The Magus (1968)

Director: Guy Green

Starring: Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, Candice Bergen, Anna Karina, Paul Stassino, Julian Glover

More info: IMDb

Tagline: THE MAGUS plays a vicious game. The game is love. The game is lust. The game is life itself. Or is it death?

Plot: An English teacher arrives on a sleepy Greek island to take up a vacant teaching post. The last man to hold the post committed suicide under mysterious circumstances. Slowly but surely, he is drawn into a bizarre game engineered by a reclusive local magician. The deeper into the game he is drawn, the more he senses danger... yet cannot seem to untangle himself from the fascinating and compelling influence that the game is having on his mind.

My rating: 3/10

Will I watch it again? NOOOOO!

This is about as much fun as the pretentiously lame tagline suggests. Maybe this plays better in the novel but I'll never know since I don't want to go anywhere near it after seeing this flick. It's slow, dull and pointless until you get to the surprise ending. By then you've invested nearly 2 hours of "I don't care" and are ready to go. The performances are OK I guess but the movie feels so full of itself in playing us with its mind games that it loses any sense of importance or investment on the viewer's behalf. I didn't care about the characters and they didn't seem to care much either. I'm sorry I watched it. To date this is the worst Michael Caine picture I've seen. It's so bad that I'm willing to bet JAWS 4: THE REVENGE (1987) is better. Woof.