John Huston Thursdays: ‘Beat the Devil’

Beat the Devil, despite it’s 1953 release, may be the most relevant Huston film for our current Age of Self-Parody Performances. You know: once-serious actors who now seem to coast by on playing offsetting exaggerations of former roles–Christopher Walken, Gary Busey, and, of course, William Shatner, spring to mind.

I’m sure there’s plenty more, but these three are the front-runners (Nick Cage doesn’t quite make the cut because I don’t think he’s ever doing a parody of himself–it’s just him). Walken led the way somewhat accidentally, revealing a comic side on Saturday Night Live and showing the world that this creepy, Oscar-winning skeleton man can dance in Spike Jonze’s music video of Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” (ahh 2001…).

Reading The Three Little Pigs; The Country Bears, “Poker Face.” Busey kind-of, sort-of predates even that with his cameo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (“Gimme a kiss”), but with his recent Vitamin Water ads it’s become pretty full blown. Aaaaaaand then there’s Shatner.

But whatever the reason for our love of character actors mocking their early, legitimate stuff, it’s nothing new, because Beat the Devil is essentially the same thing, and one of the oddest entries into Huston’s filmography (a phrase I feel I’ve been typing a lot).