''The Ninth Gate'' is a 1999 movie by RomanPolanski, freely adapted from ''The Club Dumas'' by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, starring JohnnyDepp as Dean Corso, an expert on rare books. A client, Boris Balkan, asks Corso to authenticate his copy of ''The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows''. The book has three copies surviving, due to the rest being burned at the stake in 1667 with its author - because the book is supposedly an adaptation of another book co-written by Lucifer himself.

As Corso attempts to figure out which of the three copies is the genuine one, he discovers that the ''Nine Gates'' has a purpose - when used correctly, the book will raise the Devil himself and grant the summoner great supernatural power. Corso is not the only person who has figured this out, and is chased by others who want the power and protected by a mysterious girl. The deeper Corso delves into the mystery of the book, the deeper the pile of bodies left behind becomes.

That, of course, is the movie. In the book, Corso has two missions. One is to try and authenticate his client, Vara Borja's, copy of "The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows." The other involves "The Anjou Wine", a chapter of the original manuscript of ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'' by Creator/AlexandreDumas, père. This manuscript was once owned by the late Enrique Talliefer, a millionaire who specialized in cookbooks, who killed himself. While traveling around Europe on his mission(s), he finds himself being stalked by a man and woman who look uncannily like Milady de Winter and Comte de Rochefort.

What do these two strangers want with him and what is the connection between Literature/TheThreeMusketeers and the Devil?
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!! This book includes examples of:

* [[AffablyEvil Affably Morally Ambiguous]]: "Irene Adler" [[spoiler: (or whatever her real, demonic name is)]].
* AngelUnaware: While the movie only implied it, [[spoiler: The Girl is specifically stated to be a fallen angel in the book.]]
* TheBaroness: Baroness Ungern, while actually holding the title, is not one.
* BlackAndGreyMorality.
* BlondesAreEvil: Liana Talliefer
* ButchLesbian: Makarova, who in the words of the author "looked like a fitter from a ball-bearing factory in Leningrad."
* TheDevilIsALoser: The Girl seems to think so. [[spoiler: And she would know.]]
* FemmeFatale: Liana and the Girl
* GenreSavvy: Discussed, played with and ultimately subverted. [[spoiler: The GenreSavvy Corso recognizes the connection between the two plotlines, only to find out that there was no such connection, and that by reading too much into the situation he was distracted from what was actually going on.]]
* {{Ghostapo}}: Baroness Ungern was the assistant of Hitler's personal astrologer when she was younger. Corso produces a photo of her with Himmler to blackmail her at one point.
* GreenEyes: The Girl's are dwelt on in detail.
* HammeredIntoTheGround: Corso gets pushed into the floor by Frank Langella, who delivers the one-liner, "It seems you found your proper niche at last... I like that."
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Discussed, in regard to Dumas' treatment of Cardinal Richelieu in his books. Occurs in-story with Giordano Bruno, who while a bit of a kook, was not a devil worshipper by any means.
* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: Varo Borja]]
* HowWeGotHere:
* MeaningfulName: Boris Balkin
* MetaFiction
* NaziNobleman: Sort of. While apparently friendly with Nazis, Baroness Ungern was not a noblewoman back then.
* NouveauRiche: Enrique and Liana Talliefer who "have more money than taste," according to Corso.
* PlagiarismInFiction: [[spoiler: Enrique Talliefer plagiarized an obscure novel, ''Angeline de Gravaillac'', for his book, ''The Dead Man's Hand, or Anne of Austria's Page.'' Balkan's discovery of this fact drove him to suicide.]]
* RootingForTheEmpire: In-universe, Liana is a big fan of Milady de Winter and hates the Musketeers.
* ShoutOut: Listing all of them would take up a page on its own.
** Most obviously, there's a blatant shout-out to SherlockHolmes when the Girl identifies herself once as Irene Adler.
** And the entire interaction between Corso and The Girl is a reference to Jacques Cazotte's ''The Devil in Love.''
* SmugSnake: Varo Borja, so much.
* SummoningArtifact
* TomeOfEldritchLore: ''The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows'', as well as the ''Delomelanicon.''
* UnwittingPawn: [[spoiler: Varo Borja suspected from the beginning that the authentic engravings were spread across three books and sent out Corso to confirm this theory and to serve as a fall guy for the murders of Fargas and Ungern.]]

!!This movie includes examples of:

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Corso, in the book described as rather unattractive, is played by Johnny Depp.
* AdaptationDistillation: The movie removes several subplots from the novel, combines numerous characters and changes the ending.
* AncientConspiracy: The Order of the Silver Serpent probably like to think of themselves as this.
* BlondGuysAreEvil: Liana Telfer's main henchman in the movie is a bleach-blonde black man.
* CompositeCharacter: [[spoiler: The film's Balkan is a composite of the book Balkan and another character, Varo Borja. Also, the film's Andrew Telfer is a composite of Enrique Talliefer and Gualterio Terral.]]
* CulturalTranslation
* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler: Bernie the bookshop owner is killed early on. His book counterpart, Flavio la Ponte, is a major supporting character and stays very much alive. Also Liana Telfer and Boris Balkan, although [[CompositeCharacter it's not really the same character as in the book.]]]]
* FadeToWhite: The ending.
* HiddenInPlainSight: The last of the engravings in "The Ninth Gate" is hidden in what, in hindsight, is an extremely obvious spot. "If this is a forgery or a copy with missing pages restored, it's the work of a master," says the master bookbinder.
* HotAsHell: [[spoiler: The Girl, who makes the Devil look GOOD.]]
* ImpoverishedPatrician: Both Victor Fargas, the Portuguese owner of the second copy, and [[spoiler: Liana Telfer, who had to marry Andrew Telfer in order to save her ruined French aristocrat family.]]
* LouisCypher: Signed [[FunWithAcronyms LCF]].
* MindScrew: The ending.
* NoNameGiven: The Girl.
* NumberOfTheBeast: Balkan has the largest collection in the world of books about the Devil. Guess what the password to his library is?
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Balkan gives one [[spoiler: to Liana and her followers.]]
* SidekickExMachina: The Girl, who is always there just in time to extricate or save Corso.
* StartsWithASuicide: The film begins with Andrew Telfer hanging himself in his library.
* TarotMotifs: The film includes many examples of Tarot imagery.
** The Hanged Man - Corso's friend is killed in this manner.
** The Tower - [[spoiler: Balkan's]] death occurs by fire, in a tower, after a lot of pride.
** The Magician - Boris Balkan.
** The High Priestess - Baroness Kessler or Liana Telfer.
** The Empress - Liana Telfer.
** Death - Fargas.
** The Hermit - Fargas
** The Fool - Corso.
* UnusualEuphemism: At one point, Liana tells Corso "don't fuck with me," to which he responds, "I thought I just did." The TV Edit changes "fuck" to "mess" making Corso's response unintentionally bizarre.
** Although "mess around with" is a more widely used euphemism for the sex act.
* WeWillNotUsePhotoshopInTheFuture: the Ceniza brothers tell Dean Corso that forging an antique book is very difficult and has a low profit margin.
** Forging old books actually is really difficult even with modern technology and techniques and unless the title forged is extremely rare the profits are not even nearly worth the work. And if one forges a high enough profile book that it would net enough money on the market to cover the cost of forgery, a Gutenberg Bible for example, the risk of getting caught would be extremely high.
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