 


 


          No surprise that he came to the genre early, drawn like a fallen angel to an infernal flame, but the truth is that the Devil was here first. Throughout the ages and across cultures, Satan – literally “adversary” – was present like a lurking shadow that spread its wings the very moment the first human being formulated the concept of goodness. Ironically, the Satan of storybooks – red tail, cloven hooves and horns – owes a huge debt to the very people who resisted him most: Christians. The aptly titled Medieval Dark Ages placed Satan centre stage in a culture of fear and paranoia that reached a hysterical shriek during the witch burn- ing era of 17th-century Puritan Europe and America. Two centuries later,


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the Devil stood front and centre in the world’s very first horror movie (see sidebar), and shadowed the rise of horror cinema like a demon reborn in the flickering images of projected celluloid.


After decades of flirting with the counterculture, the Devil hit Hollywood superstardom in the late 1960s and early ’70s with the unholy triumvirate of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen, blockbuster movies that drew from different mythologies and fears about Satan (see sidebar). Music followed a decade later, after sinister elements in rock ’n’ roll gave the Devil his soundtrack with heavy metal music and the Satanic Panic that came with it (see sidebar).


Satan reigned supreme throughout the 1980s but, like all things, he too was doomed to be a passing fad. Fears of the apocalyptic end times evap-


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