Cinema: Fausticm Fringe

As the ancestor of all man-v.-devil stories, the Faust legend has spawned some curious offspring over the centuries. The latest, Stanley Donen's Bedazzled, could in all likelihood qualify as the worst. A meek little short-order cook (Dudley Moore) hankers inarticulately after the waitress (Eleanor Bron) in a London greasy spoon. The Devil (Peter Cook) follows him home and makes a proposition: seven wishes granted, a soul in return.

Unfortunately, none of the wishes works out quite right. In answer to one, Moore is turned into a voluble young intellectual who plies the willing Bron with Brahms; just as her defenses begin to...