The Pooshipaw's job is to make the child "hollow with fear" until one day he just
fades away into death during sleep.
Little Nicky would rather sit in his room listening to his beloved heavy metal than vie with his brothers (Rhys Ifans and Tiny Lister) for control of Dad's throne, but when their scheming takes them up to Earth and stops new souls getting through the gates to Hell, draining Satan's life force, it's up to naive Nicky to trick them back home before Old Nick
fades away completely.
Then he
fades away, reappearing as a Bride; and yet again, as Buster Keaton.
Each is a lilt-and-miss affair, and you silently pray that the hits outnumber the misses so you have a reason to hang on to it after the good feeling of donating to whatever cruise
fades away. The cause this time is the Bisexual Foundation, a nonprofit San Diego-based group that's up against the still-pervasive idea (even among lesbians and gays) that bisexuals are stuck in a sexual holding pattern, a 1970s-era Ziggy Stardust-fueled experimental phase they never outgrew.
And when Liberto Rabal emerges naked and gleaming from the smoke of a flaming frying pan like some Eros of Madrid, the complex labyrinth of passions
fades away for one charged moment, leaving us to behold the simple, unalloyed desires of the filmmaker.
