Fantastic new addition to the SittingNow writing-crew, Adrian Dobbie, gets down and dirty with the recent Julian Doyle (Monty Python)/Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) written, Chemical Wedding. Is this release finally what acolytes of Aleister Crowley have been waiting for? or another Magickly-huge disapointment?…

Carry-On Crowley?

Among occultists and Thelemites specifically there has long been a certain desire to see their hero Crowley immortalised on film. The exploits of the Master Therion would seem to offer pre-packaged prime subject matter for an industry that thrives on titillation and sensationalism, but while general interest in Crowley does seem to be on the rise, the definitive Crowley film remains to be made. In the last few years we’ve seen a number of documentaries of varying quality and lately the internet has been awash with teasers and half-baked trailers promising more dramatized takes on the life and times of the Beast 666. Yet none of these have seemed more likely to come to fruition than Bruce Dickinson’s project ‘Chemical Wedding’. For those who may not know who Dickinson is, he is the yodelling, spandex-sporting front man of legendary UK metal band Iron Maiden. I have to admit that when I first heard about the Brit-rock legend touting his screenplay around Hollywood, my heart sank. In my opinion, Dickinson was possibly the worst person to be planning a movie about Crowley; I just couldn’t see how a man so steeped in juvenile horror-movie imagery from his years on the heavy metal circuit could possibly come up with anything other than a hatchet job if let loose on the Crowley story. So when the imminent release of the movie was announced I’ll admit I feared the worst but my curiosity was piqued nonetheless. Upon seeing the trailer online I actually thought it could be a good film after all, if slightly sensationalist. When I heard that the premier was happening last month just a few miles from where I live, I just had to get a ticket. So off I duly went to London’s West End to see what the fuss was all about.

The story opens in 1947 with two young students visiting an ageing Crowley at his lodgings in Hastings, England. We learn that one is a regular caller, while the other is nervous about meeting the Beast for the first time. As they enter Crowley’s dark bedsitting room, they find the prophet of the new aeon ailing but still lewdly vigorous. Crowley however is preoccupied by the exploits of his young acolytes in Pasadena. He has learned that Jack Parsons & L Ron Hubbard have been busying themselves in attempts to produce a Moonchild and Crowley is not best pleased. With this initial portrayal of the Beast in his latter years we get the first hint that the film will be taking more than a few artistic liberties. The man we see before us, although masterfully realised, is the stout, bald Crowley of two decades previous and certainly not the wizened pipe smoker that we know he was during his final years. Nevertheless - we are only treated to a few minutes of Crowley in this incarnation before he is mortally struck down. He dramatically celebrates his greater feast during his young friends’ visit, presumably as a direct result of the dark forces unleashed by his two wards on the other side of the Atlantic.

We now fast forward to turn-of-the-millennium Cambridge where a team of visiting scientists from Cal Tech are preparing to unveil a state-of-the-art virtual reality suit before the assembled academics of the University. The suit is controlled by a supercomputer called - wait for it - the Z93, whose chief programmer, a certain Victor Newman, just happens to be a student of the works of Aleister Crowley. We learn that Newman has distilled the rituals of Crowley’s magick into a numerical code that he has fed directly into the program that runs the VR suit. Eager to test his invention before its official maiden voyage, he manages to lure the bumbling, stuttering, classics tutor, Professor Haddo (Simon Callow), into giving the suit a sneaky whirl. The hapless professor, fresh from an on-campus masonic meeting, agrees to take part and it’s here that the story properly begins.

Haddo dons the suit and is bombarded with the accumulated power of Crowley’s rituals in virtual form. When we next see him, the shy, floppy haired don has disappeared and instead, he has morphed into a strangely familiar, bald, menacing character, wilfully striding down the University’s corridors on his way to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare. In the course of ensuing events it becomes obvious to all, not least the Cambridge don who years ago visited the Beast on the day he died, that Haddo’s body has been taken over by a ‘virtual Crowley’, who has plans to stick around for good. In order to do so, the resurrected occultist must perform a magickal operation called the ‘Chemical Wedding’ whereby, with the help of a Scarlet Woman, he will summon the demon Choronzon and so take permanent possession of his new host.

From here on in the film becomes an example of the kind of high-camp, low-budget British thriller-cum-horror that we haven’t seen much of since the demise of the Hammer marque nearly 30 years ago. As his quest to find the perfect scarlet woman unfolds, the reincarnated Crowley sets out on a rampage round Cambridge leaving a trail of flagellation, sex magick, murder and scatology in his wake. The girl in his sights turns out to be Leah, a plucky young student reporter and it isn’t long before she and a visiting American professor called Mathers team up and set about thwarting Crowley’s plans for permanent reincarnation.

It’s wacky stuff, and in places it’s laugh-out-loud funny. In fact it’s as much Carry-On as it is Hammer Horror. Callow camps it up royally in cartoon Crowley mode and in so doing puts his fellow cast members in the shade. There are a few stand-out scenes: an operation to enlist the help of a hapless aide is hilarious, Crowley’s method of acquiring a rather natty purple suit and fedora hat brought howls from the audience and in an act of sex magick designed to entrap his muse we see Crowley ‘charging’ a talisman and then sending it via fax to Leah.  She discovers a rather sticky mess coming through on the copy at her end…

It’s all good fun when it works, but all too often the clumsy editing, redundant plot twists, below-par acting and the shot-on-digital-media feel let the picture down. Some will undoubtedly enjoy playing ‘spot the Crowley reference’ as the film blunders on. In-jokes abound; half the characters in the film bear names not too dissimilar to associates of the Beast and there’s enough trivia to satisfy the nerd in any of us. However, those looking for a positive or serious take on Crowley’s doctrine of Thelema will be disappointed - it’s just never mentioned. Not once. On the other hand, those fearing misrepresentation can largely breathe a sigh of relief, the Crowley character’s murderous tendencies notwithstanding. The film does attempt to pose some real questions about the nature of the relationship between magick and science (VR as ersatz astral plane, the potential for downloading personalities as digital information) but it ends up trying to cover so much ground that it fails to do any more than scratch the surface of a fascinating subject, while various plot devices such as Crowley’s masonic connections are alluded to but never elaborated. As such it’s as frustrating as it is fun. The definitive film about Crowley this certainly isn’t, but if you have a penchant for oddball British camp-horror, who knows? This film may just be for you.

2/5

Adrian Dobbie

www.chemicalweddingmovie.co.uk