This is a modern updating of the classic, 'Picture of Dorian Grey.' As if the Oscar Wilde story was rewritten by sex & shopping book hack, Jackie Collins. There's nothing new here except for the setting, in a photo model environment instead of Victorian London.

It starts off interesting enough but McDowell as a poor man's Devil, begins to chew the scenery before too long. And sadly, Ethan Erickson doesn't have the range of acting to successfully portray the slowly morally declining Dorian.

For a study in debauchery, there's precious little shown, you would get the idea the height of decadence was dancing in a few discos on the continent. Surprising since the video I watched had an 18 certificate.

The original film version was made under far more stringent censorship rules but still was able to imply the depths that Dorian sunk to in his pursuit of hedonistic pleasures.

This is just fodder for the MTV generation, full of flash style and hip music but lacking in any real substance at all.

Watch the original or for a study in moral corruption, check out the excellent 'Alias Nick Beal' starring Ray Milland as well.

The title of the movie, as shown by Showtime, the other night, was "A Pact with the Devil". It didn't ring a bell as anything seen locally in recent years. The idea of seeing a film with Malcolm McDowell in it, and nothing else worth watching in the other channels, played a trick on us. We witnessed in horror, a remake of the Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" that has nothing to do with the classic, and much better film, of 1945.

Under the direction of Allan A. Goldstein, we are taken, where else, to the world of the super models, where beauty is only skin deep. Henry, who stands as the Devil, tempts Louis into giving his soul in exchange of keeping his good looks forever, duh! Incredibly, we watch as the picture of Louis, now renamed Dorian, ages in ways that are not realistic, at all. I mean, a few wrinkles, we could understand, but making the image in the photograph, taken by Henry, a monster, is pushing reality a bit too far.

Malcom McDowell, who is an otherwise excellent actor, lends himself to this misguided attempt to retell something that was better done before and should have been left alone by the people behind this travesty.

Watch it at your own risk.

Everything about this sickly adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray stinks to heaven: stinks its saccharin cloying disco soundtrack, stinks Cheshire Cat's grin of a protagonist throughout the film, stinks its stuffy atmosphere of cheap glamour. After the publication of bestseller about the model Dorian - I wonder what kind of bestseller may be written about a man advertising underwear - he becomes famous and forever young thanks to devilish charms put into his photograph and forever intoxicated on drugs and alcohol he's galloping through beautiful people's parties thanks to his putrid popularity straight to his unavoidable bitter end. If there weren't so many funny Malcolm McDowell's grimaces, for whom playing a demonic being is business as usual, I would have given this piece of crud just one star.