aka Pact With the Devil
Canada/UK. 2003.
Crew
Director – Allan A. Goldstein, Screenplay – Peter Jobin & Ron Raley, [Uncredited] Based on the Novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, Producers – Charmaine Carvalho, Allan A. Goldstein, Christine Kavanagh & Luciano Lisi, Photography – Eric Moynier, Music – Larry Cohen, Makeup Effects – Twin FX (Supervisor – Erik Gosselin), Production Design – Csaba Kertesz. Production Company – Danger Inc/Alist Productions/Towers of London/Blue Rider Pictures.
Cast
Malcolm McDowell (Henry Wootton), Ethan Erickson (Louis/Dorian), Jennifer Nitsch (Bea), Victoria Sanchez (Mariella Steiner), Christoph Waltz (Rolf Steiner), Amy Sloan (Sibyl), Ron Lea (Detective Giatti), Carl Alcacci (James), Bronwen Booth (Trina)
Plot
At a double murder scene in New York City, detectives question Henry Wootton who knew both victims. Henry is an important figure in the modelling world. Back in June 1980, Henry spotted the unknown Louis and decided that he could turn him into a world-class male model. After Henry told Louis the story of The Picture of Dorian Gray, who remained youthful and handsome while all of his aging was transferred to his portrait, Louis swore a similar pact and took the name Dorian. As his star rose in the modelling world and Henry plied him with pleasures and temptations, Dorian remained youthful through the years as his debauchery and aging was transferred to a portrait shot.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) was the sole novel written by Victorian playwright and cause celebre Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). The book has since become regarded as a horror classic and has undergone numerous film adaptations and the character been introduced to the pantheon of Famous Monsters. (See below for the other adaptations of The Picture of Dorian Gray). This is a modernised adaptation.
The film gains a great deal of life out of the casting of Malcom McDowell who plays one of the few holdovers from the book, the character of the libertine Henry Wootton – although the surprise is that Henry is actually made into more of a central character to the film than Dorian is. McDowell plays everything with a wicked gleam that gives the part a diabolical twist. Indeed, in the early scenes, McDowell’s performance becomes positively stalkerish in the ways he sneaks around after Ethan Erickson, even contrives at one point to photograph him making out with his girlfriend. When it comes to Ethan Erickson agreeing to become immortal, this is made more into a Pact with the Devil, which is in fact the film’s alternate title. Some scenes even hint at Malcolm McDowell being a devil figure and having powers in contrast to the book where there is no explanation of the agency behind how Dorian transfers his aging to the portrait.
Outside of McDowell, Dorian is dull and unexceptional. It is directed as though it were a tv movie, or at least 2000s video shelves fodder. Allan A. Goldstein’s direction has a style-less efficiency but is faceless. We see nothing of the debaucheries that Dorian engages in. It is only whenever Malcolm McDowell turns up that the material gains any life.
In the role of Dorian, Ethan Erickson has a moderate handsomeness but little else. The film also misconstrues the character. Here Dorian seems a decent innocent. What we get in Wilde is an innocent who is corrupted and becomes amoral and debauched. In the film’s PG-rated debaucheries, we get to see none of that – someone who seems no more than a handsome but elusive Hollywood star. This Dorian may sell his soul but we never see him surrender to corruption. In the book, for instance, Sibyl is an innocent actress he sleeps with, letting her believe he is going to marry her, and then abandons, driving her to suicide, which is something that seems a whole lot more morally corrupt than here where Malcolm McDowell merely turns up to give Sibyl a fatal drug overdose.
This version was made by British producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009), who had a long history with genre material including the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films and several collaborations with Jesus Franco. The film was shot in Toronto.
Other film adaptations of The Picture of Dorian Gray include a number of versions made during the silent era – in 1910, 1913, 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918. The classic adaptation is generally regarded as the MGM version The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) starring Hurd Hatfield, although this is a staid film when seen today. These are all lost today. The other sound versions are Dorian Grey (1970), producer Harry Alan Towers’ notoriously bad sexploitation version; The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), Dan Curtis’s tv movie version starring Shane Briant; The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983), a tv movie version, where Dorian is made into a woman played by Belinda Bauer; The Picture of Dorian Gray (2004) starring Josh Duhamel; The Picture of Dorian Gray (2006); Oliver Parker’s excellent big-budget adaptation Dorian Gray (2009) starring Ben Barnes; and the low-budget The Picture of Dorian Gray (2023) with a female Dorian (Leonie Kessel). The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) includes a spoof, among other genre homages. Dorian Gray even turns up as one of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) played by Stuart Townsend and as a regular character in the tv series Penny Dreadful (2014-6) played by Reeve Carney, while variations on the plot appear in episodes of Blake’s 7 (1978-81) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94).
Allan A. Goldstein is a director who has mostly made tv movies. His most well-known work was probably Death Wish V: The Faces of Death (1994). He has also made the sf film Memory Run (1995), the jungle adventure Jungle Boy (1996), the biowarfare action film Spill/Virus (1996), the comedy 2001: A Space Travesty (2001) and The Snake King/Snakeman (2005).
Trailer here