While the fact is strenuously ignored by his subsequent
devotees, L. Ron Hubbard was once an ardent follower of the notorious British
occultist Aleister Crowley. That was when Hubbard and Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) founder Jack Parsons were traveling in the same Pagan circles, so to
speak. The relationship between the three men is indeed referenced in Iron
Maiden lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson’s screenwriting debut, but it is the
connection to Parsons that will have greater significance in Julian Doyle’s
way-better-than-reported Chemical Wedding
(a.k.a. Crowley,
trailer here), which screens as part of a retrospective
tribute (or whatever) to Crowley at the 2015 Macabro, the International Horror Film Festival in Mexico City.
In 1947, Crowley’s earnest young understudy Symonds
was present at his death, but it will not be the last time he sees the dark
magus. Flashing forward to 2000, Symonds has forsworn the occult as a
respected Cambridge professor. As the Florida recount rages, Dr. Joshua Mathers
arrives from Cal Tech to test his Virtual Reality simulator using the
university’s powerful super-computer. Unbeknownst to Mathers, his Cambridge
colleague Victor Neuman is also a budding occultist, who performs an
off-the-books experiment, programming Crowley’s information into the computer
while twittish classics professor Oliver Haddo is wearing the VR suit.
As you might expect, Haddo is a different man
when he steps out of the Z93. His stutter is gone, replaced by an encyclopedic
knowledge of the Bible and a voracious sexual appetite. He is indeed Crowley and
he has big plans. Symonds understands how dangerous it will be if he completes
the resurrection process, so he advises Mathers and Cambridge student
journalist Lia Robinson as best he can. Unfortunately, her red hair will attract
Crowley’s attention, in a very bad way.
Frankly, the prospect of revered British character
actor and Orson Welles biographer Simon Callow going all in as Crowley is reason
enough to see Chemical, but Doyle
& Dickinson also wrote a considerably inventive narrative around him. Admittedly,
the logic and believability of their pseudo-science is hit-or-miss. However, ambition
of its scope is rather impressive. Chemical
stakes out the territory where metaphysics and theoretical physics
intersect—and it is quite a bloody crossroads.
Perhaps realizing he will not have many more
opportunities to exercise his Hammer Horror muscles, Callow makes the most of Chemical, luxuriating in Haddo’s
agonizing stutter and feasting on scenery as the reincarnated Crowley.
Similarly, John Shrapnel is aptly malevolent and larger than life as the 1947
Crowley. Although the film’s aesthetics are stacked against their
conventionally unassuming characters, Kal Weber and Lucy Cudden still manage to
show some presence and energy as Mathers and Robinson, respectively. However,
it is Paul McDowell who really anchors the film and sells its third act
revelations as the older and wiser Symonds.
For a demonic horror film co-scripted by a
heavy metal rock star, Chemical Wedding is
surprisingly tweedy and thoroughly British. It is indeed a throwback to old
school Hammer-Amicus films, but one informed by post-Uncertainty quantum
mechanics. Pretty cool really (and also available on DVD), Chemical Wedding screens this Thursday (8/27), along with the
wonderfully eccentric Karloff-Lugosi vehicle The Black Cat, as part of the Crowley-inspired programming at this
year’s Macabro.
