The Devil and Max Devlin (1981) on Netflix
Max Devlin, a Los Angeles slumlord, is killed by a bus and lands in Hell. The devil's chief henchman, Barney Satin, offers him a way back if he delivers three souls.
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- Netflix1.7/5
- IMDb5.0/101,560 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes17%
Trailer
Plot summary
Max Devlin is the landlord and owner of a rundown Los Angeles building, and when his tenants turn on him he flees into the path of a bus. He comes to in Hell, laid out like a corporate office, where Barney Satin, the devil's chief henchman, proposes that Max return to the living if he persuades three young people to sign their souls over to him. Barney keeps Max's soul, so no mirror shows Max his reflection, and grants him a few magical abilities. Max's intended marks are Stella Summers, a high school dropout who wants to sing; Nerve Nordlinger, a pupil who longs to be popular; and Toby Hart, a boy who wants his widowed mother Penny to be happy. Max gets Stella a recording contract and coaches Nerve at motorbike racing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Devil and Max Devlin (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jimmy Sangster first conceived the film in 1973 as a Hammer Films horror called The Fairytale Man, with Vincent Price as a dead actor who collects children's souls for the Devil; it stalled when producer Harold Cohen could not raise the money, so Sangster bought the rights back and sold them to Disney, where studio head Ron W. Miller had Mary Rodgers rewrite it.
- Bill Cosby had turned down earlier Disney film offers because of rumors the studio was unwelcoming to minorities, and he and his wife Camille doubted a black actor should play the devil; he took the part anyway because the devil had historically been played by white actors.
- The film was one of three that pushed Disney to set up Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures as a way to produce and release films for mature audiences, after controversy over its subject matter and Cosby's atypical villainous role.
- The underworld set on Soundstage 3 at Disney's Burbank studio used so many butane furnaces, dry ice and smoke machines that the temperature hit 100 degrees, and the cast and crew could only stay inside for limited spells while shooting.
- The film's 1981 UK videocassette debut landed in the middle of the "video nasties" uproar; anti-censorship campaigner Liam T. Sanford wrote to the police watch committee about it simply to test their criteria, and they pulled the film, though only temporarily.
- Disney received angry letters from longtime supporters who objected to the profanity in the dialogue and claimed Walt Disney would never have allowed it, even though his own films 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians used the word "hell" and Pluto's Judgement Day showed it as a place.
- Part of Max Devlin's first descent into Hell was made by reusing footage of bodies marching from Disney's 1979 film The Black Hole.
