Exploito All’Italiana: Black Magic Rites (Renato Polselli, 1973)

 So, having managed to maintain this blog for the better part of fifteen years, it feels remiss of me not have dedicated at least a few paragraphs to discussing the indescribable cinematic singularity which is Renato Polselli’s ‘Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge nel Trecento’ [‘Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies of the Fourteenth Century’], aka ‘The Reincarnation of Isobel’, allegedly aka ‘The Ghastly Orgies of Count Dracula’… but known to most of us (for the sake of brevity, if nothing else) simply as ‘Black Magic Rites’.

So, what with it being October, and having just spent some time luxuriating in the glow of Indicator’s never-thought-I’d-see-the-day 4k restoration… now would seem to be the time to take a deep breath and get on with it.

It must be admitted from the outset that this is a very difficult movie to try to review in any conventional sense, as those who have seen it will surely appreciate.

It is not only the film’s almost total lack of narrative which causes difficulties for the potential critic, but the seeming lack of any unifying pattern or purpose whatsoever. Faced with the onslaught of audio-visual anarchy found herein, the idea of understanding what Polselli’s intentions were in creating this thing, or of positing any framework against which his success may be assessed, seems nigh on impossible.

‘Black Magic Rites’ is, essentially, about as close as a piece of ostensibly commercial cinema has ever come to a state of utter, formless chaos, a celluloid equivalent of the mad piping of the servitors of Lovecraft’s blind idiot god crouching vacantly at the centre of the uncaring universe.

If you go in with enough determination, and pay close enough attention, you can identify discrete scenes and sections within the film, albeit generally interrupting and overlapping with each other to no clearly defined purpose. (This time around for instance, I was particularly taken by the whole funeral / premature burial sequence).

But, basically, this is a 100-minute hypnotic drone of a movie - no form, no progression. Most of the characters here are doing exactly the same thing at the end that they were doing at the start. The intermittent fragments of narrative which do creep in from time to time feel a bit like a heavy psychedelic rock band half-heartedly trying to add lyrics and song structure to their music, only for it to be totally drowned out by the roar of their amplifiers.

And what exactly, the uninitiated may ask, might that metaphorical roar consist of?

Well, you know - fire, screaming, gurning faces, crimson gore, kaleidoscopic psychedelic hoo-hah, awkwardly framed tableaux of female and male bodies squeezed into all kinds of outré costumes (both 14th and 20th century vintage), frantic time-and-space shredding jump cuts and cross-edits, lurid red and green disco lighting, erotic torture, breath-taking scenery and groovy castles, anonymous, drooling creeps lurking in shadows, more fire, more screaming faces, hypnotism, witch burnings, widescreen vistas of ritual depravity, pitchfork wielding mobs, chintzy birthday parties, frantic, awkward softcore sex, outbursts of alarming, screechy comic relief, and Count Dracula (apparently). 

The usual, basically - just a whole lot more of it. An all-you-can-eat buffet of all purpose, fumetti-style gothic horror/sleaze.

Within the pantheon of Italian genre directors who have become admired and/or infamous amongst the fans who have painstakingly unearthed their work over the decades, Polselli stands out as the kind of figure who, if he didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him.

I mean, he had to be out there somewhere on the margins, didn’t he? The guy whose films were more extreme, more hysterical, more chaotic and senseless than anyone else’s, and who was stricken by censorship, public indifference and critical bafflement to such an extent that many of his films were barely even released at all, languishing in unfathomable obscurity for decades, and in some cases remaining almost impossible to see to this day.

And yet, despite these catastrophic set-backs, he kept dusting himself off and coming back to make more of the damned things, driven on by who knows what unfathomable personal demons. Certainly, the few public comments he made during his lifetime shed little light on why he persisted in ploughing his long-suffering financiers’ money into such grotesque, bizarre and (crucially) unprofitable productions. Indeed, reading the sparse interviews conducted with Polselli whilst he was still with us, his attempts to explain himself seem alternately gnomic, cynical and entirely irrelevant to the work at hand.

Suffice to say that, if you were putting together some ‘Berberian Sound Studio’-styled fiction based around the world of Italian cult cinema, you could scarcely hope to create such a fascinating, baffling and hilarious character - and yet, here he is, large as life, with ‘Black Magic Rites’ standing as his defining artistic statement.

Enthusiasts such as myself often tend to praise Euro-horror films for achieving passages of surrealistic delirium. In ‘Black Magic Rites’ though, Polselli begins in a state of surrealistic delirium and keeps his foot down hard on the accelerator right through to the closing ‘FINE’.

As a result, it stands as an example of a piece of pulpy, cynical exploitation assembled with such fevered intensity that it goes full circle on the artistic spectrum, swallowing its own tail and emerging as an experimental art piece; an overwhelming sensory experience that would probably sit better on a double bill next to ‘Flaming Creatures’ or ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ than with a Paul Naschy or Sergio Martino movie.

To return to my earlier music metaphor, watching ‘Black Magic Rites’ for the first time as a fan of Euro-horror feels a bit like growing up listening to canonical ‘60s rock, loving the occasional moments of dissonance and feedback... then suddenly discovering Les Rallizes Denudes or Mainliner. Whoa. Too much, man.

Before we get too carried away though, it’s worth splashing our faces with cold water and remembering that, of the individual elements which make up the totality of ‘Black Magic Rites’, none are entirely unique within the Italio-cult context.

The voluminous output of that nation’s cinema during the early ‘70s did, after all, include low budget horror films which, whether by accident or design, were almost entirely incoherent (Angelo Pannacciò’s ‘Sex of the Witch’), or formally and tonally inexplicable (Francesco Mazzei’s The Weapon, The Hour, The Motive). 

There were films which simply pushed WAY TOO FAR to ever see widespread, uncut distribution at the time of their production (Fernando Di Leo’s ‘Slaughter Hotel’ aka ‘Cold Blooded Beast’), and other entries in the “sexy gothic” sub-genre which knowingly plunged over the precipice into full-blown parody and deliberately disjointed, rambling nonsense (Luigi Batzella’s ‘Nude For Satan’) - all trends redolent of a pre-porno film culture which routinely allowed questionably committed filmmakers to essentially go out and shoot whatever the hell they felt like, so long the requisite nudity and softcore groping was delivered on time.

‘Black Magic Rites’ though is the only film I’m aware of which managed to simultaneously cash in on ALL of these crazy possibilities, creating a maximalist overload of ‘70s witch-smut insanity which has never been equalled.

Trying to account for all this on a rational basis, I’m tempted to consider the suggestion floated by Stephen Thrower in his supplement to the Indicator release, that, perhaps, Polselli had intended to make a somewhat more structured, narrative film but (as per the Pannacciò film cited above) simply lost control of the production, discovering after the money had run out and the actors fled the set that he was missing whatever footage he needed to pull the whole thing together.

Hitting the editing room therefore, perhaps with only a few days to spare before delivering a rough cut, he simply panicked, resorting to the only tool available to a director of crazy horror movies in such circumstances - Art! Or, more specifically - jump cuts, and dreams-within-flashbacks-within-dreams, special / temporal disorientation, overlapping images and audio tracks and hypnotic repetition of footage - all cut to the beat of Franco Reverberi’s freaky, ritualistic score. Yeah!

In other circumstances, such an endeavour could have emerged as simply unwatchable (and many would no doubt claim ‘Black Magic Rites’ is just that), but, even for the less fanatical viewer, the film’s aesthetic pleasures and unexpected outbursts of beauty certainly help to sweeten the pill.

‘Black Magic Rites’ was shot in Italian weirdo horror’s home-from-home, the 15th century Castello Piccolomini in Balsorano, previously home to everyone from The Crimson Executioner to Lady Frankenstein, and it must be said, Polselli uses the castello’s potential quite brilliantly in places, especially when he breaks away from the suffocating, colour-saturated gloom of the interiors to stage scenes on the castle battlements, showcasing the astonishing vistas of snow-capped mountains which form the backdrop to the valley in which the castle stands. (1)

A necessary refresher amid all the madness going on down in the ballrooms and dungeons, you can almost smell the fresh air during these sequences, and a similar chill wind of melancholic atmos can also be felt during the funeral / burial sequence I mentioned above, which is really beautifully put together, acting both as a reference to the best scene in Polselli’s earlier The Vampire and the Ballerina, and indeed to its original inspiration, Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr.  

Though I prefer to avoid going into ‘consumer guide’ mode in these reviews, it must be said that the new transfer of the film really helps to highlight the beauty of some of the individual images Polselli and his collaborators conjured up here amidst all the carnage and peek-a-boo nudity and cheap special effects, perhaps helping to lend the whole thing a bit more of a sense of artistry than was really evident in earlier editions. God knows the travails Director of Photography Ugo Brunelli probably had to go through whilst shooting all this stuff, but he certainly delivered the goods in technical terms.

His work, together with Reverberi’s appropriately wigged out yet infernally catchy score (heavy on hand percussion, primitive electronics and reversed/echoed vocal weirdness), work to ensure the film remains an aesthetically intoxicating experience, as well as a simply overpowering one - with this intention often succeeding in spite of Polselli’s feverish, ADHD-afflicted editing and obsession with rubbing our noses in the most unpleasant imagery he can conjure up at any given point.

By far the funniest thing about the new transfer though is that it retains the grandly ornate interval cards from the movie’s original Italian cinema screenings, which I don't recall seeing before. What a hoot! I mean, can you imagine the poor, unsuspecting audience, staggering out into the sunlight for a smoke after 45 minutes of this shit? (“Say pal, whatcha think's gonna happen next?”) 

Simply amazing - as indeed is every aspect of this astounding, unrepeatable film’s genesis, existence and continued survival.

Check it out, please, before the thousand-faced messengers of Azathoth think better of letting it out in the wild, and pull remaining copies through some black trans-dimensional vortex, leaving no trace but a lingering, half-forgotten memory, ready to be shaken off with tomorrow morning’s much needed coffee.

---

(1) As I believe I noted in my ‘Lady Frankenstein’ review a few years ago, I’m intrigued by the fact that, of the four noteworthy Italian horror film Mickey Hargitay appeared in, three were shot in the Castello Piccolomini! I mean, was this just a coincidence, or did he live nearby, or know the owners of the castle or something..? Sadly the man himself is no longer with us to provide an answer, but - any insight welcomed.

Book Review: Wheels of Light: Designs for British Light Shows 1970-1990 by Kevin Foakes (Four Corners, 2022)

Ever since I first began to develop an interest in psychedelic rock as a teenager, the elusive presence of those bubbling, multi-layered liquid light shows which we’re led to believe routinely accompanied performances and ‘happenings’ during the 1960s has always fascinated me. Although I’ve only been lucky enough to witness proper, analogue light shows on a few (distant and poorly remembered) occasions, I feel that they represent an underappreciated and under-utilised DIY art form which has never really been given its due over the over the years.

As such, I was immediately on-board when I learned that Kevin Foakes (aka DJ Food) had a new book coming out via the estimable Four Corners Irregulars imprint, cataloguing his researches into the history of light shows in the UK.

The first thing to note here is that, by Foakes’ own admission, visual evidence of the development of light shows during the ‘60s is sketchy in the extreme. Over the course of a few pages, we learn that the ‘bubbling coloured oil’ type lighting effects primarily associated with the psychedelic era were first brought to these shores in 1964, when avant garde practitioners Mark Boyle and Joan Hills (aka The Boyle Family) utilised them in a series of stand-alone environmental art pieces in central London.

At some point thereafter, Boyle and Hills hooked up with the legendary UFO Club, presenting their, dangerous and occasionally explosive, lighting techniques as but one element of the full spectrum sensory overload envisioned by UFO founders Joe Boyd and John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, no doubt inspiring the eager young practitioners who in turn went on to create way-out lighting experiences for the likes of Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and Dantalian’s Chariot.

It was from this hallowed scene that the first business centred around hiring/selling liquid light show equipment - Krishna Lights, based at 13 Goodge St - emerged, but, with this important pre-history established, ‘Wheels of Light’ swiftly leaves the psychedelic splendour of the ‘60s far behind, focusing instead on the leaner years of the 1970s, when a more established commercial niche for light show projection equipment began to emerge, its focus necessarily becoming more diffuse, both geographically and aesthetically.

By the early ‘70s, specialist retailers like Optikinetics, Pluto and Orion were operating not out of the trendy West End, but from shop fronts and industrial units in such far-flung locales as Luton, Colchester and Penge. Though there was some crossover of personnel from the UFO/Floyd days, these enterprises were staffed not by acid-guzzling hippie agitators, but by nerdy blokes with backgrounds in electronics or engineering, who saw an opportunity to make a living from lenses, bulbs and moulded plastic gizmos.

And, naturally enough, as the excesses of psychedelic rock fell out of fashion, and as the scene’s surviving practitioners moved on to bigger venues and more professional/purpose-built stage shows, these firms needed to widen their remit, appealing to a broader and potentially more mainstream range of potential customers.

But, who in the hell might they be, exactly?! This is the unanswered question which lies behind much of the more curious material in ‘Patterns of Light’, as the book becomes less a celebration of the psychedelic counter-culture, and more of an exploration of a previously neglected form of suburban folk-art, very much in line with Four Corners’ earlier, excellent, volumes on CB Radio Cards and UFO drawings.

By the point at which most of the material in this book was created, projected light shows had largely abandoned the messy and dangerous business of bubbling inks and oils, and - at least in their commercial capacity - were instead largely centred around the use of customised (or custom built) slide projectors. These could be loaded up with either 3” ‘effects cassettes’, used to generate abstract, kaleidoscopic / op-art patterns such as the one seem on the book’s cover, or larger 6” ‘picture wheels’, which allowed a rolling, circular display of themed artwork to be projected in magnified form - and it is on the latter that most of Foakes’ book naturally concentrates.

Probably the most famous examples of these ‘picture wheels’ are the ones created by ‘space artist’ David A. Hardy for Hawkwind’s ‘Space Ritual’ tour in 1972, and subsequently reproduced as part of the artwork for the resulting live album and sold under license by Optikinetics.

 

‘Space Ritual’ wheel by David A. Hardy

So far, so psychedelic, and indeed, this kind of traditionally ‘way out’ imagery remained a proponent component of the lighting companies’ product over the years. At the same time though, many of the picture wheels reproduced herein date from 1977, ‘78 or ’79, by which point surely no remotely fashionable rock band or night club would countenance the idea of using a projected light show at all, let alone subject their audiences to the unhinged mixture of kid’s bedroom wallpaper designs, seaside postcard sleaze and new age kitsch being proffered at the time by Pluto or Orion.

I mean, can you even imagine what kind of terminally naff event would make use of Orion’s ‘punk rock’ picture wheel (featuring Beano-esque figures of mohawked thugs stomping around vibrating amplifiers), never mind their ‘wild west’, ‘smurf’ and ‘torture’ lines?

‘Daffy Disco’ wheel by Steve Maher (Orion Lighting, 1974)

Some semblance of an answer can be found in a passage of the text in which Pluto founder Micky Thompson notes that, by the dawn of the 1980s, the customers of his rivals at Optikinetics were largely proprietors of mobile discos, whilst his own company catered instead to what he calls, “the domestic Saturday night party projector”.

Regarding the former, I certainly went to a school disco or two in my time, and I don’t specifically recall any pirates or cowboys being projected across the assembly hall walls, but yes - mobile discos. That makes sense.

As to the “domestic Saturday night” crowd meanwhile…. well, the mind fairly boggles. At this point, it’s probably worth noting that another thing which stands out about the artwork reproduced in ‘Wheels of Light’ is just how damn smutty (in a distinctly British, 1970s kind of way) much of it is. Drawings of ladies with their boobs out are a frequent presence, as are photo-collages assembled from porno mags, spread across a range of picture wheels which includes such provocative titles as ‘glamour’, ‘stripper’, ‘flesh’, ‘naughty girls’, and the ever-popular ‘roman orgy’.

Clearly these risqué picture wheels must have sold well, as each of the companies featured in the book seems to have offered their own variations on the theme. How many man-caves, private dungeons and swingers’ parties hid behind the pebble-dashed façade of ‘70s suburbia, with lights dimmed and projectors cranked up to create just the right atmosphere for an evening’s indulgences…? Mercifully perhaps, we will probably never know.

As with the aforementioned Four Corners’ books however, the kitsch/cringe factor and analogue-era nostalgia inherent in such material is only a small part of ‘Wheels of Light’s overall appeal. As aesthetically questionable as some of the picture wheels proffered by Optikinetics, Pluto and Orion may have been, many of the other wheels gathered by Foakes are genuinely remarkable, highlighting a wealth of awesome, hyper-detailed and (dare I say it) even somewhat mind-blowing artwork from artists such as Maggie Gould, Roy Wilkinson and Connie Jude (whose 1978 ‘gay’ picture wheel is a particularly fascinating inclusion), as well as impressive later work from Jennie Caldwell (who graduated from designing picture wheels to masterminding Hawkwind’s light show for a period in the 1990s). 

Comprising an exemplary cross-section of the era’s more imaginative popular/pulp illustration, the work of these artists (and numerous others who remain uncredited) is eminently worthy of preservation between hard covers, and it is fair to assume that the opportunity to produce these wheels gave jobbing commercial illustrators a chance to ‘go wild’ in a way which would never have been allowed in more straight-down-the-line magazine/book gigs.

Meanwhile, reproductions of the more more abstract, mandala-like patterns created by the smaller ‘effects cassettes’ are also fascinating and hugely appealing (to me, at least), as is the wealth of technical detail concerning equipment and projection techniques covered in Foakes’ text. In fact, as much as I may have poked fun at the “domestic Saturday night” crowd earlier, I’d dare any reader to get through ‘Wheels of Light’ without at some point feeling an irresistible urge to start tracking down some of this old gear and giving it a whirl.

I mean, who knows? Chances are there’s a music venue down the road from you somewhere with a white sheet, an open mind and a few spare plug sockets. Optikenetics are - miraculously - still in business. So long as we’re all still burning through electricity like irresponsible goons, we might as well channel some of it into light shows, and that pixelated video shit just don’t cut it. So long as we all remember to leave the ‘roman orgy’ wheel at home, a bright future surely awaits.

‘Wheels of Light’ can be purchased direct from Four Corners.  

‘Liquid Lady Wheel’, Light Fantastic Limited (1976)

Horror Express: In The Earth (Ben Wheatley, 2021)

Shot in a remarkable fourteen days during the summer of 2020, when such concerns must have still felt quite scary and new, Ben Wheatley’s most recent horror film begins by using the conventions of old school British post-apocalyptic SF to casually outline the parameters of a world in which a pandemic has progressed in a considerably worse direction than the one we've all been living with for the past few years.

Our protagonist Martin (Joel Fry) has just emerged from four months in isolation, and is met by staff in hazmat suits and subjected to extensive - if inconsistently applied - health and hygiene checks before being allowed to enter the ‘sterile area’ within a lodge on the outskirts of a national park. We soon learn that granulated coffee has become a rare and valued commodity, and there is grim speculation about families fleeing the city to camp out in the forest (“Bristol was hit very badly in the third wave..”).

This unsettling human background gradually fades in importance though once Martin and park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia) set out on foot through an expanse of ‘old growth’ woodland, with the aim of reaching the remote camp where Martin's former colleague Dr Wendel (Hayley Squires) has been alone for some months, conducting research on the possibility of boosting crop yields through stimulation of the neural networks within plant roots, or somesuch.

(I need to break my plot synopsisin’ here to note that I’m not sure I quite buy the idea that there are still areas of forest of the west of England so dense and inaccessible that they can also be reached through several days solid hiking, especially given that, when we eventually reach it, the doctor’s set-up is kitted out with at least a lorry-load of specialist equipment… but never mind, let’s just go with it.)

Without giving too much away, it’s fair to say that the gruelling and terrifying events which Martin and Alma experience during their journey through the forest contain strong trace elements of a modern horror film, incorporating such checklist ticking essentials as axe-wielding psychos, forced incarceration, desperate fights for survival and an uncomfortable preoccupation with gruesome injury detail. 

Beyond that though, it’s easy to see why many viewers were disappointed with and/or perplexed by this film upon release (and the fact it was marketed by Univeral as a straight genre piece probably didn’t help).

What Wheatley has actually gone and done here, y’see, is to funnel a modest studio budget into making another totally zonked out, bad trip ‘head movie’, following a wafer-thin structure which at times put me in mind of ‘Heart of Darkness’, ‘Stalker’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and Saul Bass's ‘Phase IV’, but that in essence can probably be traced all the way back to the grail myths or ancient Sumerian scriptures or whatever else.

Which is to say: Quest > confrontation/catharsis > revelation, basically. You know the score, I’m sure. (As a pattern for storytelling, it’s curiously compatible with the Marxists’ beloved “thesis / antithesis / synthesis” equation, isn’t it? But, that’s a big pile of navel-gazing for another day, I realise.)

What ‘In The Earth’ reminded me of more than anything though is Wheatley's own ‘A Field in England’ (2013). Indeed, it struck me that the core premise of both films is essentially the same; ie, a pair of innocents being coaxed into a fixed and inescapable rural space in which they are menaced and generally fucked with by a more-or-less insane practitioner of uncertain magickal arts, subjected to non-consensual drug experiences, forced to re-examine their conception of the laws which govern the universe, and at one point obliged to participate in a kind of supernatural tug of war.

Here though, that premise finds itself revisited and greatly expanded in a quasi-realistic contemporary setting, its impact amped up through the use of an extreme and confrontational cinematic aesthetic which basically seeks to replicate the textural & emotional experience of making multiple bad drug decisions at an experimental music festival (with added gory violence).

(In fact, seekers after an auteurist thread running through Wheatley’s work could even go further here, citing the fact that films as disparate as 2015’s ‘High Rise’ or 2017’s brilliant Free Fire also centre around the idea of a zero sum game of survival played out within a single, confined environment, in which characters gradually accumulate wounds and physical impairments as their determination to get out alive transmutes into a kind of despairing, entropic embrace of self-immolation.)

Thankfully though, the mere opportunity to crown Wheatley as the unwilling king of “closed environment injury movies” is pretty much the least interesting thing going on in ‘In The Earth’ - a film which, thematically-speaking, leaves all kinds of fascinating stuff floating around in the ether, just waiting to be plucked out by the critically engaged and/or stoned viewer.

In no particular order then, we’ve got: the nature of English identity and the malign/atavistic aspect of people’s connection to the land, the interplay of science, culture and ritual in understanding the natural environment, the fine line between learning from nature and being consumed by it, the unimaginable psychological impact of contact with non-human intelligence…. and probably a dozen other things besides.

Personally, I couldn’t help latching onto the fact that both of the ‘questers’ within the film are of mixed race / non-white ethnicity (and thus implicitly urban, as well as relatively young), whilst the two characters who have fully lost themselves to the atavistic forces stirred up within the the forest - dwelling within it and becoming at least somewhat crazed and dangerous as a result - are Anglo-Saxon, middle-aged, and recognisably middle class.

Filtering this through the dialectics currently in play within UK society, I couldn’t help but see this as some kind of exaggerated depiction of the underlying menace potentially experienced by bold young urbanites when (as they are want to do) they step out into the remoter depths of the countryside, perhaps seeking that uncanny frisson that comes from connection with the ancient, ancestral earth… only to find that, socially speaking, things have a tendency to get a bit weird, and not necessarily in a good way, as soon as they venture more than a few miles from the nearest train station.

I’m sure this was nowhere near the forefront of Wheatley’s mind when he was conceiving ‘In The Earth’, but, it’s definitely buried in there somewhere, waiting (if you’ll excuse the pun) to be unearthed. Indeed, quite what the film is trying to say about any of the stuff listed above remains nebulous and vague in the extreme; nothing is ever really unpacked or nailed down amid the onslaught of bloody forest mulch and editing room psychedelia.

In short then, it’s easy to see why so many people had such a negative reaction to this film. I appreciate that some viewers may find its style too emphatic and aggressive, or feel that its ideas are mixed up and under-developed to the point of being meaningless; and, they may have a point.

Likewise, Wheatley’s embrace of shop-soiled talismans of the ‘folk horror’ and ‘hauntology’ movements (cf: the film’s ‘Owl Service’ referencing standing stone, and the Julian House-styled faux-Penguin closing credits) may strike some as contrived and opportunistic, whilst the digital psychedelic freak-out effects which comprise much of the finale certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste (not least a few moments which throw caution to the wind and basically turn into a ‘90s new age / techno-pagan screensaver).

But, personally, none of these potential stumbling blocks bothered me. Hell, I enjoyed them! In fact, I got a lot out of the film on all levels. For my money, it’s arguably the most frightening, provocative and impactful film Wheatley has made to date. 

In the long run, I foresee it accumulating a more appreciative audience as the years go by, and in the short term, I imagine it will spend a long time lurking in the back of my mind, as the question of what it all “means” stews around in there, taking on new forms, drawing me to contemplate repeat viewings, in spite of the mild psychic trauma initiated by the first go-round.

Which is exactly what you’d expect of any good zonked out, bad trip ‘head movie’ really, isn't it?

Psyched Out Sci-fi: Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny (Star Books, 1978)

A quintessentially mind-blowing exemplar of ‘70s psychedelic SF artwork, the cover for this Star books edition of Roger Zelazny’s 1976 novel ‘Doorways in the Sand’ appears to combine imagery drawn from Indian and Chinese Buddhism, culturally non-specific monumental architecture and a bunch of stuff that looks as if it might have been found tattooed on the arm of a Hell’s Angel. The more I look at it, the more my head hurts, which is usually a good sign when it comes to this sort of thing.

I can’t for the life of me find an artist credit for this one online, but the style does look at least vaguely familiar, so if you’re able to put a name to it, comments are open below. [UPDATE: the artist has now been identified as the great Bob Haberfield - see comments.]

 My research however did inform me that, a) this artwork originally appeared on the W.H. Allen & Co first edition UK hardback of the preceding year, and b) my imperfectly preserved paperback is at least mildly collectible, if online prices are to be believed - so that’s nice. (It will certainly sit nicely on the shelf next to my prized Panther edition of Zelazny’s uber-classic Lord of Light, anyway.)

I wish I could report that the novel itself is as mind-blowing as its wrapping, but…. well… let’s just say that anyone drawn in by this artwork in fact is liable to be somewhat disappointed when ‘Doorways in the Sand’ kicks off not as an intergalactic, spiritual trip, but as a kind of gentle, collegiate farce.

A determinedly perpetual student, protagonist Fred Cassidy has exploited a clause in his late uncle’s will which promised to provide for his upkeep until the point of graduation, allowing him to spend over fifteen years enrolled at an unnamed American college (presumably modelled upon Zelazny’s alma mater Columbia), switching his programme of study with sufficient regularity to ensure he never obtains enough credits in a particular discipline to allow him to graduate.

In a further act of brazen eccentricity, Cassidy has also managed to obtain a medical exemption from the College, allowing him to freely indulge his compulsion for scaling tall buildings, Spiderman-style, without fear of censure. As the novel begins, Cassidy has been assigned a new personal tutor, who - effectively taking on the fist-shaking, “crusty old dean” role - is determined to put an end to his shenanigans by tricking him into finally meeting the criteria for graduation.

Amidst all this, we’re a few chapters into the novel before we realise we’re actually reading a near-future science fiction story, as Cassidy sits atop the steeple of the college chapel, sharing a bottle of highly prized vintage brandy with a similarly unconventional professor, celebrating his impending retirement. As their conversation turns to the implications of the human race’s recent contact with multiple alien civilisations, we are gradually clued in to the fact that the Earth has actually been allowed to begin the process of being accepted as a junior partner in a kind of inter-planetary United Nations-type organisation.

As part of the resulting ‘cultural exchange’ outlined in the back cover blurb above, Earth has been granted temporary custody of two priceless items which will go on to play prominent roles in the novel - firstly, the ‘Rhennius Machine’, a perplexing conveyor belt and tube-based device which functions to “..reverse, turn inside out, and incise objects” (don’t ask), and more significantly, the ‘Star Stone’, an impossibly ancient sculpted sphere discovered on a long dead world, the sole relic of some unknown, extinct civilisation.

As it transpires, a series of mishaps and misunderstandings have led to the Star Stone being employed as a paper-weight in Cassidy’s student pad (he and his roommate believed it to be a rejected replica crafted by a friend of theirs), and, following a wild party on the premises, it appears to have been lost without trace.

Thereafter, much of the novel basically becomes a kind of comic sci-fi riff on ‘The Maltese Falcon’, as various factions - alien and terrestrial, friendly and malevolent - pursue Cassidy, determined to extract from him the information they insist he holds regarding the stone’s whereabouts, using torture, persuasion, bribery, hypnosis and - in one of the novel’s more diverting passages - the brain-scarring “assault therapy” practiced by a sentient potted plant named Dr M’mrm’mlrr.

All of which may sound like a wild old time in the abstract, but, frustratingly, the book really doesn’t add up to much more than a near-200 page wild goose chase. Though Zelasny seems determined to begin each chapter with a descent into deconstructed poetic / dream imagery (which largely just proves an annoyance in this kind of plot-driven narrative), and skims across the surface of assorted philosophical / scientific notions and mythological allusions along the way, the whole exercise ultimately seems rather pointless.

Even if we just accept it as a big lark though, the book’s alleged charms still remain questionable. Though the comic tone and casual surrealism sees the story drifting toward the realm of Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Adams, Zelasny (on this occasion at least) fails to capture either the heartfelt profundity of the former or the actual funny-ness of the latter, leaving us to wonder once again why this titan in the field of high-minded science fantasy is wasting our time with sophomoric student puns, screwball chases and talking donkeys.

But, never mind. If digging into Zelasny’s back catalogue has taught me anything, it’s that (outside of his more trad heroic fantasy work at least), he always had something different going on - and that’s enough to keep me coming back for more, even if the results sometimes can't even touch the hem of the most distant shadow of his earlier / better-known work.

October Horrors # 12: A Flipside Halloween with ‘Legend ofthe Witches’ (1970), ‘Secret Rites’ (1971) & More.

Back in the halcyon days of 2009-11ish, I was a regular attendee at the monthly ‘Flipside’ screenings which took place at the National Film Theatre / BFI Southbank here in London, organised in support of the BFI’s then flourishing DVD/Blu-Ray imprint of the same name. Bearing witness to the assorted oddities unearthed from the archives by curators Vic Pratt and William Fowler was always a joy and a privilege, to the extent that I pretty much bought my tickets blind, confident that whatever they came up with would prove both surprising and rewarding, even if it was something I would never have voluntarily signed up for in any other circumstances (a Q&A with the late Michael Winner springs to mind).

Naturally, I was sad to see the ‘Flipside’ slot gradually muscled out of the BFI’s schedule, presumably to make way for no-doubt-more-lucrative extra screenings of whichever restored Kubrick epic was currently doing the rounds (or, perhaps it was the decision, apropos of nothing, to screen the largely unheralded 1982 post-apocalyptic movie ‘Battle Truck’ with the director in attendance which proved the final straw for the accounts department, who knows).

The absolute highlight on the Flipside calendar of course was the programmes of shorts, TV episodes and documentaries which Pratt & Fowler used to pull together for Halloween (you can read my thoughts on the 2010 Halloween special here) and it has been a joy and a privilege this month to be able to relive the spirit of those strange evenings in my own home, as the Flipside label has risen from its slumber and produced a shiny new release which pretty much exemplifies the kind of thing which used to pop up at those October screenings.

Beginning with our feature presentation for the evening, Malcolm Leigh’s 1970 documentary Legend of the Witches opens in surprisingly meditative fashion, with a near ten minute sequence of uninterrupted nature footage. In what certainly seems like a boldly experimental gambit for a film which saw its only theatrical exhibition as a supporting feature for ‘Not Tonight, Darling’ aka ‘Sex in the Suburbs’ (Anthony Sloman, 1971), we see seaweed ebbing and flowing on the tide in a manner that I’d be tempted to tag as a tribute to Tarkovsky but for the fact that he had not actually made ‘Solaris’ yet at this point, reeds and branches swaying in the breeze, and a sunrise presented in real time.

(For some reason, Leigh and “lighting cameraman” Robert Webb seem to have had a particular yen for this kind of ambient / landscape footage, inserting seascapes, cliff faces and foliage throughout the film. Even when visiting a haunted house, the camera seems more concerned with the peacocks in the garden and the grain of wood on the staircase than the supposedly spooky goings-on.) (1)

Over this opening footage, our stentorian-yet-faintly-ironic narrator Guy Standeven intones what purports to be the “creation myth of the witches”, involving a tryst between the moon goddess Diana and Lucifer the light-bringer, representing a union between the feminine/lunar and masculine/solar ideals. (2)

Under the circumstances, this yarn does a pretty good job of sounding authentically old-as-the-hills, supporting the film’s contention that modern witchcraft has risen organically from the natural world and the impossibly ancient worship thereof. In reality however, this “creation myth” was likely knocked up from scratch by the film’s ostensible star, self-styled ‘King of the Witches’ Alex Sanders, and the references to the Greco-Roman Diana and the Christian figure of Lucifer will no doubt have already made the blood of any Wiccan purists in the audience start to boil.

We’re on safer ground though as we join Sanders’ skyclad coven (or at least, the younger and more photogenic members thereof, I suspect) as they circle their ceremonial fire in some suitably remote and inaccessible deep forest clearing, undertaking a series of elemental initiation rites for a new member.

Chances are, if you’re familiar with Sanders’ name, you probably know him in his capacity as a media / showbiz fixture, a relentless self-promoter and, arguably, an out-right charlatan. Here at least though, Leigh & Webb’s striking, high contrast black & white photography and solemn, naturalistic pacing succeeds in imbuing Sanders’ rites with a degree of dignity and gravitas, framing the coven’s matter-of-fact nudity in a way that often seems closer to Francis Bacon-style anatomical expressionism than yr common-or-garden exploitation.

After quite a lot of this, we veer into slightly more routine paranormal documentary territory, as Standeven essentially delivers a lecture on the early Christian church’s tendency to incorporate pagan tradition into their architecture and practice, and a sympathetic, Margaret Murray-ish take on the subsequent persecution of ‘the old religion’, all illustrated with visits to some churches and standing stones, medieval woodcuts, an examination of the weirder goings-on in the Bayeux Tapestry, and so forth.

This all leads up to a second staged ritual, which will no doubt have those hypothetical Wiccans spitting horse feathers, as Sanders and his wife Maxine are seen conducting a quote-unquote ‘black mass’, complete with full Xtian paraphernalia – looming crucifix, altar boys, sacred host and ecclesiastical music on the soundtrack. Presumably dreamed up in order to add a frisson of blasphemy to proceedings, this sequence ends like some Ken Russell wet dream, with Alex apparently instigating a menage-a-trois with two naked ladies inside the magic(k) circle. Good heavens.

Next up, we get an intriguing tour of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, on the north coast of Cornwall. It’s still there today, and I have long wished to pay it a visit, although my failure to persuade anyone to drive me there has thus far stymied that ambition. I mean, I’m sure they must have changed things around a bit in the past half century, but on the basis of what we see here, it looks pretty amazing.

This transitions into another staged ritual, in which – extraordinarily, given that they were supposedly aiming to popularise and win respect for their beliefs – we see Sanders and his followers demonstrating the rites through which a coven might place a death curse on an enemy. This also incorporates a strong sexual element, as Alex and Maxine again put on a bit of a show for the camera, enacting the simulated conception and “birth” of the curse object.

Thus far, ‘Legend of the Witches’ has served up an odd mixture of sombre, moody atmospherics and increasingly questionable content, but happily, the film’s final stretch is by far the most entertaining, committing fully to the cause of wonderful, silly-ass nonsense.

For no particular reason, we ditch witchcraft for a while, and instead visit a haunted house (I’m currently unable to identify which one). Here, a mod-ishly dressed young lady is left alone to shiver in “the most haunted room” whilst – in a development guaranteed to produce rapturous excitement for those of us with a fetish for vintage audio equipment and/or The Stone Tape – a team of paranormal investigators begin hauling their elaborate electronic gear up the stairs!

I’m pretty sure this stuff was all staged for the film (the ‘psychic’ girl in the haunted room re-appears in later scenes, still wearing the same outfit), but it’s still great fun.

Rather than waiting for a conclusion to this paranormal stake-out, the film soon changes course again to take in psychic phenomena and, uh, electronically-induced hypnotism? Yes, there are whirring oscillators, “stroboscopes” and a big ol’ hypno-wheel on the wall, as we are invited to note the similarities between “traditional “and “modern” means of generating a trance state, leading us directly into the film’s big finale, in which all pretence of documentary realism is merrily discarded in favour of a wild, studio-bound happening (ostensibly the preparation for a scrying ritual) which feels like a cross between an early Velvet Underground photo-shoot, an outtake from ‘The Devil Rides Out’ and a Jess Franco night club scene.

Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in here, as we get a giant hypno-wheel projection, a guy wearing a goat mask, several naked girls, Alex Sanders (I think) turning up in an owl mask, ceremonial whipping and light bondage, clouds of incense, strobe lighting, and even a soundtrack of ragin’ sitar music (because there’s no better way to get your psychedelic witchcraft party started than with some totally random cultural misappropriation). Speaking with what I hope is the authority befitting a connoisseur of this sort of thing, I declare it to be absolutely amazing. Wow.

Moving on the Flipside disc’s second billed attraction, we find Secret Rites, a 50-minute item directed by sometime horror scriptwriter and notorious sexploitation maverick Derek Ford. Originally released as a supporting feature for Ford’s ‘Suburban Wives’ in 1972, we find ourselves presented here with a case study in how two films dealing with exactly the same topic, made at roughly the same time, with the same central participants, can be entirely different from each other.

Once again, Alex Sanders takes centre stage, but he and his coven seem to have left the neo-primitive rural environs depicted in ‘Legend of the Witches’ far behind, instead heading straight for the heart of London’s swingin’ scene and the urban sprawl of Notting Hill Gate. Their rituals are now a riot of tinfoil, black candles, theatrical make up, big moth-eaten goat heads and costumes from the psychedelic dressing up box, and are now staged in what looks like a cramped subterranean night club done up to resemble a faux-medieval dungeon, all captured by Ford’s camera in blazing, over-saturated faux-technicolor.

A queasy mixture of ‘fact’ and fiction, the flimsy narrative around which ‘Secret Rites’ is constructed concerns Penny Beecham, a real life model and actress who went on to become a regular on ‘70s TV, appearing in ‘dollybird’ roles in ‘Up Pompeii’ and ‘The Morecombe & Wise Show’. Confusingly, Beecham uses her real name in the film, despite the fact that she seems to be playing the role of a fictional trainee hairdresser who, having “always been fascinated by the occult,” has decided to get herself hitched up to the nearest witch cult.

(Note the poster for Harry Kumel’s ‘Daughters of Darkness’ visible on the tube station wall in the screen-grab above.)

Venturing into the patchouli-drenched bohemian hinterland of Notting Hill, Penny meets Alex and Maxine Sanders down the pub to discuss the possibility of her initiation into their order.

It’s the little details that can make a big impression in things like this, and, whilst Alex was droning on in his drowsy Mancunian tones about how much hard work it is learning to be a witch (lots of reading, lots of study, he keeps stressing, they don’t just spend all their time horsing around in the nude, he’ll have you know), I couldn’t help noticing that the couple both seem to have been enjoying half pints of a rather tasty-looking ale served in stemmed glasses, whilst Alex has his fags and his wallet set out on the table in front of him, like a seasoned man-about-town. Somehow, I found myself entranced by this curious mixture of pious new age esotericism and down to earth ‘70s masculinity (and Maxine’s paisley-patterned dress is a knock-out too).

After this, most of the rest of the film consists of kinky rites in the groovy day-glo cellar, in which the remnants of respectably sincere pagan practice (the ‘hand-fasting’ marriage ceremony for instance) find themselves napalmed by a retina-scorching aesthetic of fancy dress pop-porno psychedelic excess, culminating in the “rarely witnessed and never before photographed” Invocation of Ra, whose gold-foil bedecked explosion of high camp Egyptology must be seen to be believed.

Sanders, during his interminable invocations, even makes reference at one point to “the Terrible Domain of the Dread Lords of the Outer Spaces”, which seems pretty way out there, even by his standards. Perhaps some of those Ladbroke Grove Hawkwind/Moorcock type vibes had been rubbing off on him whilst he was down the pub?

Those in a position to know about such things have noted that Sanders’ “coven” seems to have had its numbers boosted on this occasion by at least some performers who also appeared in the harder sex films and illicit porno loops which Ford was producing during this period, and indeed, rumours persist that a ‘harder’ cut of ‘Secret Rites’ may have been prepared for the export market (perhaps explaining the awkward 50 minute running time of the version which made it into UK cinemas). No one involved in the BFI release seems to have been able to verify the truth of this however, so who knows.

Also of note in ‘Secret Rites’ is the soundtrack, which, perfectly in keeping with the film’s visuals, comprises a way-out smorgasbord of ominous, effects-drenched psychedelic jamming, credited to an otherwise unknown outfit identified as ‘The Spindle’. No one seems to have been able to ascertain the provenance of this music, or to identify any of the players involved, but writer Rob Young puts forward a pretty intriguing theory in the booklet accompanying the BFI disc.

And…. that’s about all I can think to say about ‘Secret Rites’, really. Suffice to say, it is essential viewing for… well, I mean, I hesitate to say everyone, but if you’re still reading this post by this point, then suffice to say, you’ve found a perfect little number to project onto the wall during your next occult-themed drug orgy, at the very least.

This being a Flipside release of course, the fun doesn’t end there, and my top pick from additional shorts included on this disc is – joy of joys – another episode of Out of Step, a series of short programmes which essentially seem to function as a more stridently judgemental 1950s version of a Louis Theroux type thing, in which presenter Dan Farson – yes, the same nephew of Bram Stoker and “charismatic Soho bon vivant” who later turned up in the wonderful BBC documentary The Dracula Business in 1974, no less! – tracks down some quote-unquote “oddballs” and basically bothers them about their unusual beliefs.

Farson’s witchcraft episode – broadcast in 1957 -may not achieve quite the same level of hilarity as his UFO one (which I briefly wrote about here), but he certainly managed to assemble an impressive line-up of interviewees, speaking first to the 92-year-old Dr Margaret Murray, whose 1921 book ‘The Witch-Cult in Western Europe’ played a pivotal role in establishing the more sympathetic narrative surrounding historical witchcraft which developed through the 20th century.

(Brilliantly, a note in the booklet accompanying this set reports that Farson had to re-shoot his ‘question shots’ for this segment of the programme in the studio, because he’d been involved in a drunken brawl the night before the Murray interview took place, and was nursing a black eye.)

Still an alert and engaging speaker at her advanced age, Dr Murray’s responses to Farson’s demand to know whether witches “actually have special powers” are non-committal, but he gets a far firmer statement of belief from Gerald Gardner, the man who essentially established modern Wiccan practice in the UK during the 1950s.

Definitely a card-carrying oddball, Gardner was living at the time in an abandoned mill in Castletown on the Isle of Man, surrounded by crudely carved magical effigies. Worryingly, he regales Farson with a tale about how he and his fellow witches successfully placed a curse on an unscrupulous property developer, and he also begins cackling devilishly when Farson broaches the subject of nudity. Let’s just say that I’d advise any residents of the Isle of Man who happen to be reading in the 1950s to keep their daughters well away from that there old mill.

Farson’s final guest meanwhile is Louis Wilkinson, an intimate friend and literary executor of Aleister Crowley. Unhelpfully from the point of view of a witchcraft documentary, Wilkinson claims that he was chiefly interested in Crowley’s talents as a wit and raconteur, and largely ignored all that magickal hoo-doo he got up to (which strikes me as being rather like claiming that you were friends with Joseph Goebbels because you liked his cooking and his singing voice, but never really paid attention to all that political stuff - but whatever).

Nonetheless, Wilkinson comes through with some great anecdotes about the control Crowley exercised over his disciples, and about the conduct of his followers during his memorial service – and, as with just about all stories concerning Crowley’s extraordinary life and conduct, it’s interesting stuff to say the least.

Next up, I turned my attention to another of the disc’s extras - Getting it Straight in Notting Hill Gate, a rather hap-hazard but still fascinating short film which takes a look at the same West London counter-cultural milieu from which ‘Secret Rites’ arose, presumably shot and directed by some proud denizens thereof.

I’ll skip over this one quickly, as it’s a bit off-message re: our Halloween/horror theme, but it should certainly prove enthralling viewing for anyone familiar with the Notting Hill area, as rambling, handheld street footage takes us through the Portobello / Ladbroke Grove area in all its post-psychedelic squalor and post-windrush finery, wringing a few moments of “Oh, it’s THAT place” type excitement even from me, and I barely ever visit that part of town.

Highlights include Caroline Coon of the influential legal rights organisation ‘Release’ interviewed (next door to the offices of Oz magazine, no less) by a young hipster going by the unlikely handle of Felix Scorpio, a visit to the flat of psychedelic artist Larry Smart (whose work looks genuinely mind-blowing – definitely worthy of further investigation), and a lengthy jam session from the band Quintessence, who we see laying down some seriously funky flute and guitar-led gear in their practice space in All Saints Church, improvising around the local anthem which gave this film it’s name. Oh, and there’s a bloke playing a sitar on a rooftop too. Top stuff.

All that, and this Flipside release still has more to offer; there’s a cine-poetic tribute to William Blake based around footage of contemporary London, directed by Robert Wynne Simmons, who wrote the script for ‘Blood On Satan’s Claw’, and a 1924 silent short entitled ‘The Witch’s Fiddle’, produced by the Cambridge University Kinema Club and utilising the talents of a bunch of keen young chaps who seemingly all went on to live lives which sound like the plots of Eric Ambler novels.

I haven’t even had a chance to watch those at the time of writing…. too much, man. Needless to say, we’re looking here at a wonderfully researched, beautifully restored and incredibly generous package of tantalising glimpses into the stranger and more marginal corners of British cinema, fascinating cross-cultural connections sparking off each of them like some out-of-control generator. Fantastic work from all concerned, and here’s hoping it opens the metaphorical floodgates for more collections of shorts, documentaries and suchlike under the Flipside banner.

---

(1) Unfortunately, IMDB credits for the Robert Webb who worked on ‘Legend of the Witches’ seem to have been garbled with those of the American director of the same name, but I’m assuming THIS Robert Webb was probably the one who worked on music hall documentary ‘A Little of What You Fancy’ (1968) – co-directing with Michael Winner, funnily enough – and directed a short film entitled ‘Dancing Shoes’ (1969), before dropping out of sight..?

(2)Though it seems he rarely had the chance to give his voice much of a work out on-screen, Guy Standeven is notable for appearing uncredited in the background in just about every film ever made. Nice work if you can get it!

Weird Tales / October Horrors 2019 # 9: The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham (Penguin, 1971 / originally published 1908)

“Oliver Haddo ceased to play. Neither of them stirred. At last Margaret sought by an effort to regain her self-control.
‘I shall begin to think that you really are a magician,’ she said, lightly.
‘I could show you strange things if you cared to see them,’ he answered, again raising his eyes to hers.
‘I don’t think you will ever get me to believe in occult philosophy,’ she laughed.
‘Yet it reigned in Persia with the magi, it endowed India with wonderful traditions, to civilised Greece to the sound of Orpheus’s lyre.’
He stood before Margaret, towering over her in his huge bulk; and there was a singular fascination in his gaze. It seemed that he spoke only to conceal from her that he was putting forth now all the power that was in him.
His voice grew very low, and it was so seductive that Margaret’s brain reeled. The sound of it was overpowering like too sweet a fragrance.
‘I tell you that for this art nothing is impossible. It commands the elements, and knows the language of the stars, and directs the planets in their courses. The moon at its bidding falls blood red from the sky. The dead rise up and form into ominous words the night wind that moans through their skulls. Heaven and Hell are in its province; and all forms, lovely and hideous; and love and hate. With Circe’s wand it can change men into beasts of the field, and to them it can give a monstrous humanity. Life and death are in the right hand and in the left of him who knows its secrets. It confers wealth by the transmutation of metals and immortality by its quintessence.’
Margaret could not hear what he said. A gradual lethargy seized her under his baleful glance, and she had not even the strength to wish to free herself. She seemed bound to him already by hidden chains.
‘If you have powers, show them,’ she whispered, hardly conscious that she spoke.”
- pp. 90-91

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965) is not usually a name that springs to mind when one thinks of the great horror writers early 20th century. Indeed, the best-selling author of ‘Of Human Bondage’ and ‘The Moon and Sixpence’ goes entirely unmentioned in H.P. Lovecraft’s wide-ranging survey Supernatural Horror in Literature (although, far further down the line, I gather Stephen King has expressed a fondness for his work).

Given Maugham’s reputation for florid Victoriana and good, old-fashioned story-telling, I approached his 1908 novel ‘The Magician’ - a tale inspired by the (broadly negative) impression Maugham formed of Aleister Crowley whilst both men were living in Paris in around 1902 - expecting something reasonably down to earth.

I picked the book up recently partly just out of sheer curiosity, and partly to soak up some fin de siècle Parisian atmosphere. I suppose I was anticipating some kind of slightly bohemian society melodrama with a few sinister overtones, framing a thinly veiled, industrial strength character assassination of a legendary blaggard – and whilst the book certainly delivers on this score, as it went on, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself reading a full-blooded supernatural horror story that wouldn’t have been out of place in Bram Stoker’s canon, further enlivened by some wildly excessive, hallucinogenic excursions into realms of depraved occult phantasmagoria. So, yeah - that’s certainly a recommendation that fans of this era’s literary fantastique can take to the bank.

Central to the story of course is Maugham’s Crowley analogue, Oliver Haddo - an exaggerated and titanic caricature of The Great Beast who bestrides ‘The Magician’ with a force of will that makes it feel as if the prose itself is cowering in his presence.

Clearly unconcerned about the prospect of upsetting his character’s real life model, Maugham’s descriptions of Haddo dwell obsessively upon his physical girth; we are constantly reminded that he grotesquely, unnaturally fat, as well as sweaty, pale and morbidly unhealthy in all manner of other respects. (Curiously, this characterisation feels slightly prophetic, given that, by my calculations, Crowley was a mere 27 years old and in fairly gaunt physical shape, having recently returned from one of his debilitating mountain-climbing exploits, when Maugham met him in Paris.)

Haddo’s conversation meanwhile echoes his physical appearance, in that is obscenely verbose and self-regarding. After making his entrance to the British ex-pats dining club where are heroine Margaret, her fiancé Arthur and their party are enjoying their supper, Haddo immediately sets about bullying and haranguing the assembled artists and dilettantes until, stung by his barbs or disquieted by the bad atmosphere he has introduced, they all make their excuses and call it a night, leaving Haddo to regale our protagonists with tales of his unparalleled bravery and skill in the field of big game hunting (a clear analogue for Crowley’s mountaineering), alongside darker hints of his sinister occult beliefs.

Although Haddo is a grotesque and cartoonish figure, Maugham does an excellent job here of capturing the aspect of Crowley’s character which has allowed him to remain such a fascinating figure within our culture – and, in the context of this novel, a frightening one too. Namely, the fact that whilst he may have been a liar, egomaniac, wastrel, blowhard, confidence trickster, sexual predator, drug addict, bully, spendthrift, really crappy poet and wanton abuser of men, women, children and animals alike, at the same time, he could never be entirely written off as a fake.

That’s not to say that Crowley possessed the kind of supernatural powers which are attributed here to Oliver Haddo, but for all his myriad failings as a human being, his work in the field of ceremonial magic, and the philosophy which accompanied it, have proved sufficiently revelatory to have entirely redefined the discourse surrounding his chosen subject area across the span of an entire century, whilst his dedication to his craft, and his associated feats of endurance, stamina, memory and persuasion, remain remarkable.

These latter qualities are carried over wholesale to the fictional Haddo, the legitimacy of whose powers is first indicated by his forceful gaze, which, in an identical manner to that which can be observed in the most famous photographs of Crowley, has the uncanny quality of seeming to look through, rather than at, the object of his gaze.

As we will gradually learn, Haddo’s learning and intellect also appear to be vast (he can quote entire tracts of books on a wide variety of subjects from memory), he plays the piano like a veritable demon, and, according to a letter helpfully provided by a former university colleague whom our hero contacts to learn more about this troublesome rascal, his achievements in the fields of hunting and sports are genuine and widely acknowledged.

During the book’s first real horror set-piece, we find Haddo – who has accompanied his new ‘friends’ to the fairground, largely against their wishes – intimidating an Egyptian snake-charmer with a tirade of terrible and forbidden incantations in his own language, before coaxing the deadly cobra into biting him on the arm, apparently suffering no ill effect from the fatal venom, and promptly snapping the creature’s neck.

Clearly Haddo – like the notoriously spiteful and litigious Crowley – is not a man you’d care to get on the wrong side of, in spite of his boorish public persona. But, of course, that is exactly what happens here, as the upstanding Arthur (it’s difficult not to picture him as being played by the aptly named David Manners from Browning’s ‘Dracula’ and Ulmer’s ‘The Black Cat’) subjects Haddo to “a sound thrashing” after the ill-mannered brute kicks his fiancée’s pet dog in a fit of pique.

Thereafter, the gargantuan magus instigates his elaborate scheme of vengeance, bending the impressionable Margaret to his indomitable will and eventually coaxing her into marriage, after which ‘The Magician’ falls into a similar formula to Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, as Arthur, Margaret’s best friend Susie and Dr Porhoët - a genial French surgeon with a special interest in Alchemy who acts as the novel’s Van Helsing character – become a close-knit unit, united by their determination to free their mutual friend from Haddo’s malign influence.

One area in which Maugham’s creation departs significantly from the real life Crowley is that of the precise nature of his magic(k)al work. The author seems to have been either unfamiliar with, or uninterested in, the ‘Western esoteric’ tradition of ceremonial magic from which Crowley’s practice originated, with the enactment of rituals and spiritual communion with supernatural intelligences mentioned only fleetingly in the text (and then only in the vague context of unspeakable, implicitly orgiastic, bacchanal rites and so forth).

Instead, Oliver Haddo is portrayed as a kind of modern day alchemist, working toward his abominable goals through chemical experiments which, for the modern reader, seem to veer closer to the realm of mad science than black magic, digging deep into that fascinating, pre-20th century hinterland of weirdness in which cutting edge chemistry seems to exist side-by-side with the blackest of ancient diabolism.

To his credit, Maugham seems to have conducted an absolute ton of research in this area, and ‘The Magician’ verily overflows with esoteric lore, as the works of figures such as Paracelsus, Éliphas Lévi and Hermes Trismegistus are discussed at length, whilst Dr Porhoët bangs off lists of (genuine) priceless Latin grimoires which could have given Lovecraft himself palpitations.

Combined with the novel’s parallel interest in exploring the more romantic and macabre aspects of both classical and comparatively recent visual art, which repeatedly had me pausing my reading to google up images of the works the characters are discussing (both Margaret and Susie are in Paris as aspiring painters, so there’s a lot of art chat), and the overall effect is pretty intoxicating.

For my money, the most remarkable part of ‘The Magician’ is the chapter setting out Haddo’s seduction / establishment of mental control over Margaret. Written from her point of view, the sequence of events begins when Haddo gains admission to her lodgings under the pretext of being struck by some kind of medical emergency. Once ensconced, he begins to slowly lure her (and by extension, we the readers) into his trap, initial acting with great humbleness and civility, before he turns his eye to the prints of paintings pinned upon his victim’s wall and begins holding forth about them with great eloquence, before ranging freely through the canon of sensuous and decadent art, as if trying to batter his listener into submission through sheer over-powering rhetoric.

He then makes his way to the piano, were he unleashes torrents of spell-binding, demoniac music, the like of which poor old Margaret has never heard in her life. And finally, once she is thoroughly cowed by his over-bearing presence, he makes his way to the kitchen and, producing a vail of strange, blue powder, treats her to a demonstration of its startling power;

“Immediately a bright flame sprang up, and Margaret gave a cry of alarm. Oliver looked at her quickly and motioned her to remain still. She saw that the water was on fire. It was burning as brilliantly, as hotly, as if it were common gas; and it burned with the same dry, hoarse roar. Suddenly it was extinguished. She looked forward and saw that the bowl was empty.
The water had been consumed, as though it were straw, and not a drop remained. She passed her hand absently across her forehead.
‘But water cannot burn,’ she muttered to herself.
It seemed that Haddo knew what she thought, for he smiled strangely.
‘Do you know that nothing more destructive can be invented than this blue powder, and I have enough to burn up all the water in Paris? Who dreamt that water might burn like chaff?’
[…]
‘He took a long breath, and his eyes glittered with a devilish ardour. His voice was hoarse with overwhelming emotion.
‘Sometimes I am haunted by the wild desire to have witnessed the great and final scene when the irrevocable flames poured down the river, hurrying along the streams of the earth, searching out the moisture in all growing things, tearing it even from the eternal rocks; when the flames poured down like the rushing of the wind, and all that lived fled before them until the came to the sea; and the sea itself was consumed with vehement fire.’”

Haddo then urges Margaret, who by this point is thoroughly under his control, to breathe deeply of the fumes produced by the blue powder…. and after that, we’re off to the races, basically;

Another point of differentiation between Haddo and Crowley is that Maugham’s character is the vastly wealthy skein of an ancient, aristocratic family (rather than merely pretending to be), and, following Margaret’s elopement with the blighter, we are treated to some delightfully coy ‘intimations’ of their misbegotten life together, as they mix with the highest of high-rollers in Monaco.

It’s amusing here to contemplate an era when a lady’s chronic moral degradation is shudderingly revealed in the fact that she tells a dirty joke during dinner and dares to tip her hat to “a woman known to be of low virtue”, but on the other hand, the implications of after-hours debauchery in the pleasure palaces of the Riviera in this section of the book also carry a pungent whiff of brimstone, suggestive of a debased, morally bankrupt European aristocracy drifting rudderless into the jaws of the First World War.

The final act of ‘The Magician’ however is where things get really wild, cementing the novel’s horror credentials. As our heroes converge upon Haddo’s blighted family seat in Staffordshire (in the tradition of Poe and, later, Lovecraft, vegetation fails to grow upon the blasted landscape surrounding his night-haunted abode), we’re treated in quick succession to a series of set pieces that could have come straight from a 1930s issue of ‘Weird Tales’, leaving us in no doubt as to the novel’s supernatural worldview.

A necromantic séance on a moonless night, a life-or-death battle with Haddo’s spectrally projected avatar, and, finally, the terrible, sanity-shaking sights which await our protagonists when they eventually batter their way into the furnace-like interior of the locked attic laboratory atop the magus’s decrepit stately home – dark secrets which, needless to say, will remain unrevealed here.

Considered with over a century’s hindsight, ‘The Magician’ feels like one of those fascinating works which seems to gather and reflect influence in all kind of unexpected directions. As well of potentially drawing from Stoker alongside the legends surrounding the real life Crowley, Maugham also seems to have drawn here from the success of George du Maurier’s 1894 novel ‘Trilby’ (which introduced the world to the character of Svengali), whilst the book’s take on contemporary alchemy may also have found an echo in the unheimlich imaginings of Hanns Heinz Ewers’ influential but deeply questionable ‘Alarune’, published a few years later in 1911.

Thereafter, the influence of Maugham’s book can arguably be felt to some extent in all of the mesmeric Satanic demagogues who would soon be romping all over the shadier reaches of popular culture, perhaps even playing into the creation of some of the greatest works of early American horror cinema, with both Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig in the aforementioned ‘The Black Cat’ (1934) and the twisted homunculi sealed in bell jars by Ernest Thesiger’s Dr Pretorius in Whale’s ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ (1935) embodying elements which could potentially have been pulled from the lurking shadow of Oliver Haddo. (1)

Meanwhile, ‘The Magician’ also seems noteworthy as one of the only fictional works I can recall in which an author has had the cast-iron balls necessary to present a thinly veiled portrait of a still-living individual, portraying them as a diabolical, murderous villain.

In view of Aleister Crowley’s tendency to let rip against his ‘enemies’ with curses, magickal battles and wildly extravagant lawsuits, I think he must have either had a soft spot for Maugham, or else secretly enjoyed the attention which ‘The Magician’ brought his way, because his public response to the book’s publication seems to have been relatively benign.

Writing under the name “Oliver Haddo”, Crowley produced a satirical review of ‘The Magician’, which was published by ‘Vanity Fair’. With typical point-missing insouciance, Crowley seems to have focused here upon accusing Maugham of plagiarism, alleging that he ‘stole’ parts of his novel from such works as Franz Hartmann’s ‘The Life of Paracelsus’ and ‘Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie’ by Eliphas Levi - a pretty fatuous suggestion, given that it is plainly obvious Maugham did indeed consult the books Crowley cites, using them as historical sources for his broadly original fictional story. (2)

Wisely, Maugham refused to respond to Crowley’s accusations, later claiming that he had not even bothered to read the ‘Vanity Fair’ review, adding that, “I daresay it was a pretty piece of vituperation, but probably, like his poems, intolerably verbose”.

In the same ‘fragment of autobiography’, which has prefaced most latter-day editions of ‘The Magician’, Maughan also claims that, many years later, in the flush of his literary success, he received an unsolicited telegram which read as follows;

“Please send twenty-five pounds at once. Mother of God and I starving. Aleister Crowley.”

Once again, he declined to respond.

---

Having generally been marketed as a “general fiction” title in paperback, covers for ‘The Magician’ have tended to be pretty dull, but I love the none-more-decadent detailing on the first edition hardback pictured above. That aside, the designs below are proabably the best of the bunch.

--

(1)Funnily enough, Thesinger actually knew Maugham socially, as a result of their work in London theatre; he appeared in the cast of Maugham’s play ‘The Circle’ in 1921.

(2) Crowley also accused Maugham of ripping off H.G. Wells’ ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’, but I really can’t see much similarity between the two novels at all, to be honest.