTV-styled updating of Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of the Dorian Gray" doesn't fully describe how awfully irritating it is. For some reason, once-acclaimed actor Malcolm McDowell ("A Clockwork Orange" (1971)) and future two-time-Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz ("Inglorious Basterds" (2009), "Django Unchained" (2012)) are in it. They easily outshine the wretched demonstrations of so-called "acting" by the rest of the cast of amateurs--even though McDowell mostly butchers the epigrams of Wilde's Lord Henry, and Waltz plays a billionaire cuckold invented for this movie and who is rather superfluous to the main plot. There's a lot of yelling and shoving that's supposed to be drama. Wilde's words are replaced by illiterate drivel. At the least, the movie should've been edited down to a more tolerable short rather than a feature-length picture cluttered with time-lapse photography of traffic and cityscapes as transitions between just about every scene and with a distracting and obnoxious soundtrack also transitioning between and within just about every scene. In the one where Henry discovers two girls in Dorian's apartment, his voiceover is almost inaudible because of the blaring music. Instead of trimming, however, the jarring editing features temporal replays and sequences that look like trailers (the montage of Dorian and Bae's affair and the one of the billionaire's cuckolding).

I've seen every Dorian Gray movie I could find since reading Wilde's book, and although there's not many of them available (I've seen 10, including the loose reworkings such as this one), this is easily the most ineptly assembled of the lot. It seemingly has a few novel ideas, too, but blunders them all. There's potential for some clever structuring of the narrative, especially with McDowell and Waltz' characters. Both employ a form of surveillance: Waltz with the cameras capturing his cuckolding, and McDowell sneaking photographs like a peeping Tom. McDowell's Lord Henry is also the narrator, who in the movie's framing device is relating the main story to the detective. He also relates the outline of Wilde's novel to the Dorian in this movie. Plus, he has the omniscience of the Devil. But, nothing interesting comes of any of this.

Reworking Wilde's Faustian tale of eternal youth and doppelgänger images for the modeling business seems promising, too, as it did when the 1983 TV movie "The Sins of Dorian Gray" did the same thing. That version also had a female version of Basil, the artist who painted Dorian's portrait in the book. Here, she's Bae, the photographer. In both movies, Henry manages Dorian, and both are updated to contemporary times. Worst of all, both, through their partial gender reversals, are heteronormative debasings of the gay subtext of the book. Although, at least, this one contains some debauchery; it's flabbergasting how little is even hinted at in some of the other adaptations. A photographic portrait of Dorian instead of a painted one also has an antecedent in a 1915 silent film version, which still exists.

Ordinarily, I think I'd like the use of mirrors here, too, including hiding the portrait behind one, but the movie is so poorly executed in every way, it's difficult to appreciate that there might've been some appealing concepts to begin with.

Oh yes, here's how to mess up a great & classic tale of the macabre...

[Vomitron_G · 3/10 · 2 February 2010]

Basically, transporting it to a modern day setting should be enough to do the trick. Christ on a stick, this was a lamentable film. It will never be the worst film ever, nor is it so badly made it sucks hairy balls. But given the fact this was based on Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", they sure turned it into an atrocity.

The easiest thing to do, was to set the story in the world of models & fashion photography (eternal youth & beauty, right?). Yawn, how original. Furthermore, this film suffers that hard from looking "so nineties", that it hurts. A lot. Ridiculous and worn-out fashion concepts, the photo-shoots are so clichéd (and you should see the result - no artistic value whatsoever), a lot of uninspired pop/rock songs for no reason on the soundtrack, lots of cheap but oh-so-hip at the time editing effects, glossy & shallow sensuality, polished soft sex scenes, art-farty 'beau monde' parties, an artificial fragrance of decadence,... Should I go on?

I've seen decadence in the world of fashion portrayed with more flair in a grotesque B-flick like "Night Angel" (1990). I've seen art, photography, evil & mirrors handled better in horror sequel romp like "Amityville: A New Generation" (1993). You think those are great movies? That should say enough about how good a job this "Dorian" did on a classic story. I've also seen great Edgar Allan Poe stories all mangled up and poured into some 'sorority girls' slasher-format in "Buried Alive" (1990), not exactly the most faithful of adaptations. But I'm sure if they'd turned this "Dorian" into a slasher, it would have been a better stupid movie.

You can tell Malcolm McDowell had some fun playing his part, as Dorian's (evil) mentor, but it's far less fun seeing him play it. The whole film pretty much bores you along, and so does McDowell after a while.

Have the Hughes Brothers make a new "Dorian Gray" movie with a Victorian London setting and give us decent adaptation. It would be for more pleasing looking forward to such a project than suffering through the umpteenth unimaginative Hollywood re-make of any given horror film these days. Or maybe I could check out that 2009 version with Colin Firth. It surely should have more appeal than this trite.

So Grey Dorian Gray

[JustApt · 2/10 · 6 November 2007]

Everything about this sickly adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray stinks to heaven: stinks its saccharin cloying disco soundtrack, stinks Cheshire Cat's grin of a protagonist throughout the film, stinks its stuffy atmosphere of cheap glamour. After the publication of bestseller about the model Dorian - I wonder what kind of bestseller may be written about a man advertising underwear - he becomes famous and forever young thanks to devilish charms put into his photograph and forever intoxicated on drugs and alcohol he's galloping through beautiful people's parties thanks to his putrid popularity straight to his unavoidable bitter end. If there weren't so many funny Malcolm McDowell's grimaces, for whom playing a demonic being is business as usual, I would have given this piece of crud just one star.

A Portrait of Cheese

[cinefilegod · 17 April 2004]

A cheesy, modern take on The Portrait of Dorian Gray story. The most unsettling thing is, there are supposed to be flashbacks from 20 years earlier, but they aren't the least bit convincing - it almost feels like the moments occurred on a previous day. Malcolm McDowell's character is either immortal and unaging, or the makers of this film didn't feel it was important enough to put him in makeup to make him 20 years younger for these flashback moments. It was later on that I realized that this film may have been originally shot for television, due to the fading in and out that occurs whenever possible.

Almost a waste of time if it wasn't for some laughable moments and the good-looking Dorian

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 4/10 · 9 June 2011]

"The Picture of Dorian Gray", the classic story written by Oscar Wilde in 1890, was adapted to the modern times in "Dorian", a quite cheesy film that brings the same story with a giant variety of changes and characterizations of events, in short a drastic summary for people who hate read books and prefers to watch images.

The story goes from the 1890's to the 2000's; Dorian (played by Ethan Erickson) isn't rich, he's a young worker that happens to be in the right place at the right moment when his beauty is noticed by Henry (Malcolm McDowell) who wants to transform the average worker into a famous top model. Instead of painted picture Dorian is immortalized into a photograph that will become ugly, scary while he'll never get old after making a pact with the devil (the notion we get is that Henry is the devil who steal cute guys souls to take). There's the forever young theme, the romance between Dorian and Sybil; tragedies, beauty vs. Ugliness vs. Intelligence and body vs. Soul, and the elements and quotations perfectly written by Wilde in his masterpiece.

But there's something rotten in this film, something that doesn't work quite right. Actually, many things. The wooden acting from the casting (but hey, 'Mr. Hans Landa' Christoph Waltz is there to give an impressive job here), the script that is pretty laughable at so many moments (the photo session with Dorian trying to do a sexy pose is one of those); and once you love the book, know how everything is so perfect and beautiful in it, you can't never achieve greatness in an update like this. A remake with period costumes, closer to what the writer wrote, like the one made in 1945, works way better than this.

"Dorian" only works when it comes to see how handsome Dorian is, I mean, the main actor who looks incredibly hot whether shirtless, showing his great body or just wearing those tight jeans, so nice to look, he's very hunky. His female co-stars are equally good, except for the one who plays Sybil Vane, which might only be attractive to the director or Dorian's eyes.

This Dorian Gray's modernization might work for the poor souls who haven't got the opportunity, or the time and patience to read one of the most dazzling and respected classic of English Literature. To me, it was just an silly entertainment, with some good laughable moments. 4/10.

competent and completely irrelevant tv-flic

[bloodshed666 · 4/10 · 29 March 2004]

well, not very much more to tell then, yes, it's a modern adaption of oscar wilde's classic "the picture of dorian gray". competent and completely irrelevant tv-flic, nothing which makes it worth to watch it or even rent or buy. it's set nowadays within the professional model scene where a manager discovers a new talent. and one of the first pictures he takes of him is this "picture of dorian gray" which ages instead of him. "dorian" makes this pact with the manager who seems to be the devil or something. and when the picture gets destroyed he dies, yeahyeah, you know the story I guess. nothing really to mention about this movie except that it is not really boring, o.k. if you have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do and they screen it on t.v. oh yes, malcolm mcdowell has some cool & evil facial expressions (but always repeating the same) and the director allan a. goldstein also did "death wish V" with charles bronson - and this last comment was for the nerds, hehe...

Leave your expectations at the door

[nathanchasewomack · 5/10 · 21 September 2022]

I must admit I do get a genuine kick out of people giving films like this a serious review like they're Siskel & Ebert. I watched it on Tubi. It's EXACTLY what Tubi is for. And I was entertained for 90 min. I give it a solid 5, tho I never was bored or took my eyes off the screen & the 5 stars are for the beyond humanly beautiful lead actor. This movie could have been twice as long and I'd watch it just because he really is that darn gorgeous. Malcolm? Well, you always know he is going to bring it in any role regardless of how stinky the film is. There's a tawdry bit of pleasure seeing him perform as if it's Shakespeare & not the direct to dvd dreck that it is. After a couple glasses of.wine and a Napien I'd easily watch this again.

For what it is (a direct to video horror movie) it's not bad

[preppy-3 · 7/10 · 12 July 2005]

This was shown on cable under the title "Pact with the Devil". I thought it would be an obscure John Carradine flick...but it was this.

This is a modernized version of "The Picture of Dorian Grey". Henry (Malcolm McDowell) a very rich man who runs a photographic service becomes enamored with Louis (Ethan Erickson) a young, hunky man. He sees him as the perfect male model and gets him started. He tells Louis about the story of Dorian Grey--a man who makes a deal with the devil--he'll stay young-looking always while his portrait ages. Louis is intrigued and does exactly that. Henry changes Louis' name to Dorian, Dorian becomes a HUGE male model and Henry will do ANYTHING to keep Dorian...including murder.

PLOT SPOILER AHEAD!! You've probably guessed that McDowell is the devil and it all ends as the original did. PLOT SPOILER END!!

This is no great movie but not bad on its own terms. It's beautifully shot in some absolutely gorgeous settings. The music soundtrack is good and there are some nice directorial touches. The story itself is OK--it follows the original pretty closely. There was one glaring lapse--it takes place over 20 years. Everybody notices how young Dorian stays--but don't notice it with McDowell or another character! McDowell is (quite obviously) having a whale of a time with this and he's just great. Erickson is so-so. Sometimes he's pretty good--other times he's pretty bad. But he is incredibly handsome with a nice body. The surprising thing about this is there's no nudity--the closest they get is when Erickson ALMOST bares his butt.

So--for a direct to DVD movie--this isn't too bad. And Erickson IS incredibly good-looking. I give it a 7.

Massacre

[Vincentiu · 5 February 2012]

a great novel is too fragile to be a toy. this movie is proof.the intention of director is not very bad but not cast, not clothes, not acting can save a nasty script. and the acting is not impressive. this movie is only a stupid game with pieces from Faust and Dorian Gray. no start, no end. only a perfect chaos.boring, strange, gray. a kind of blasphemy. it is not an error or mistake. it is only a show, adaptation for a kind of public, mixture of fashion, photo art and temptation of celebrity, metamorphosis and moral lesson. so, the sin is option for Oscar Wilde. and the childish desire to tell a profound story as ordinary joke.otherwise, only great virtues for time waste

Dorian Gray 1945 vs Dorian 2003

[Davidpm-751-837149 · 7/10 · 18 August 2019]

There were things I liked and hated about both versions however, I don't think a side-by-side comparison is a good idea simply because of the different attitudes during the time frames the pictures were made in Not to mention the difference in attitudes between the 1945 version and when the book was first published in 1890.

Each version was an interesting look at what is considered to be a classic novel of morality all in all I think each version did a fair job of telling the story for the times they were set in.

The interpretations were vastly different but the question is still valid would you sell your soul in exchange for everything you ever dreamed of and if your answer is yes is it really going to be worth it?

modest. but...

[Kirpianuscus · 19 March 2023]

A film reminding the generosity of novel inspiring it, against obvious use of the book only as pretext for a story in which the physical beauty of Ethan Erickson ( an ordinary one , for my poor taste ) and the try to use same recipe of ambiguous evil character by Malcolm McDowell, more devil than Harry . Sure, modelling world, photo and not picture ( a not so bad idea and the last moments of Dorian life are just nice crafted ), same moral and ironic final,not the most inspired dialogue but a real good job of Christoph Waltz.

A modest film but not exactly a real dissapointment , nice try to use, in a sort of MTV style game, pieces of a classic masterpiece .

Confuse, chaotic, unrealistic situations and not brilliant acted but a version, reminding more 1970 one, unfortunatelly as the worst one , adaptation.

So, not so fair to be very critic about this new Dorian, but only accept its modest purpose and to hope, in idealistic manner, to be a sort of kick to discover the book inspiring it for the audience.

A Worthy Contemporary Version of Oscar Wilde's Classic Book

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 11 May 2005]

While temporarily working in a photographic studio with the famous photographer Bae (Jennifer Nitsch), the simple and handsome worker Louis (Ethan Erickson) meets her manager Henry (Malcolm McDowell), who is impressed with his beauty. He invites Louis for taking some pictures, gives the artistic name of Dorian to him as a homage to "Dorian Gray" and a framed picture of him. Louis wishes to have the same fate of Dorian Gray, and from this moment on, he becomes very successful in the career of model. As years go by, he notes that only his picture ages, and he has the same face of years ago. "Dorian" is a worthy contemporary version of Oscar Wilde's classic "The Picture of Dorian Gray". When I was a boy, this book was among my favorite ones. "Dorian" is a simple low budget movie, with a great music score, and average performances, but I liked it. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Dorian Gray – Pacto com o Diabo" ("Dorian Gray – Pact With the Devil")