A strange film, probably because it comes from Monty Python’s editor so although it is generally serious, it often has very funny moments mixed with Python’s gross surrealism. If you gasped at the exploding fat man in Meaning of Life – wait till you see the magic spell involving the fax machine. The film is about the reincarnation of the legendry Magus, Aleister Crowley, recently voted the 73 most important Brittan.

The film opens in 1947 as the aging Aleister Crowley (John Shrapnel) is visited by a young initiate to plan an important life saving ritual. Here the themes of the film are introduced. Crowley’s occult knowledge of the Bible, his skill at chess, his Masonic connections and his anger at L. Ron Hubbard (yes him of the Church of Scientology) who has turned the head of Crowley’s rich American disciple, Jack Parsons. Crowley’s rage at Hubbard fires off a heart attack and he dies.

We then fast forward to the end of the 20th Century, Cambridge University, where scientist Dr Joshua Mathers is about to integrate the world’s biggest super-computer, the Z93, with the human brain. But assistant programmer, Dr Neuman, is an obsessive follower of Aleister Crowley, and has reduced his occult rites to a series of quantum equations. Bumbling, Professor Haddo, (Simon Callow) desperate to get inside the mind of the long-dead Magus volunteers himself for integration. Unknown to Mathers that night the experiment begins. Next morning Haddo has undergone a dramatic transformation,
His head is shaved and now strident and arrogant he gives a lecture about Hamlet where he announces he is the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley and proceeds to quote Crowley’s Shakespearean parody ‘To pee, or not to pee.’ He then pees on the front row of the students. Yes you heard it right! Crowley always claimed he would rise from the dead and from this point on Haddo, begins playing out all Crowley’s most bizarre rituals, from his orgies involving Sexual Magic to showing his di