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Pitch / Synopsis |
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C R O W L E Y M A S S "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"
From the "Sunday Express" November 26, 1922
The Sunday Express last week demanded the suppression of a book, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, written by a person called Aleister Crowley. "At the baser and more bestial horrors of the book it is impossible to hint," wrote Mr. James Douglas. The publishers state that it is their intention to push the sales of this pernicious work. The Sunday Express was determined that the public should be protected, and made the fullest investigations into the career of the author. These investigations have produced the most astounding revelations. The man Aleister Crowley is the organizer of societies for pagan orgies. He engaged in pro-German propaganda during the war. This is the man whose latest work is a deliberate symposium of obscenity, blasphemy and indecency. CROWLEYMASS - THE MOVIE (The life and time of Aleister Crowley, poet, magician, mountaineer) "At least one claim may be made; nothing has
been invented, nothing suppressed, nothing altered and nothing
'yellowed up'. I believe that truth is not only stranger than
fiction, but more interesting. And I have no motive for deception,
because I don't give a damn for the whole human race - 'you are
nothing but a pack of cards.'" A.C. THE PITCH: CROWLEYMASS tells the story of Aleister Crowley, aka The Beast 666. He was
known as, "The wickedest man in the world," to Victorian society.
The movie CROWLEYMASS will show you why. A biopic with balls, the movie will take you on a journey through Crowley's life and through his twisted genius. Never has a cult figure commanded so much respect, curiosity, awe, and fear. Crowley was, and remains, the world's greatest magician. Doug Bradley, who starred as 'Pinhead' in the Hellraiser series, will play Aleister Crowley. Frazer Lee (creator of the award winning On Edge and Red Lines) is writer and director. Joseph Alberti (Robber Baron Productions) is producer. CROWLEYMASS is the movie everyone will talk about, because it is about the man everyone still talks about (Crowley featured in the BBC list of Top 100 Great Britons - voted for by the public). It has massive marketing potential and is a superb vehicle for Mr Doug Bradley's talents. THE SYNOPSIS: Stranded on a mountainside in the midst of a terrible storm, Aleister Crowley remembers his life past, considers his present, and has visions of his future... Crowley's Childhood (30 Clarendon Square, Leamington, Warwick, UK, 12th October 1875) Just as modern day serial killers experimented with roadkill as children, The Beast 666 himself confesses to a macabre fascination with the idea that cats have nine lives: "I had been told that 'A cat has nine lives.' I deduced that it must be practically impossible to kill a cat. As usual, I became full of ambition to perform the feat. I got it into my head that the nine lives of the cat must be taken more or less simultaneously. I therefore caught a cat, and having administered a large dose of arsenic I chloroformed it, hanged above the gas jet, stabbed it, cut its throat, smashed its skull and, when it had been pretty thoroughly burnt, drowned it and threw it out of the window that the fall might remove the ninth life. In fact the operation was successful; I had killed the cat. I remember that all the time I was genuinely sorry for the animal; I simply forced myself to carry out the experiment in the interest of pure science." The Early Years Crowley becomes interested in Magick. He later learns that Magick only works if the practitioner performs it without thinking. His early rituals are therefore rather comical: One of Crowley's early performances one evening in Eastbourne is a complete failure. He makes a circle and builds an altar of stones by the edge of the sea. He burns incense, performs his 'evolutions' and, "Makes heaven hideous with (his) enchantment," in order to invoke spirits. The only spirit that appears is a policeman. He approaches close enough to witness Crowley, dressed up in a bizarre costume of robes and occult ornamentation, dancing and howling in the moonlight. Crowley is baying at the moon, whistling and shouting forth his invocations, whilst dancing up and down the beach. He looks like a complete lunatic. Thus Crowley makes his first acquaintance with Her Majesty's police force. Crowley concludes later that, "Magick… is rather an art than a science." Crowley the Mountaineer Failure strikes Crowley many times in his life, but his pioneering spirit is unshakeable. Tellingly, he fancies himself as a bit of a mountaineer. He strikes up a partnership with the adventurer Eckenstein and plans an expedition to K2 in 1901. In true Crowley style he delves into research for his trip and even practises not touching his face with his left hand to mimic the customs of the Mohammedans he'll be travelling with. He also learns Hindustani and Balti so he can act as an interpreter on the mission. Bizarrely, Crowley wears sandals and robes for this most gruelling of journeys. "The expedition was a failure: of the sixty-eight days on the glacier, (at 22,000 feet) eight only were fine, and of these no three consecutive. In itself it was a world record; and, as far as I know, stands to this hour. I hope I may be allowed to die in peace with it," says Crowley. Beauty and The Beast "The love of my wife had made me the richest man on earth." Surely this can't be The Beast speaking? Crowley is indeed a great romantic and falls deeply in love with his first wife, Rose. He wants to impress her and does so by suggesting they spend the night in the King's Chamber of Egypt's Great Pyramid - his way of showing off. "I wanted my wife to see what a great Magician I was. We reached the King's Chamber armed with candles and a notebook in which were written my principal invocations. By the light of a single candle placed on the edge of the coffer I begun to read the invocation. But as I went on I noticed that I was no longer stooping to hold the page near the light. I was standing erect. Yet the manuscript was no less but more legible. Looking about me, I saw that the King's Chamber was glowing with a soft light which I immediately recognized as the astral light. The pitiful dirty yellow flame of the candle was like a blasphemy, and I put it out. The astral light remained during the whole of the invocation and for some time afterwards, though it lessened in intensity as we composed ourselves to sleep. In a sort of way, I suppose I did consider myself rather a fine fellow to have been able to produce so striking a phenomenon with so little trouble. But it did not encourage me to go on with Magick. My wife was all in all." But Rose tires of him, and he does indeed go on with Magick, writing many seminal occult texts in the coming years. He is left rather heartbroken and embittered - a string of lovers follows. Crowley quickly gains the reputation of a man who seduces wealthy women and introduces them to a world of occultism and vice. Victor Neuberg Every witch must have a familiar. Crowley's is one Victor Neuberg, a 25 year-old agnostic, mystic vegetarian. Crowley meets him in 1910 and the lad quickly begins to follow his master around like a lost puppy. Indeed, Crowley even puts Neuberg on a leash and fashions his hair into horns before taking him off into the desert for a terrifying Black Magick ritual. Neuberg is the court jester - Aleister Crowley's fool. One day, he covers himself from head to toe in yellow paint and one evening in Paris he becomes so drunk on Absinthe that he can't tell two sisters apart. Crowley delights in watching Neuberg try to seduce one sister and then the next. Neuberg is so frustrated by the experience that he rushes to his bed and masturbates all night long. Crowley the Spy Men in black approach Crowley. Being The Beast 666, he should be used to this - but no, these men are from MI5. They take him to London and descend into a military compound beneath the city streets. Codenames are exchanged, secrecy is sworn and Operation Mistletoe begins. Hitler is well known for his dabblings in the occult. Several of his followers, including Rudolf Hess, are suspected members of Magickal orders. Crowley is asked by MI5 to perform a complex ritual to shift the Nazi power balance. The ritual takes place in Ashdown Forest, Sussex. It is long and complex, and visually awe-inspiring, with hundreds of British soldiers wearing robes over their uniforms. A dummy, dressed in Nazi uniform, is seated on a throne-like chair. Two crowds of troops move in circles; one with the sun and the other against it. It is all timed with great precision by Crowley and each time the crowd stops and faces inwards the runes stitched onto the robes spell a different set of messages aimed at the dummy. At the climax of the ceremony the dummy is hoisted to the top of a church tower and, after being set alight, is launched along a cable in the exact direction of Germany. A squad of R.A.F. men follow its track in fighter planes to quench any outburst it may cause. Some time later. 11th May 1941, Crowley receives a phone call. The news he hears then breaks in the newspapers: "Hitler's Deputy Quits Reich" "Rudolf Hess Flees to Britain" Hess spends the rest of his life in prison. At the Nuremberg trials he tells the doctors why he had to come to Britain: He had received spirit messages and the gods were demanding that he did something because he was the 'Chosen One'. He alone could bring a new age of peace to the world. He is diagnosed insane and spared the death penalty. He dies in Spandau, in mysterious circumstances. From the "Sunday Express" February 25, 1923 "New sinister revelations of Aleister Crowley- 'Varsity lad's death". "The revelations in the Sunday Express recently of obscene orgies carried on by Aleister Crowley - 'The Beast 666', as he styles himself-in his 'abbey' at Cefalu, Sicily, have been followed by a sinister and tragic happening. Information has just reached this station of his two latest victims. One of them, a brilliant young English university man, a writer, is dead. His young wife, a beautiful girl prominent in London artistic circles, arrived in London two days ago in a state of collapse. She is unable to give more than a hint of the horrors from which she has escaped. She said, however, to a Sunday Express representative yesterday that the story of Aleister Crowley's sexual debauches and drug orgies as published in the newspaper far understates the real horror of the life in the 'abbey' at Cefalu, where he keeps his women and practises his black magic. This young girl, whose name and that of her husband the Sunday Express withholds in deference to the parents' sorrow, said that Crowley offered her husband a secretarial post last autumn when in London. The Beast is possessed of a persuasive smile and suave manners. The young couple had no idea of the true character of the place to which he was inviting them. As the offer seemed to mean travel and congenial work the young husband, a boy of twenty-two, accepted it. Once they were in Sicily, however, they found they had been trapped in an inferno, a maelstrom of filth and obscenity. Crowley's purpose was to corrupt them both to his own ends. They resisted him and his women with all the strength they could summon. The wife was forced to do the cooking and the kitchen work for the nine people in the house. Then suddenly the boy husband fell ill of enteritis, due to the insanitary conditions there and was too weak to be removed. The girl-wife was left alone to fight the Beast 666. Since she defied him in every way and managed to keep herself clear of the bestialities of the house, he turned her out one night. All that night she was unable to return into the 'abbey' on the hills above Cefalu to tend her dying husband. Two days later the boy was dead. The girl who had made so courageous a fight against the Beast who sought to destroy her was given money by the British Consul to return to England. Crowley was obliged to let her go. But he made dire threats of vengeance if she told what she knew. She has not told anything more than has already been published in the newspaper, but she is still in danger from the Beast. The Sunday Express is putting the facts of this tragic case in the hands of Scotland Yard. It is among the clean minded and inexperienced that he seeks his victims. He is sending out his invitations to young Oxford men to come to Cefalu, carefully leaving out any hint of the unspeakable facts of his 'religion', facts too unutterably filthy to be detailed here, for they have to do with sexual orgies mixed up in a hocus-pocus of doubtful mysticism, of which Crowley is the 'Purple Priest'. Filthy incense is burned and cakes made of goats' blood and honey are consumed in the windowless room where the Beast conducts his rites. The rest of the time he lies in a room hung with obscene pictures collected all over the world, saturating himself with drugs." CROWLEYMASS - THE MOVIE This document is a work in progress. The above are fragments from the life and times of Aleister Crowley - there is much, much more to tell about The Beast. Robber Baron Productions is seeking development funds to bring this amazing character to a global audience. Nobody has yet had the balls to make a film of Crowley's life. Do you have what it takes to join us in making history? © Robber Baron Productions 2003 Contact: |