Cagliostro Reviews

Confusing mishmash of ESP, black magic, religion, and history in the first film produced by jewel merchant Puttignani and photographer Pettinari. Fehmiu is the title character who founded the Masons in Europe shortly before the French Revolution. He combines reincarnation, ESP, and alchemy as a quasi-religious-moral response to the omnipotence of existing papal power. He is caught, tried, and sentenced to death by the Inquisition, but his sentence is reduced to life imprisonment by a new pope played by Jurgens. The formation of Fehmiu's secret society is interesting, but the script bogs down the premise by introducing an unnecessary subplot involving a lookalike who causes some trouble for Fehmiu and the Jesuits who are trying to capture him. Orson Welles does it better, if not hammier, in BLACK MAGIC.