Simon, King of the Witches is kind of like that friend that is so ridiculous that you keep him around just to see what stupid shenanigans he’ll try next.  The plot boils down to a warlock wants to use his powers to join the gods he worships so he can watch over the planet.  That’s it.  What we get is something that I’m sure screenwriter Robert Phippey (a practicing warlock, hence what the movie’s about) was not actually trying to attain; one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen.  This film falls into the “So-bad-it’s-good” camp, joining the ranks of such films as Humanoids From the Deep, Troll 2, and Hollywood Blvd.  I mean, I haven’t laughed as hard as I did during Simon in a long, long time.  I think I started to cry.

Rating:

The film starts off with some horrible special effects involving fake witch craft and Simon giving the audience a mini-lecture about how when it rains everyone goes inside, but not a man, like Simon, who lives in a sewer drain.  He goes out.  OK.  We get it.  He’s weird.  Yet, the film spends most of its running time proving to us that Simon is as weird as we already knew he was.  The best part is, Simon’s not even the weirdest cast member!  The film also includes: a kid who befriends Simon that is apparently unsure of his sexual identity, a coven of witches that believe in nudity as part of any ritual, a girl who is supposed to be Simon’s love interest but is too stoned to know what’s going on, Hercules, the high-roller who can make anyone’s dream come true, and a man that ( I looked it up on IMDB to find out what they classified him as, so don’t get mad at me) is billed under “A Gay Adventurer”.  And, that’s just the cast.

The film veers off the course of normalcy immediately.  Early on Simon faces his “nemesis” that he will end up fighting several times.  It’s a big floating ball of red, complete with psychedelic sounds and a weird spinny center. There are three scenes in particular where the audience feels the utter power of the red ball (hopefully you can read sarcasm)!   In the first meeting Simon faces the ball early on.  Using just a knife and some Bruce Campbell overacting Simon is able to make the ball fade into nothing.  The second involves a dumb man, a bunch of stoners and the ball next to a potted plant on the roof of a building.  Damn that ball can shake pottery!  The final scene I’ll mention involves the red ball becoming extremely pissed off.  Not only can it knock over chairs without actually touching them, but it can open doors with NO arms!  This thing is dangerous!

This isn’t to say it’s all laughs and good times.  Oh no.  The police are on to Simon.  This starts after they stop him with a bag full of magic artifacts.  Of course, they don’t buy the whole “I’m a warlock” bit.  On top of that, Simon sucks at talking to women and he’s not really too good at picking up friends either.  But, Andrew Prine makes the role of Simon his own.  He plays a poorly written part completely straight and elevates Simon, King of the Witches to a level akin to that of Evil Dead.  I think a film with Prine and Campbell would be top notch, but that’s just wishful thinking.

There are some really nice shots in this film.  None that would fall under that art house style of filmmaking, but some of the locations (mostly inside the sewers and a basement room) allow for some interesting angles.  One of the best-looking scenes involves a naked woman, Simon, an alter, outfits that might have been stolen from King Arthur himself, a ruby laden knife and some of the dumbest incantations ever.  If you manage to keep your eyes on the screen through the tears of laughter you’ll realize it actually looks really, really cool.

It’s funny to see most of the cast didn’t go on to do much else, the director, Bruce Kessler, went on to do a bunch of TV shows, but only Andrew Prine went on with a solid film career with parts including: Grizzly, Barn of the Naked Dead, The Town Dreaded Sundown, and The Evil.  At least someone walked away from this over-the-top film with a job, even though I really would have liked to see more of Hercules in something later on, but alas, nein.

Overall Simon, King of the Witches is an awesome exploitation film that really has to be seen to be believed.  Even though it does kind of slow to a crawl for about 20 minutes as a whole it’s an excellent, cheesy film.  Anyone looking for some good laughs, ridiculous acting, horrible plot points and fights with glowing red balls of doom…look no further.

“I’m a serious practitioner of the Magical Arts!” - Simon

Here’s that opening scene I mentioned earlier: