Director – Bruce Kessler, Screenplay – Robert Phippeny, Producer – David Hammond, Photography – Vision Photography, Music – Stu Phillips, Optical Effects – CineFX, Special Effects – Roger George, Art Direction – Dale Hennesy. Production Company – Fanfare Film Productions, Inc.
Cast
Andrew Prine (Simon Sinestari), George Paulsin (Turk), Brenda Scott (Linda Rackum), Norman Burton (D.A. Willard Rackum), Gerald York (Hercules Van Sant), Michael C. Ford (Shay), Lee J. Lambert (Troy), William Martel (Commissioner Dan Davies), Richmond Shepard (Stanley), Harry Rose (Landlord), Ultra Violet (Sarah)
Plot
Simon Sinestari is a magician who lives in the Los Angeles sewers. After being busted by the police as a vagrant, he meets Turk in a cell. Turk takes Simon to meet the wealthy Hercules who makes Simon into a hit on his social scene, selling charms. Hercules issues a challenge to Simon to kill a man who has given him a false cheque but is shocked when Simon’s spell succeeds. Simon takes Linda Rackum, the daughter of the District Attorney, as his lover. This draws the displeasure of her father who employs underhand tactics to force Simon out of her life.
Simon, King of the Witches was an interesting film that came out following the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Rosemary’s Baby created an interest in the occult, devil worship and black magic. There were soon a number of other films that jumped on this fad, including the huge hits of The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976), which created other branches of the fad dealing with demonic possession, The Anti-Christ and End Times prophecies. Before possession and the Anti-Christ became predominating theme of the fads, we had an interesting range of films that explored the occult and devil worship, including the likes of The Mephisto Waltz (1971), Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1972), Jack’s Wife/Season of the Witch (1972) and The Devil’s Rain (1975). (For a more detailed list see Films About The Occult and Black Magic).
Simon, King of the Witches apparently comes with a script from a real witch – Robert Phippeny who had previously written The Night of the Following Day (1968). Phippeny construes the film as a work of comic realism centred around the everyday life of a modern warlock. This is a film that takes its Witchcraft seriously – it is, for example, not a work that rests inside the horror side of genre or is constantly confusing witchcraft practitioners with Satanists.
The various aspects of witchcraft are constantly being undercut by a sly sense of humour. Andrew Prine’s Simon is constantly coming up against real world concerns – he has a great intro where he tells us “My name is Simon, I’m a warlock” and causes a lamppost behind him to switch on, but then in the next scene we see him being bailed up by cops and searched with they puzzling over his magical items and occult books, before he is busted for vagrancy. Or else when in the middle of seducing Brenda Scott at a party he is forced to leave as it starts raining and he realises that this means all his paraphernalia will be washed away in his sewer home. One of the funniest scenes is where Prine goes to visit a rival Wiccan group where clearly Robert Phippeny is having a good deal of fun poking fun at the stuffiness of their rituals, including a girl who objects “Don’t touch me, I’m a sacred object.”
Simon (Andrew Prine) conducts an occult ceremony with Brenda Scott
There is not much of a plot to the film. Another film would have pushed the scenes with Andrew Prine killing the man on a bet and then being regarded as a pariah for more in the way of thriller tension – at most we get the scenes at the end here where the police begin a crackdown to stop Andrew Prine from seeing the D.A.’s daughter. This latter is quickly resolved in some muddled scenes about the exposure of high-level corruption in city hall and the murder of Simon by drug dealers, but they seem there more to wrap the plot up than anything else. The scenes towards the end do briefly jump off into a brief LSD-inspired psychedelic acid trip sequence as Andrew Prine trips through space and back.
The title role of Simon is played by Andrew Prine, a young actor of the day who had a number of roles (albeit nothing major) in B movie cinema throughout this decade, including the genre likes of Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973), The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Grizzly (1976), The Evil (1978) and Eliminators (1986). Prine plays with a handsome, cocky charisma that inhabits the role perfectly.
