Audience Member
Simon Calow (Four Weddings and a Funeral) is Professor Oliver Haddo, a Cambridge scholar who is reprogrammed by a virtual reality machine into becoming the avatar for the spirit of Aleister Crowley. Now, more than fifty years after his death, Crowley begins his search for a scarlet woman to be part of his next working.
It was directed by Julian Doyle, who edited Brazil, Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life and Time Bandits. He's also directed music videos for Kate Bush and made Iron Maiden's "Can I Play With Madness?" video. Speaking of Maiden, he co-wrote this with their lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, and two of his songs ("Chemical Wedding" and "Book of Sorrows") and two Maiden songs (the aforementioned "Madness" and "The Wicker Man") are on the soundtrack.
I learned from this movie that we live in the world where Satan is in charge, that you can fax sperm and that even a movie with this much nudity and depravity can be slightly lame. I wanted to love this and it got close, so close, but it's charitably a complete mess.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Chemical Wedding is a mediocre horror film that had the potential of being so much more than what it turned out to be. The script was written by Iron Maiden lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and though he had some interesting ideas that were displayed in the film, there weren't fully fleshed out, and therefore the film suffered from lacking anything truly entertaining in the long run. Fortunately Bruce is a great singer and he fronts a great band that makes some of the best heavy metal music. With Chemical Wedding, this is a film that simply relies too much on bland performances, and has a script that just doesn't use its ideas to the fullest. What follows is a movie that simply isn't entertaining and it ends up being boring. I really wanted to enjoy the film because I am a diehard Iron Maiden fan, and Bruce Dickinson is one of my favorite singers, unfortunately he lacks the chops to write a really good script and therefore the film just ends up being a waste of time. Chemical Wedding is not an awful film, it's just a film that never attains its potential, ands the story is interesting, but it never goes in depth, and you feel there could have been so much more out of the film. If you're expecting a good horror film, you'll sadly be disappointed. Chemical Wedding is one of those films that is underdeveloped and relies on a poorly thought script that ruins its ideas by not having a fully thought out script. Add to that a cast that are ridiculous in their parts and you have a film that just suffers from the first frame onwards. At least Bruce Dickinson's cameo is sure to delight Iron Maiden fans, but for the rest, this will be a tedious film to sit through.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
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Audience Member
quite stupid and boring
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
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Audience Member
A low-enough budget horror movie. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden and the director Julian Doyle co-wrote the script. And there's some interesting points as both are quite steeped in Crowley knowledge. But the build a plot around a developer of a virtual reality machine coming from California to Cambridge. The first guy who uses it comes out as a reincarnated Aleister Crowley wh is going to now wreak havoc. It gets a bit complicated there, as they imploy as much quantum physics discussions that they can to build either the audience belief that either this really is the reincarnation or just the implanted memory of Crowley making a guy nuts. As Crowley, Simon Cowell is delightfully gross. And there's entertainment here, but it's more enthusiastically made than it is skillyfully made.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It seemed like it would be interesting and I was caught by the fact that Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden wrote the script, but in the end, it was just really convoluted and kind of hard to follow. Simon Callow as Crowley was very fun to watch, though. Many of his lines of dialogue sounded like Iron Maiden lyrics to me.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
"Chemical Wedding" first garnered my attention SOLELY for the fact that Iron Maiden is my all time favorite band and their frontman Bruce Dickinson penned the script, his first feature film. The film drifted from memory over the next few years as I was unaware that it got re-titled "Crowley" for American release. One day while rummaging through a bargain bin at a local chain store, my eyes fell upon it and decided to plop down a few bucks just to see how 'bad' Dickinson's first foray into horror filmmaking turned out. Well my pre-conceived notion was correct as he needs to stick to writing amazing head banging metal music and keep his little over-achieving fingers out of the horror film market.
"Crowley" is about... who else, Aleister Crowley and the film is loosely, VERY LOOSELY inspired by the real life British occultist. Well we open with Crowley dying of leukemia in the 1940s and then we jump ahead to modern times when an American brings a virtual reality machine... whoa... wait a minute. A virtual reality machine?! Anytime that lame aspect is brought in you know a film is going to turn out to be a turd. Weren't we done with the whole virtual reality shit in the early 90s? Well I digress as the virtual reality machine 'reincarnates' the spirit of Crowley into the body of an elderly professor (Simon Callow) and of course he goes on a 'rampage', of sorts I guess.
If I can praise the plot of one aspect is that at least it's NOT a damn remake. Other that there is absolutely nothing original to this films approach. The ancient devil worshiper that gets killed and then gets resurrected decades later has been done to DEATH. Even the prospect of the villain stealing the guys girl for a sacrifice has spoiled from being overused.
In an attempt the cover-up the inept and tired plot devices, Bruce Dickinson loads the film up with metaphysical mumbo jumbo that just makes the mouthful dialogue a hoot of technobabble. Data of "Star Trek", eat your heart out! It seems when horror films start to mix quantum physics and religion it's just a recipe for disaster. The closest that formula has EVER come to working is in John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" but even that resulted in an extremely flawed film product.
Director Julian Doyale, a veteran from many of the Monty Python films and numerous Terry Gilliam projects, brings a nice old school style look to the project, no doubt a nod to the old British Hammer Horror films of the past. Still the films final outlook seems rushed and hurried along in production as the editing is disjointed and the computerized special effects leave a lot to be desired.
The cast for the most part is made up of a bunch of novices and our young professor that's out to save his girl from being made a bride of Crowley is stiff and wooden as the rest of the cast. The one shinning light is Simon Callow who gives a no holds barred performance to the role of Crowley, especially since he no doubt had to bite his tongue extremely hard to stop from snickering at the vulgar and silly dialogue he had to spout out.
I really wanted to like "Crowley" but sorry to say I didn't. The plot is contrived and clichà (C) and I actually ended up laughing more unintentionally at the film than anything else. The only thing really good about the film is Simon Callow's performance and the rockin' soundtrack which contains a few Iron Maiden and Bruce Dickinson tunes. Other than that I believe I have another dust collector to store on my DVD shelf. Sorry Bruce! I guess I better crank up the new Iron Maiden album to help erase this failed attempt at a horror film from memory.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
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