Best known for his editing role on Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ and special effects man on Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’, Julian Doyle returns with his B-Movie take on Aleister Crowley in this years ‘Chemical Wedding‘. Deciding not to take the biographical role, and instead envisioning Crowley in a modern setting, the film took a panning by critics, and Crowley fans alike. We sent in our man, Adrian Dobbie, to find out what Doyles motives and reactions were behind the film…

Resurrecting the Beast

I’ve only been in the company of ex-Monty Python collaborator Julian Doyle for half an hour or so but already the conversation has been surprisingly brisk. So far we’ve discussed the Osirian symbolism behind the story of Abelard and Eloise, the influence of early Christian Britain on the Roman Empire before Constantine and the idea that giants built many of the Neolithic stone circles in the British Isles.  Oh and we’ve touched on quantum theory too. Just a little.

I’m at Doyle’s North London home to interview him about the movie Chemical Wedding, which alongside Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, Doyle co-wrote, directed, edited and produced. To date, Chemical Wedding is by far the most ambitious and commercially successful feature film to have been made about the character of Aleister Crowley. And I do mean the character of Aleister Crowley rather than Aleister Crowley himself because Chemical Wedding, which premiered at the London Science Fiction Film Festival earlier this year, certainly isn’t a straight biopic of the Beast.

The film chooses to eschew the option of a straightforward period retelling of Crowley’s life and works, opting instead to play with a ‘what-if?’ scenario by bringing ‘the Beast 666′ back from the dead in the modern era. In the film, a ‘virtual’ reincarnation of Crowley (artfully realised by British Shakespearian actor Simon Callow) is released on an unsuspecting modern day Cambridge, thanks to an experiment involving a university professor, a virtual reality suit and a supercomputer that has been programmed with the numerical codes contained in the magickal rites of the Master Therion.

When the trial run of the VR suit goes horribly wrong, the brain of stuttering classics professor Oliver Haddo is bombarded by Crowley’s ritual symbolism and in a shocking overnight transformation, he ‘becomes’ the Beast 666. He shaves his head, dons a natty purple suit and fedora hat and proceeds to wreak total havoc around the Cambridge campus, urinating on students, defecating on desks, conducting orgies and generally behaving very badly in his three-day quest for permanent reincarnation. Suffice to say, those hoping for historically accurate tales of Golden Dawn leadership battles, life in the Abbey at Cefalu or lucid expositions of the Law of Thelema will be sorely disappointed.

Instead, Chemical Wedding revels in being a quintessentially British, low-budget romp. Think the bastard child of Blood on Satan’s Claw and Carry On Screaming. The film is possessed of an undeniable charm, bags of humour, a tongue planted firmly in cheek at all times and, as it plays with the ideas of non-linear time, multiple universes and the creation of magickal children, it never forgets to have great fun along the way.

The film polarised opinion among Crowley enthusiasts and the general cinema-going public alike and it’s very easy to see why. While those harbouring a vested interest in Crowley’s positive portrayal baulked at the film’s sensationalist portrait of the Beast ‘at large’ in the 21^st century, others found the lack of serious content a stumbling block too great to overcome. The great cinema going masses largely ignored it, much as they ignore anything to do with Aleister Crowley, so no great surprises there.

Reviews were decidedly mixed on its initial theatre release. The high-brow papers rubbished it, while the tabloids and lad-mags hailed it as a ‘guilty pleasure’. Despite the bad press Doyle is unbowed as he unwraps a brand new DVD of the film. He’s eager to give me a peek at two reinstated deleted scenes that, he says, tie up a few loose ends in the plot; “Reviewers seeing the DVD version have likened the story to a kind of dark Da Vinci Code,” says Doyle, “I wanted to get two new occult theories into the film; one, that the story of Abelard and Eloise actually details the workings of a sex magical ritual which has only been enacted 4 times in history, the other that Joseph of Aramathea may have been the real father of Jesus…”

Hardly top contenders for the dominant themes running through a film about Aleister Crowley one might think, but then it depends very much on what kind of interest you have in the man himself. There are two types of people who get excited about Crowley: first there are the ‘Thelemites’ who are generally so focused on Crowley as the Prophet of the Aeon of Horus, that they forget there are plenty of folk who simply like Crowley because, well, he was a really interesting guy. There’s no shortage of people out there who are turned on by Crowley the iconoclast; the mountaineer; the drug fiend; the ‘black magician’; the ‘man behaving badly’. To my mind there’s nothing wrong with this level of interest. It’s all grist to the mill.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that when the latter type of person makes a film about Aleister Crowley, the former can’t expect it to be tailored to them alone. This is where a lot of serious students of Crowley have had trouble attempting to understand this film - it’s just not aimed directly at them and they just can’t understand why the hell it isn’t.

Doyle is quite clear about his motives for making the movie; “To me it’s all about making a film that’s entertaining. I think the film is very watchable and that’s what I was after. It’s one thing to make an interesting film, but I like stuff with hidden meaning. The story of Chemical Wedding has meaning behind it and it’s got this very interesting character centre stage, someone we can reignite interest in. That’s a really nice thing to be able to do”.

Doyle isn’t too concerned about a duty to portray Crowley in a particularly positive light. Given the premise of the story the audience is never asked to believe that the character on screen is the ‘real’ thing and this allows for a considerable amount of artistic leeway; “We were attempting to make a film that was populist. I already had enough trouble with the financiers when I was trying to get anything of any interest into the film,” he laughs, “…y’know - they just wanted a horror film with black cats and people drinking blood, but I didn’t want to make it that simple. The film doesn’t have a genre. It’s impossible to classify.”

You can say that again. Although plenty of people I know have used certain four-letter words in attempts to categorise the film, Chemical Wedding does avoid the pitfalls of simplistic shlock on the one hand and preaching to a converted audience on the other. Instead it goes unashamedly for the bigger, popular vote. Whether it succeeds is another matter but either way you have to admire the sheer determination involved in managing to get a film about Aleister Crowley financed, made and distributed to mainstream cinemas. It’s nothing short of a miracle.

Doyle’s first contact with co-conspirator Bruce Dickinson came while shooting the video for Iron Maiden’s 1988 classic ‘Can I Play with Madness?’, which featured the late ex-Python Graham Chapman. Dickinson first approached Doyle with the idea of making a film about Crowley in the early 90s; “Bruce had wanted to do a film about Crowley for years. He came to me with a number of scripts and eventually we decided we couldn’t do a period piece, partly because of budget restrictions and partly because the story of Crowley doesn’t have the right kind of drama to make a successful film…” argues Doyle, “…then Bruce sent me a script featuring a virtual reality suit, and this was when VR was very new. I took that script, restructured it, gave it some shape and colour and all the time I was adding the occult stuff that I wanted to get in there. About 80% of the final story is mine.”

The film took the best part of 2 decades to reach full realisation, much of that time was spent in attempting to gain funding for what was and still is a risky project. In the time between the writing of the script and the making of the film, interest in the possibilities of VR has dissipated to such a degree that when one watches the film, one gets the distinct feeling that it was made 15 years too late. Chemical Wedding is undeniably flawed; a large proportion of the cast’s youthful inexperience is brought into sharp focus when contrasted with the commanding presence of the lead and the low budget means a few corners were cut in production. Doyle admits as much but defends the film’s homespun sensibilities; “I’m certainly not embarrassed by the end result. The film has that Hammer Horror look because we didn’t have the time or the budget for much sophisticated camera work, so it has that kind of feel and think that’s perfectly fine.”

Whatever criticisms we may lay at the door of Chemical Wedding, all are agreed that the film comes alive whenever the character of Oliver Haddo, the Cambridge don possessed by the spirit of Crowley, arrives on screen. Simon Callow who plays Haddo/Crowley was not the first choice to play the lead role, but he quite simply saves the film single-handedly with his boisterous portrayal of the Beast; “…I was very unsure of Simon at first, but as soon as we heard him read the script we knew - it was him.” says Doyle, “Simon hits the right note between the heaviness and high camp the role requires.” He’s right. Callow plays a convincing Crowley, albeit as a conscious pastiche. In one memorable scene the Crowley figure is hauled before a panel of university bigwigs to explain his errant behaviour; Callow gives an incredibly strong performance, with ‘Crowley’ quoting freely from the more lurid passages in the Bible as he successfully attempts to undermine his peers’ faith in the ‘good book’. It’s a great scene and genuinely funny.

The film attempts to draw parallels between science and magick, referencing the real Crowley’s own interest in the then burgeoning science of Quantum Physics. This is a very strong thread throughout the film and one that Doyle is keen to emphasise; “Along with the two new occult theories, I wanted one new piece of scientific information to come through and that was about the nature of time.” Says Doyle “I have this theory that time doesn’t actually exist, its only the degradation of matter, the slowing down of matter. If you speed up matter to the speed of light, time ceases to exist. How long ago was the big bang? For light, the big bang is still happening.”

It’s evident that Doyle is enthusiastic about his subject matter. What is also evident to the serious student of Crowley’s work is that maybe a little more research ought to have been done before committing such a parody of Crowley to film for general consumption. While the film is littered with Crowley in-jokes; the female lead is called Leah; Oliver Haddo is the name of W. Somerset Maugham’s magician from the book of the same name, himself based on Crowley; the Z93 supercomputer; all this suggests a cursory level of research and it’s all good fun spotting the references in the film. However, beyond that we get very little of the ‘true’ message of Crowley. The concept of Thelema is conspicuous by its absence throughout and Liber Al, the Holy Book which is central to any understanding of Crowley’s life never once gets a mention. Doyle defends his decision to leave Thelema out of the equation; “I couldn’t see how we could successfully work that into a commercial film. I was more interested in making Crowley a shocking character, updating the shock value.”

And that, really, is the bottom line with Chemical Wedding. It’s ultimately much more concerned with exploring the shocking, controversial aspect of Crowley and imagining what might happen if he were alive in a modern setting than it is with bringing the real message of Crowley to the popular world. Yet before leaping to criticise, it is worth remembering that if the script had attempted to do that, the film would never have been made as it would never have secured financial backing.

So, the film’s got a bit of science, a bit of magick, a bit of controversy and some laughs, but it’s not a film about the real Crowley. It’s fun if you forgive the rather patchy production and below-par acting of the majority of the cast, but if you are expecting a film that’s a good advert for Crowley or his doctrine of Thelema, this certainly isn’t it. In a way, I hope there never will be. Perhaps Crowley is best left where he is - in the shadows.

Adrian Dobbie