{"id":973,"date":"2008-01-19T23:32:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-19T23:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=973"},"modified":"2008-01-19T23:32:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-19T23:32:00","slug":"review-beyond-lemuria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=973","title":{"rendered":"Review: Beyond Lemuria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine that cult film director Ed Wood<\/a> was also a ceremonial magician.<\/p>\n

Or imagine a merger of Dion Fortune<\/a> and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark<\/a>. She would be perfect to introduce this film.<\/p>\n

Imagine giant caverns underground<\/a> filled with degenerate descendants of the Lemurians<\/a>, accessible from the lower slopes of Mount Shasta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you can imagine all that, you should watch Beyond Lemuria<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Written by Poke Runyon, well-known in West Coast Pagan and magickal circles<\/a>, and including several other veterans of that scene in its cast (as well as some much younger and cuter actresses to balance the mostly mature male cast), the movie was clearly a labor of love, with the director and cast enjoying themselves almost too much.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t have an occult thriller without swirling visual vortices or bits of Central European menace: a black magician with a \u201cbroomhandle\u201d Mauser pistol<\/a> strapped over his robe, or a sinister Romanian carrying (oddly) the Hungarian name of \u201cZoltan.\u201d And black magic must work, because that particular cabal seems not to need California license plates on their black SUV<\/a>. Evidently they are invisible to the cops.<\/p>\n

At the heart of Beyond Lemuria<\/i> are a 19th-century occult bestseller, A Dweller on Two Planets<\/em><\/a>, by Frederick Spencer Oliver and the \u201cShaver Mystery<\/a>,\u201d which sustained the sales of the old SF pulp magazine Amazing Stories<\/em><\/a> for years, not to mention being a staple topic in Fate<\/em><\/a> magazine as well.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the good guys are all good and seek enlightenment. The bad guys are bad and seek power. \u201cOther members of the expedition were expendable,\u201d sneers the chief baddie. <\/p>\n

A young initiate must choose between two paths. But evil is never permanently defeated.<\/p>\n

You will have to buy it from the filmmakers<\/a> or from Amazon<\/a>, because you won\u2019t find this occult thriller at Netflix or showing at the local cineplex. But once you own a copy, you can add it to your \u201cmidnight movie\u201d collection. Think of it as Plan 9 from Inner Space<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Best line: \u201cNow I don’t care how politically correct and liberal you people are, believe me, these aliens are not people you want to have for your next-door neighbors,\u201d delivered by Poke Runyon\u2019s character of an over-the-top anthropology professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine that cult film director Ed Wood was also a ceremonial magician. Or imagine a merger of Dion Fortune and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. She would be perfect to introduce this film. Imagine giant caverns underground filled with degenerate descendants of the Lemurians, accessible from the lower slopes of Mount Shasta. If you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[75,72,36],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-california","tag-magick","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-fH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5954,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5954","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":0},"title":"Oceania Has Always Been at War with Lemuria","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Los Angeles Review of Books offers a review of two books on Ray Palmer, the Shaver Mystery, and pulp-esoteric publishing of the 1940s\u201350s: The War Over Lemuria and The Man from Mars : Ray Palmer's Amazing Pulp Journey. From the review: Of course, the underground worlds of Richard Shaver\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Chicago\"","block_context":{"text":"Chicago","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chicago"},"img":{"alt_text":"51119-243x366","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/51119-243x366.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5425,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5425","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":1},"title":"On the Science of How Plants Talk to Each Other","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine this, a kernal (heh) of truth: Sound is so fundamental to life that some scientists now think there's a kernel of truth to folklore that holds humans can commune with plants. And plants may use sound to communicate with one another. Do beetles eavesdrop on drought-stressed pine trees? Maybe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"folklore\"","block_context":{"text":"folklore","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=folklore"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":220,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=220","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":2},"title":"The Poison Path and Fatal Fronds","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"While I was in England, M. was Web-searching and turned up the Duchess of Northumberland's \"poison garden,\" which I would like to see today. Part of a much larger garden complex that is under construction but still attracting busloads of garden-loving Brits, it has gotten a lot of press. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.icnetwork.co.uk\/upl\/nejournal\/mar2010\/4\/1\/duchess-of-northumberland-334905528.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2307,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2307","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":3},"title":"Trademarking Your Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"At the Washington Post's \"Under God\" blog, a story about how the Seventh-Day Adventist church guards its trademark\u2014even against other Adventists. This has got me thinking: will all religions end up trademarked? Do you need intellectual-property lawyers and copyright lawyers to be a \"real religion\"? Imagine trademarking \"Witch.\" Someone in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5590,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5590","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":4},"title":"Survey: Your Spiritual Relationship with Animals","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Sabina Magliocco, anthropologist and folklorist and author of Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America, among other books, has a new research project underway on people's spiritual relationships with animals. The purpose of this study is to understand how we imagine our relationship to animals, how we incorporate animals into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animals\"","block_context":{"text":"animals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2123,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2123","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":5},"title":"The Revenants’ Tales and What They Tell Us","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few key ideas hold the promise of keeping Pagan religions distinct from the people who go around claiming the \"all Truth is one\" etc. (When I hear that, I also hear \"You will be assimilated.\") An obvious one is polytheism. Another is the concept of the multiple soul, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}