Coming to DVD Tuesday, March 10th
Cast:
Simon Callow as Haddo
Kal Weber as Mathers
Lucy Cudden as Lia
John Shrapnel as Crowley
Terence Bayler as Professor Brent
Directed by Julian Doyle
Review:
There are confusing horror films. And then there’s Crowley (in the UK known as Chemical Wedding). A film so convoluted and trying to cram so many ideas into one tiny DVD box that you are left with your eyes spinning like Will-E Coyote.
Crowley is at its core a film about Aleister Crowley, the so-called wickedest man in Britain who, in 1947, cursed two men using ⦠sexual magic. Yes, you read that right. Not black magic. Not voodoo magic. Not circus magic. Not even David Blaine magic. Yes, sexual magic. While Aleister Crowley in Britain may have been the wickedest man in Britain ⦠somehow I think over in the states he’d be considered just a high-grade pervert as nothing really seems to be all that evil or wicked in terms of what he did over the years. Although his reincarnation is a bit more deadly.
Meanwhile, in modern days ⦠a group of scientists are working on trying to fuse a supercomputer with a human brain. But, unfortunately for them, one of the assistants is a Crowley occult follower â as, by this time, he has his own following for whatever reason â and has reprogrammed the computer to infuse occult rites in the minds of the volunteers by using quantum equations. Haddo, a bumbling, stuttering professor (played awesomely by Four Weddings and a Funerals‘ Simon Callow) desperate to become a better teacher, volunteers to be the human brain but, of course, has no idea that he’s now getting Crowley-isms imprinted into his mind.
After one mind merging session, the bumbling professor loses his stuttering problem, shaves his head and waxes Crowley Shakespeare including “to pee or not to pee” as he whips it out and does just that all over his students. When he is brought in front of his peers for review as to why he did it ⦠instead of just getting fired, they ask him all sorts of random questions where he reveals he is Aleister Crowley, but everyone ⦠save one professor that was cursed by Crowley 50 years earlier thinks he’s just mad. Must be a British thing as this is an all British cast save one and normally anyone peeing on their students wouldn’t just be fired but be brought up on charges.
In any event, over the course of the next 30 minutes Professor Haddo goes about recruiting occult members through anally raping the assistant that imputed the occult rites into the computer, killing a number of hookers, murdering a pimp for his clothes, beating a homeless dude with a cane and pursing a hot redheaded British bird that’s a student of Haddo and has been following the experiments for the college’s newspaper.
Then the real sexual magic begins as a random orgy takes place with all sorts of people you didn’t want to see naked, the hot redheaded chick’s blonde hot roommate is forced to strip under hypnosis and then she’s murdered and Haddo beats off onto some Crowley scripture while getting whipped by his assistant complete with money shot. Yeah, not exactly what I was hoping for when I heard the whole sexual magic thing brought up.
This is all supposedly to bring back Crowley to the physical form and not just in the mind of Haddo. This takes place over a period of four days ⦠why four? Hell, why not. Oh, but then we go back in the past at the end so maybe it’s only two days. And then there’s the whole time/space paradox and parallel universes that come into play. Sigh, I’m confused and my eyes are bugging out.
Overall, Crowley is well made. The digital transfer is crisp and for a low-budget production it doesn’t feel like it. But with a plot so convoluted, so confusing and with so many completely random and meaningless points, it is hard to know if the film actually makes sense or if it is just a series of nonsensical images being thrown into a mixing bowel to see what happens. One thing is certain. There are no scares here. Nothing is even close to frightening, well except for the unwanted orgy and old guy money shot that are delivered. Some of the ideas are interesting but with so much going on and so much randomness it is hard to separate the decent from the bloody awful.
Extras:
The audio commentary is probably the best source of supplemental behind-the-scenes material as we get a step-by-step look at how the film was put together, some interesting stories from on-the-set and just what type of horror film the creators were actually going for â rather than the tortuous mess we actually got.
The behind-the-scenes making of featurette is as random as the movie itself with a slew of backstory into the occult and trying to explain just what’s happening but it doesn’t work. We are still as confused as before. There are some good interviews here, however, and some of the details into the special effects are worthwhile if you enjoy seeing the curtain being pulled back.
The deleted scenes are not worthwhile as they were deleted for a reason, although honestly, they could have been left in and nothing would have changed this movie for the better or worse.
