Savant PAL Region 2 Guest Review: THE SORCERERS The Sorcerers Prism Leisure Corp. 1967 / Color / 1.66 anamorphic wide screen / 87m. / Street Date September 1, 2003 / �5.99 Starring Boris Karloff, Ian Ogilvy, Victor Henry, Elizabeth Ercy, Susan George, and Catherine Lacey Cinematography by Stanley A. Long Art Direction Tony Curtis Film Editors Susan Michie, Ralph Sheldon, and David Woodward Original Music Paul Ferris Written by Michael Reeves and Tom Baker suggested by a story by John Burke Produced by Patrick Curtis, Arnold L. Miller, Michael Reeves, and Tony Tenser Directed by Michael Reeves
	Reviewed by Stuart Galbraith IV British Director Michael Reeves is remembered almost exclusively for Matthew Hopkins-Witchfinder General (1968, released in the U.S. by AIP as The Conqueror Worm), the excellent if grim cult film starring Vincent Price, and for Reeves's accidental overdose/suicide the following year. He was only 24 years old when he died, and ever since fans and film scholars alike have speculated on what might have been had this promising talent not been lost in a sea of alcohol, drugs, and deep depression. Reeves had only directed two features prior to Witchfinder General. The made-in-Italy Revenge of the Blood Beast (La Sorella di Satana, 1966), released in America as She-Beast is a lively but amateurish no-budget no-brainer, but his next film was something else entirely. The Sorcerers (1967), Reeves's second film, is shamelessly neglected. It was, obviously, overshadowed by the popular and more artistically-recognized Witchfinder General, and by Reeves's death soon thereafter. In this home video age, Witchfinder's reputation has only swelled with time, with M-G-M painstakingly restoring Reeves's preferred cut for DVD release next year. The Sorcerers isn't as fashionably nihilistic or unflinchingly bleak as Witchfinder, but it equally impressive in many ways, and just like Reeves's final work, it's a genuine original. Synopsis: Discredited hypnotist/inventor Marcus Monserrat (Boris Karloff), working out of his shabby apartment, has invented a technique for controlling minds. Picking up Mike Roscoe (Ian Ogilvy), a young man looking for new mind-altering thrills, Monserrat and his assistant-wife Estelle (Catherine Lacey) alter the unwitting man's mind with their Ipcress File-like contraption. The elderly couple, as it turns out, can not only control Mike's actions from afar, but their thought control actually extends to experiencing Mike's physical sensations as well. This proves too tempting for the long-suffering Estelle. She becomes addicted to living vicariously through the young man, whom she soon has committing the most heinous of crimes. The Sorcerers has been described as an engaging pot pourri of genres: classic mad doctor stuff, psychedelic science fiction, angry Mod melodrama. But it's really much more than that. The heart of The Sorcerers is its multi-generational story of liberation and addiction. On one hand you have Ogilvy's aimless mechanic, a man whose hallucinogenic experiences are taking him nowhere fast until Boris Karloff meets him at a burger joint and offers to fry his brain for him. (Reeves even cuts to a hamburger patty sizzling away in a clumsy shock cut.) Karloff spent his last few years alternating between respectable TV guest shots and mostly wretched movie roles. His semi-autobiographical turn as aging horror star Byron Orlok in Targets (1968), much like Witchfinder General did with The Sorcerers, completely overshadowed his fine work here. What's interesting is that The Sorcerers casts Karloff against type; he spends most of the film horrified by his wife's transformation and weakly attempts to rein her in. She's played with blissful immorality by Catherine Lacey, who had a long career stretching back to at least the late-1930s, when she assayed the role of the creepy nun in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). In later years Lacey was wasted in such trifles as Hammer's The Mummy's Shroud where she cackled maniacally in the role of an old Gypsy-hag. In The Sorcerers, though, the two veteran actors really get to show their stuff. They appear to have rehearsed pretty intensely judging by the impressive intimacy in their performances. Part of that effectiveness is also expressed through their environment, depressingly realized through Reeves's probing camera. Karloff isn't working out of some Expressionistic castle in Vasaria, but rather out of a run-down, dilapidated flat with laboratory equipment that looks like it was purchased at the corner flea market. In this sense, the picture's ridiculously low budget, reportedly somewhere between $62,000 - $125,000, inadvertently helps convey the Monserrats' desperation. That's equally true of the actors themselves. Karloff, who by 1967 could barely walk and appears pretty frail, and Lacey, looking wrinkled and haggard, play characters living on borrowed time with one foot in the nursing home. Karloff naívely hopes to bring relief to his aged generation with his magical invention that can transmit youthful pleasures to their weary bodies. But neither he nor this wife had realized just how liberating and intoxicating the experience could be or, in Estelle's case, how the many years of poverty and withering health had instilled a repressed rage against no one in particular. Screw the rest of the world, she seems to be saying, and at once begins making up for lost time. In one sense, who can blame her? She may be no better than the mini-skirt mob tripping on LSD at the disco, but life hasn't sucked the youth out of them like it has her. Lacey gives the character a horrifying arc from sympathetic senior to one of frightening wickedness and sadism. When her addiction to the mind control becomes so powerful she stands ready to kill her husband without the least hesitation, she is truly horrifying. It's one of the most overlooked performances in the history of horror cinema. Ian Ogilvy is the nominal hero, but once his character stumbles upon what Estelle promises as "ecstasy with no consequences," his character is really little more than a pawn for Karloff and Lacey's mischief, and the character's inability to remember any of his increasingly brutal crimes sidesteps a further layer of complexity that might have made The Sorcerers a genuine classic of the genre. Of the younger cast members, Victor Henry stands out most as Alan, a well-drawn best friend to Ogilvy's Mike and simultaneously if timidly in love with Mike's sometime girlfriend Nicole (Elizabeth Ercy). Torn between loyalty to his friend while wanting to seize upon Mike's inexplicably unpleasant behavior and catch Nicole on the rebound, Henry paints a complex character with a natural uneasy intensity. He might have been a major talent had he not suffered a fate even more tragic than Reeves's. After making just one more film Henry was reportedly in a vegetative state for 17 years before finally dying in 1985. The Sorcerers was originally released in the United States by Allied Artists, but I have no idea who, if anyone, has home video rights now (possibly Warner Bros., who split much of the AA library with MGM). While MGM readies its much-anticipated DVD release of Witchfinder General, one can only hope that The Sorcerers might someday get the attention it deserves, too. Video & Audio The Sorcerers was released in the United Kingdom under the Prism label, which also has put out a restored British cut of Witchfinder General. The Sorcerers is in 16:9 format with adequate Dolby Digital mono sound and no subtitles. The transfer is a mixed bag - the transfer itself is generally fine, but the material used appears to have been an original print, complete with reel change cues and wear-related splices and speckles. However, the color is good for a 35-year-old element, and the image is sharp. Like the movie itself, this was obviously done on the cheap, but also with affectionate care. For myself, the dirt and splices didn't bother me at all. The movie didn't seem to be missing more than a frame or two of footage, and it was nice to watch a DVD that constantly reminded me I was watching a film and not something digitally sterilized into videodom. (This is quite different from the junky DVDs from uncaring labels that release public domain titles using poor elements that are sloppily transferred and authored.) Shot in 1.66 format, the opening titles appear cut off slightly at the top, at least on my widescreen projection set (which presumably overscans a bit), and the first reel or so likewise appears framed too tightly, with not enough headroom, rather like the oft-criticized Hammer DVDs released by Warner Bros. This seems to go away after a while, though, and is only a minor distraction. Extras Even those who might be disappointed with the transfer will want The Sorcerers for its generous extras. First are 16:9 trailers of both The Sorcerers and Matthew Hopkins - Witchfinder General. The latter trailer is especially interesting; quite unlike AIP's American release, Tigon attempts to sell the film as a prestigious historical drama that meticulously recreates both the beauty and horror of Olde England. Next is a 23-minute documentary, also 16:9, Blood Beast: The Films of Michael Reeves, produced in 1999. It offers a nice overview of the director's career featuring interviews with (a well-preserved) Ian Ogilvy, Tigon head Tony Tenser, screenwriter Tom Baker, producer Paul Maslansky, and Hilary Dwyer, the actress-turned-producer who co-starred in Witchfinder General. Kim Newman, who also appears in the documentary, contributes thoughtful and informative production notes. Filmographies and a gallery round out this nice set of supplements. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, The Sorcerers rates: Movie: Very Good Video: Good Transfer, Old Print Sound: Good Extras: see above Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: November 5, 2003 [Savant Main Page] [Savant Links] [Article Index] [Review Index] [Savant 5 Year Report] DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson Advertise With Us Review Staff | About DVD Talk | Newsletter Subscribe | Join DVD Talk Forum Copyright © DVDTalk.com All rights reserved | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use