Crowley (Release Date: March 10)

Fans of the offbeat and the original when it comes to genre film should miss Crowley at their own risk. From all indications, director Julian Doyle, the DP on Terry Gilliam films such as Brazil and Time Bandits, has not set out to construct a self-consciously quirky horror/fantasy/science fiction tale (yes, all three genres are present and accounted for), but that’s the result nonetheless. I guess if this film were not iconoclastic, or even irritating to certain audiences, it would not be worthy of its subject matter, the renowned practitioner and champion of “magick.”

But this is no standard biopic about the self-proclaimed “Wickedest Man Alive,” who died in 1947. Rather, it’s a mystical, alt-history mix of occult physics and virtual reality that sees Crowley possessing the body of Classics professor Simon Callow in the year 2000. Callow, who this month happens to open in Waiting for Godot with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, delivers a memorable performance that is reason alone for at least checking out this film: it’s hard to believe that the real-life Crowley was half as charismatic—and outrageous—as Callow’s version.

Skilled in a kind of mesmerism, the casually bisexual Crowley comes across as a rogue who’s not just polymorphously perverse, but who treats sex largely as a means to various ends; these might include self-expression, fulfilling the dictates of the will, enacting rituals of tremendous occult power, or just manipulating his followers. In that sense, the moral attitude of the interesting script, co-written by Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, towards sexuality is somewhat at odds with itself. That is, while Crowley’s frankness in the lecture hall and even in his orgy-organizing activities is “liberating” when compared with the prissy, starched up Cambridge fossils who are his colleagues, his libertine ways are also presented as extremely dangerous.

For example, Crowley the film does not philosophically present the trippy, traumatic orgy centerpiece as morally wrong per se; but it can’t help, because of the plot mechanics of which the sequence is part, frame it ideologically as a gateway to less inhibited fare such as homicide, suicide and general insanity. In this sense, Crowley the character comes across as an evil version of Wilhelm Reich—he’s all about freeing pent up sexual energies all right, but not for the goal of liberating his followers.

Instead, the ultimate purpose is his own self-aggrandizement, a case of the sorcerer as mad scientist, and instead of secret formulae and novel forms of energy, he harnesses the explosive power of the taboo itself in his quest for power and recognition.

As an alternative audience surrogates in terms of sexual mores, we’re left with a “normal” heterosexual couple as a model of randy rectitude; yes, they bed down without much of a courtship, but they are more your standard product of the Sexual Revolution—we like each other, so why not sleep together? More outlandish notions, such as having sex in public, are beyond the pale for them. In this way the couple is shown to represent a middle ground between the uptight, priggish members of Anglican society and Crowley’s naughty, “over-the-top” sex-at-the-drop-of-hat antics.

This positioning of the viewer in turn reflects a situation that—well, “problematic” would be too strong a term here. Let’s just say a situation that may, perhaps, explain why the film has not received the positive reviews and overall attention it deserves. In terms of tone and perspective, for too much of the film Crowley is not clearly the antagonist; this is partly because he is also exalted for presenting true knowledge to the community and being persecuted for it much like Eden’s serpent or Prometheus. He struggles against the hypocrites, frees poor Prof. Haddo from his stuttering emasculation, and basically adds a lightning bolt of energy to the movie every time he appears on screen. Sure, he’s clearly an anti-hero, but the key thing part of that phrase is the word hero.

But then a strange thing happens. He becomes the movie’s bad guy, complete with a grand scheme, a henchman, and the nerve to kill anyone even remotely in his way. Maybe, of course, that’s the movie’s commentary on where permissiveness and non-Christian values ultimately lead one, but that seems too simplistic and doesn’t fit with the overall tone. Instead, I think we’re meant to see the same heterosexual couple—a visiting Yank researcher and a red-haired student journalist—as the film’s heroes, and they are not of equal stature to Callow, even if one were to combine them. During the resolution, there’s one final twist given about these good guys, but it’s sadly a case of too little, too late. The movie, despite its B-movie energy and overflowing ideas, needs a pinch of Crowley’s genuine subversiveness. For example, to hint at Crowley’s lasting impact on those he met, even his healing of some of them—either sexually or intellectually—as a byproduct of his selfishness would have been a bit more thought-provoking.