52 Weeks: Albeit Both Broken & Crooked…
Simon, King of the Witches (1971)
★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (4 out of 10 stars)
Directors: Bruce Kessler
Producer: Al Adamson
Starring: Andrew Prine, Brenda Scott, George Paulsin
“I am Simon… King of the Witches.” – Simon
The Review:
There are films that glide effortlessly into coherence… and then there are those that stagger forward as if wounded, yet refusing—through sheer, defiant will—to collapse entirely. Simon, King of the Witches is most assuredly the latter.
Simon is an intriguing film because it feels very much like a work that once harbored grander ambitions than its modest coffers would permit. One can sense the outlines of something more expansive lurking beneath the surface, like a sigil half-erased yet still faintly glowing. But alas, there were short-cuts made… compromises in the story… and what remains bears the unmistakable scars of editorial intervention.
Indeed, it has the peculiar feeling of incompleteness—like a rapacious editor’s cut executed with maniac diligence and a kind of deliberate, story-crippling precision. I do not go so far as to say that the best bits were left languishing on the cutting room floor, but there is an undeniably ragged texture to the final product. It suggests not merely trimming, but surgery—and perhaps surgery that did not proceed as cleanly as intended.
And yet, amid this fractured narrative, something curious persists.
Andrew Prine’s performance stands as the film’s most fascinating anomaly. It is as though he were entirely unaware—or perhaps heroically unwilling to acknowledge—that the production itself was hemorrhaging from a dozen different dagger wounds. He presses forward regardless, embodying Simon with an imperious grandeur more befitting a far more lavish production. There is a theatrical boldness to his portrayal, a sense that he alone has resolved to conjure magic where none should reasonably exist.
It is, I must admit, rather admirable.
Where Prine leans into the storm with fervor, others seem content to drift, their performances receding as though washed away by some unseen tide. One can almost feel whatever cohesion the film might have possessed dissolving in real time, quality slipping quietly downstream with mounting floodwater.
And yet… and yet.
There is atmosphere here—faint, flickering, but present. The occult trappings, the seedy undercurrent of urban mysticism, the notion of power both performed and believed. These elements coalesce just enough to suggest that Simon, King of the Witches might have been something truly singular had its components aligned under more favorable circumstances.
Instead, what we are left with is a cinematic absurdity—uneven, erratic, and strangely compelling in its dysfunction.
I find myself unable to wholly recommend it… and equally unable to condemn it outright. It has something. What that something is remains frustratingly elusive—like a whispered incantation heard just on the edge of comprehension.
But it is there.
Most definitely… something.
Yes child, there is more…so much more. See what you have missed: T. Glenn Bane’s 52 Weeks of Halloween Index.