Chemical Wedding (film)

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This article is about The film. For the Bruce Dickinson album, see The Chemical Wedding. For the book, see Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz.

Chemical Wedding is a supernatural horror film produced with the London-based Focus Films. It is directed by Julian Doyle, who edited Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Time Bandits, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. The story is based on an original screenplay by Bruce Dickinson, frontman of Iron Maiden. Dickinson released a solo album entitled The Chemical Wedding in 1998, which despite sharing the title and the title track from the album featuring on the soundtrack, is otherwise unrelated.

1 Production
2 Plot
3 Soundtrack
4 References

[edit] Production

The film was originally proposed in 2000 and was to have been produced by Terry Jones' "Messiah films"^[1]. It was later adopted by Focus Films Ltd. (UK). David Pupkewitz and Malcolm Kohll produced the film, with Ben Timlett and Justin Peyton of Bill and Ben Productions and Duellist Film Production in association with MotionFX and E-Motion. Executive producers are Andy Taylor, Paul Astrom-Andrews and Peter Dale. John Shrapnel plays the original incarnation of Crowley.

Warner Music released the soundtrack of the film in the UK. Edward Noeltner's Cinema Management Group is handling world sales.^[2]^[3]. It received its world premiere at the Sci-Fi-London film festival on May 4th 2008^[4].

Dickinson, who has a small cameo role in the film, has stated that "On several levels, I think it will be nice for them [Iron Maiden fans] to see somebody from Maiden doing something else that gets the band's name out there and also potentially gets a bit of respect for heavy metal and all the rest of it....But, in addition, I think they'll just enjoy it. It's a rollicking good story."^[5]

[edit] Plot

Simon Callow stars as a Professor Oliver Haddo, a modern Cambridge scholar who becomes possessed by Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist. The plot concerns Crowley being implanted into Haddo when Haddo entered a virtual reality machine and supercomputer, which has been corrupted by a follower of Crowley, and how he creates havoc in the surrounding area and university campus.