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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