Simon Sinerstari (played by Andrew Prine) opens the film by telling us that although some people call him a warlock, he's really a modern day wizard, a practitioner of some ancient rituals and a man of some power in these regards. When the picture starts, Simon lives in a drain pipe but soon enough the cops pick him up for vagrancy. While he's spending the night in jail he meets a young man named Turk (George Paulsin) who takes an unusual interest in Simon and his magic.

The pair strikes up a friendship and once they get out of jail Turk introduces Simon to some of his friends starting with a hipster named Hercules (Gerald York) who pays Simon to perform at a party he's hosting. While he's at the party, he meets a cute little number named Linda (Brenda Scott) with a penchant for dope who also happens to be the daughter of the local district attorney. As time moves on and Simon becomes a bigger and bigger part of the scene, he does a few favors for some of the players but when Simon gets screwed over on a payment owed to him he proves that his powers are no joke. He and Linda indulge in some bizarre ceremonies and soon a narcotics officer is trying to frame Simon. This doesn't go over so well and it forces Simon to cast a few spells to exact his revenge and save his own skin.

Not so much the straight up horror movie that the trailer and packaging make it out to be, Simon King Of The Witches is a trippy film whose success lies on Prine's excellent lead performance and on a few key set pieces involving occult rituals. The character development and plot aren't particularly strong but Prine is good enough that he does make for a fascinating character and the periodic doses of 'magik' give the picture enough visual flair that it is a fairly entertaining movie. Prine's Simon is much more of a beatnik/reclusive hippy than threatening black magician and he's not really the villain of the film as the marketing campaign might have you believe. There's also a strange comedic vibe running through the film involving some of Turk's sexual escapades and some of Simon's smart ass dialogue.

Highlighted by a strange scene of ritual involving naked ladies and a goat, Simon King Of The Witches is more psychedelic than frightening but it's never the less quite an enjoyable and entertaining seventies cinematic oddity. The camerawork is stylish and at times surrealist and the optical effects used in a couple of scenes are the weird icing on an already very strange cake.

Video:

Simon King Of The Witches looks good on this DVD, presented here in what looks like its original aspect ratio framed at 1.78.1 and enhanced for anamorphic sets. There is some grain and a bit of mild print damage throughout but the key word here is minor, as it isn't ever really distracting or annoying. Some mild shimmering pops up now and again but color reproduction looks good and there aren't any issues with mpeg compression artifacts or heavy edge enhancement.