SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES

Tim Lucas once again spurs my memory over at Video Watchblog with his review of SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES. This is one of my favorite magick-related films, and (though it predates it) has the same kind of sensibility as the Alan Moore/Stephen R. Bissette/John Totleben run on DC's Swamp Thing (could this stem from the fact that both Moore and screenwriter Robert Phippeny are both sorcerers? Couldn't hurt, I guess.). In fact, the film feels closer in spirit to the comic's character of John Constantine and the Vertigo comics spin-off title Hellblazer than that comic's official adaptation, CONSTANTINE. Far from how the film was marketed, it's not a horror film at all. It's a literate, witty, serio-comic look at a particular practitioner of magick and his quest to empower himself and take on the establishment (not bad goals, all said). It's probably the best onscreen depiction of an eclectic/chaos magickian (Simon doesn't follow any set path, and is openly contemptuous of the Wicca-esque orthodoxy as portrayed by the group led by Warhol superstar Ultra Violet). Sure, few have magickal mirrors that allow them to physically enter the astral plane and walk among the gods, but we all can't be so lucky as that (plus, if you take that as just a symbolic representation of achieving gnosis, then it's still pretty damned accurate).

I really don't have much else to say that Tim's review hasn't already said (and better), but I urge anyone who is remotely interested in any of the works mentioned above to check it out.