Brimstone and Treacle (1987)

good back-story, and good acting

An action-packed slog

Absolutely Fantastic

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Dennis Potter's Play for Today, Brimstone and Treacle was banned by the BBC and later became a film with pop star Sting playing the role of Martin Taylor.The banned play was later broadcast by the BBC allowing us to see what the controversy was all about. Potter wrote this as a religious parable and instead of thinking about the power of goodness, Potter thought what if the power of evil actually brought some happiness or sense of purpose.Michael Kitchen is the polite young man called Martin but in essence is the devil who visits a middle aged couple who look after their severely brain damaged daughter left that way after a car accident. He claims to be a friend of the daughter and stays on as a lodger.The father (Denholm Elliott) is a little man frustrated with life and is a racist. Of course once the devil suggests that we should kill them all, leave no black, brown, yellow people alive, he sorts of thinks twice about his racism and realises the implications of his hatred.The wife (Patricia Lawrence) is downtrodden with no life of her own looking after and bickering with her husband and caring for her daughter but the devil brings a little meaning to her life. As to the brain damaged daughter he cures her by attempting to rape her which is the element of the story that left the film unscreened for so many years and of course is the most disturbing especially as he wheels her around in anticipation of the dark deed.Kitchen is charming, infuriating and shady as Martin the devil incarnate. However despite the 1970s production values, Potter's writing shines through here and it is a play that makes you think.

I remember being extremely disturbed by this play on first seeing it twenty years ago, and it has not lost any of its power to shock. A young man, who we know right from the start to be the devil, coolly chooses his victim on the high street, foisting himself on the nervous and racist Mr Bates by his supposed friendship with Bates' handicapped daughter, Pattie. As the devil (here called Martin) Michael Kitchen is menacing and also very funny, while Denholm Elliott plays the father very well. Michelle Newell and Patricia Lawrence complete the cast as the girl vegetated by a car accident and her put-upon mother, destined to care for her forever.Banned by the BBC for nine years, mainly because the basic message of the play is that as the devil rapes Pattie, so her restores her power of speech and the quality of her existence. But the play is much more profound than that, although some of its message is muddled and not fully developed. Potter himself claimed that 'Brimstone and Treacle' was a religious parable about good and evil - if so, it raises some interesting questions while being both distasteful and compelling to watch.

My wife and I saw _Brimstone and Treacle_ at the Potter retrospective held in Boston a couple of years ago; we were discussing its implications for days afterward. Like much of Potter's work, it shows how good television can be when put in the right hands. Provocative and at times disturbing, it uses the devices of a moral fable to question our common-sense idea of moral judgment. A mysterious young man (Michael Kitchen) insinuates himself into the household of an unhappy suburban couple whose life centers around caring for their paralyzed and mute grown daughter. He has a plan for these people, and in the implementing of it he crosses the line into the unethical and the criminal. Yet we're being asked to look beyond appearances, because Martin is not an ordinary human. There's something demonic about his perverse toying with people -- not to mention his affinity with thunderstorms. As the film reaches its climax, another order of truth is revealed, one that stands our comfortable certainties about right and wrong on their heads.

This Denis Potter TV play was banned for about 15 years in the UK and was only shown for the first time recently. In the interim it was made into a film with a different cast.Potter begins with the proposal that there is more good in some people who appear to be bad than there is in some people who pretend to be good.A young woman has been brain damaged in a car accident and is bed ridden. She cannot communicate or feed herself. Her mother looks after her 24 hours a day. On day a demon in human form visits her house and ingratiates himself into the family. When alone with the girl he rapes her and then.....see for yourself.The play is disturbing but to educated people it raises interesting moral issues. It could act as a good catalyst for a discussion session in an evangelistic church and would raise some strong feelings.