Season of the Witch - Cineworld - 20/1/11

Audioboo

Did you know that there were Americans fighting in the crusades?

Neither did I.

In this historically accurate...

No, wait.

Let me just check my notes.

Ah!

In this hysterically inaccurate romp Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman desert the crusades, head for home and end up escorting a young woman accused of being a witch who has brought plague to the land to a castle full of monks who will determine her guilt or innocence.  On the way they pick up a guide in the shape of Combo from "This is England" who has, for reasons I don't really understand, decided to play the part with a New Yoik accent.  En route to the castle of monks they encounter a pack of zombie wolves, hallucinations and a rope bridge that makes the one Indiana Jones has to cross in "Temple of Doom" look like the Golden Gate Bridge.

When they eventually make it to the monkhouse they discover all the monks are dead from plague and, worse, the witch isn't a witch...she's the devil!  Satan!  Beelzebub!  Lucifer!  He who walks backwards!  The beast!  Seriously...he's got horns and wings and everything.  Unable to take care of Nic Cage, Ron Perlman and a pre-pubescent altar boy on his own the devil re-animates the monks and a battle between the living and the dead takes place for no real reason other than it gives everyone the chance to look grim faced while lopping off the heads of undead monks.

Quite clearly this is the greatest film ever made.

Sorry.

Let me check my notes again...

Um...

Oh, yes.

No.

Quite clearly this is a load of old tosh.

But, dear, dear reader, it was also gloriously, brilliantly, dementedly, wonderfully, awfully entertaining.  It can't all be Ozu and black and white Polish realist cinema you know.  Occasionally it does you no harm at all to simply sit back and let the pretty pictures entertain you.  "Season of the Witch" is, I think, knowingly camp and fabulously ridiculous...nobody involved would make any claim for "art" or a case for it being a film loaded with hidden meaning; it's a chance for Nicolas Cage to do, well, Nicolas Cage and for everyone else to enjoy getting dressed up and fight monks, devils and zombie wolves.