Crowley
Anchor Bay
R1 DVD
Crowley,
released as Chemical Wedding in
England, is an occult romp which uses the life of Aliester Crowley as its focal
point. Directed (and co-written) by Julien Doyle from a script from Bruce Dickinson,
it revels in “in-jokes” about Crowley’s wild life and his unique form of magick
known as Thelema. It gets off to a good start with an old classics professor
becoming possessed via a virtual reality computer system and becoming The Great
Beast himself. He is scheduled to give a classics lecture which instead he uses
to quote filthy poetry and then literally piss on the audience after which he
drops a large shit on a fellow lecturers desk !
While
this is great fun the problem is that it is hard to sustain throughout the
film. While Simon Callow is actually rather impressive as the drug addict,
bi-sexual magician Crowley, the script is uneven and does not sustain the level
of wit one would have expected of the role. Crowley was renowned for his wit, dark
humour and style, yet after a while Callow’s Crowley comes across as a bit of a
bore. To really do justice to Crowley you need to have a script that embodies
his immense sense of humour and education as well as his wild sexual
predilections and occult speculations. Instead this is a “dumbed down” Crowley,
I would even go as far to say it is Crowley seen through the lens of a Heavy
Metal Rock star !
While
supposedly using elements from Crowley’s life and occultism, the film also
continues the myths about Crowley. While Crowley certainly had an extravagant
life, he never murdered anyone and to have him crucifying prostitutes when he
returns from the dead is rather a stretch. If you choose to base a film around
someone you either do it right or make it a general horror film with no obvious
connection; if a film is named Crowley we should be able to expect at least
some credibility.
While
the film also throws a lot of occult ideas around as well as pseudo-scientific
speculation, it really ends just being a sensationalistic horror flick. Now
that is fine by me, I love B grade however. However, sadly it doesn’t really do
that very well either.
On
the level of a B grade horror film it is very, very average, the plot veers
from strange to at times undecipherable, the acting is very average (save for
Callow) and the score is uneven ranging from Dickinson’s own heavy metal to
1940’s songs. The editing is jarring and at times you wonder whether the film
actually jumped or the DVD is dirty, but no it is the bad editing. There is
little gore, a few bits of nudity and lots of occult mumbo jumbo but no
suspense or tension. Even Hammer horror films were better than this in that
they knew how to create a mood; this is a film without any mood or atmosphere
at all.
While
Crowley may prove endearing to heavy metal fans, it will not satisfy either
students of Crowley or horror fans so really fails on all counts. It was fun to
watch once, but I certainly wouldn’t go out and look for it if I was you.
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