EDITOR’S NOTE: Doctor Faustus was on the CBS Late Movie on August 14 and December 28, 1972 and August 30, 1973.

The only film directed by Richard Burton or Nevill Coghill, the actor’s Oxford University mentor, this adaption of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe stars Burton as Doctor Faustus, Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy and members of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.

It’s a stage play filmed in very stage play style, but yet you have to wonder what viewers who stumbled upon this in the middle of the night on the CBS Late Movie had to have felt like when they watched this. Shot on the sets at Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios in Rome, this movie was shot by Gábor Pogány, who would go on to be the cinematographer of Colt 38 Special Squad, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii and Last Stop on the Night Train.

If celebrities as big as Burton and Taylor made a movie filled with this much occult energy in 2023, I have no idea how insane people would go. The cameras get gelled all over the corners, things get neon, skeletons appear and the idea that this is the sixth of thirteen movies that Liz and Dick would make together takes on numerological significance.

It’s an indulgent project just for Burton and if only he’d let go and gone wild in this instead of seemingly sleepwalking through the movie, but you know, you can’t have everything. Not when this looks so fantastic. It’s like Burton watched a few Bava movies late at night and was like, “I want that.” Imagine if he’d gone all the way and hired John Old and given him the money no one ever gave him before and they made something truly inspired — not that this isn’t — but something that shook the very foundations of our reality.

But hey — Liz painted silver and barely speaking and she was the biggest movie star there was at the time.

You can watch this on Tubi.