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Bedazzled
Bedazzled 1967 film poster
Directed by	Stanley Donen
Produced by	Stanley Donen
Written by	Peter Cook Dudley Moore
Starring	Peter Cook Dudley Moore Eleanor Bron Raquel Welch
Music by	Dudley Moore
Cinematography	Austin Dempster
Editing by	Richard Marden
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date(s)	December 10 1967 (US)
Running time	103 min
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
IMDb profile

Bedazzled is a 1967 motion picture retelling of the Faust legend set in the Swinging London of the 1960s. It was remade in 2000 as Bedazzled.

Stanley Moon (Moore) is a dissatisfied introverted young man who works in a fast-food restaurant and admires, from afar, the waitress Margaret (Bron). Despairing of his unrequited infatuation, he is in the process of an incompetent suicide attempt, when he is interrupted by the Devil, incarnated as George Spiggott (Cook). Spiggott is in a contest with God, trying to be the first to gather 100 billion souls. If he achieves this first, he will be readmitted to Heaven.

In return for his soul, Spiggott offers Stanley seven wishes. Stanley consumes these opportunities in trying to satisfy his lust for Margaret (frequent Cook and Moore collaborator Eleanor Bron), but Spiggott twists his words to frustrate any consummation of desire. On one occasion, he reincarnates Stanley as a nun: whilst being specific about nearly every other aspect of the wish, he had forgotten to specify his gender and vocation.

Spiggott fills the time between these episodes with acts of minor vandalism and spite, incompetently assisted by the personification of the seven deadly sins, most memorably Lust (Raquel Welch).

Ultimately, Spiggott spares Stanley eternal damnation out of pity (and because he has exceeded his quota of 100 billion), and Stanley returns to his old job, wiser and more clear-sighted.

Spigott meanwhile is interviewed by God, rejected again. In the closing scene, Spiggott threatens revenge on God by unleashing all the tawdry and shallow technological curses of the modern age: All right, you great git, you've asked for it. I'll cover the world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burgers.

Films exploiting and celebrating the social and economic freedoms of the so-called swinging 60s were common, but Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's comedy attempted to both amuse and to reassert the Faust legend's caveats about greed and sexual passion. The film is loosely based on Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan.

At least one sequence didn't make it into the final film, and it's unclear as to whether it even went before the cameras, although it was scripted. Before the opening titles, Stanley Donen was to sit in a director's chair and address the audience. The general tenor of his speech was that he was angered at having been signed-up to direct such a trivial piece, and as a result has had a change of heart and is about to present us with a more worthy piece. At which point, Spiggott would rise from behind the chair, lean forward, and murmur in his ear, "Just think of the money, Stanley..." Following which, the opening credits for the film would have started rolling. (A script for the film is held in the British Film Institute Library which features this introductory scene.)

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• George Spiggott:
  • "Do hope this isn't an awkward moment." (After walking in on someone who has performed a failed suicide attempt)
  • "You fill me with inertia." (spoken as musical performer Drimble Wedge)
  • "What terrible sins I have working for me. I suppose it's the wages."
  • [to Lust] "Pick your clothes up. You're due down at the Foreign Office."
  • [offering anything in exchange for Stanley's soul ] "What would you like to be? Prime Minister? Oh no, wait, I've already signed that deal."
  • "There was a time when I used to get lots of ideas... I thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon. The only thing I've come up with recently is advertising."
  • "It's the standard contract. Gives you seven wishes in accordance with the mystic rules of life. Seven Days of the Week, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Seas, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers..." (also directed by Donen)
  • [To a pigeon about to fly over a man] "Release your doo-dahs"
  • "You realize that suicide's a criminal offense. In less enlightened times, they'd have hung you for it."
  • "Suicide, really — that's the last thing you should try."
  • [During a conversation about politics, a character with a severe speech impediment struggles to express a thought. Spiggot replies dismissively...] "Well, that's easy for you to say."
  • "In the words of Marcel Proust — and this applies to any woman in the world — if you can stay up and listen with a fair degree of attention to whatever garbage, no matter how stupid it is, that they're coming out with, till ten minutes past four in the morning... you're in!"
  • "I lost Mussolini that way, all that work, then right at the end with his last breath he says, 'Scusi. Mille regretti,' and up he goes!"

• Stanley Moon:
  • [reading Faustian contract] "I, Stanley Moon, hereinafter and in the hereafter to be known as 'The Damned' — The damned?!"

• Bedazzled at the Internet Movie Database

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