A pagan orgy and a come-on from a dancing faun. Surprisingly, not a Manhattan disco during the 1970's.
So,
I sat through THE MAGICIAN ages ago and intended to cover it in an
earlier round of these essays, but I just couldn't work up the energy to
really sit down and write much about it because, at nearly 100 years
old, it mostly has not aged well and it engenders no sentiment from the
horror fandom community as a beloved antique. I'd wanted to see the film
since I was eight years old, when I first read about it in a book on
the history of horror films on a plane to Spain during a family trip,
and now that I've seen it I don't think it was worth the wait.
It starts out quite well, telling the story of Olliver Haddo (Paul Wegener, an imposing German actor now best remembered as the iconic take on the Golem),
a Crowley-esque Parisian medical student/would-be sorcerer who needs
the heart blood of a maiden (read "virgin," because that specification
is made very clear in the script) for an experiment that will supposedly
allow him to alchemically create life in his lab. He sets his sights on
a betrothed young sculptress and even shows her then-provocative
pre-Code visions of ancient pagan rituals in which a pretty much naked
faun, alluded to be Pan himself (dancer Hubert "Jay" Stowitts),
participates and gets down with the nubile revelers.
That
stuff is great, but then the magician kidnaps the woman and from that
point it's like some totally different screenwriter took over and
reduced the second half of the movie to a rote, unremarkable, thoroughly
predictable matinee bill-filler. The shift in tone and story quality
during the second half is astonishing, and I found myself
speed-searching through most of the last fifteen minutes, missing no
dialogue since it's a silent film.
Still want to bother with it?
Still want to bother with it?
Poster
from the original Argentinian release. (I went with this because all of
the available poster images from the American release are beyond
boring.)
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