Ghost Rider

A teenager sells his soul to cure his father's cancer, the cure works, the father dies anyway, and years later the buyer comes to collect.

Johnny Blaze is seventeen in 1986 when Mephistopheles offers to cure his father’s cancer for his soul. The cancer goes. His father dies days later in a stunt accident, and Mephistopheles considers the contract fulfilled. That is a very cold opening for a studio film, and the movie plays it straight.

Years later the invoice arrives, and Blaze becomes the Ghost Rider, a bounty hunter working for the thing he sold himself to.

Nicolas Cage plays Blaze, and whatever else is true about the film, that casting is not a mistake. The character requires somebody willing to be both haunted and ridiculous in the same shot.