The Sorcerers (1967)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

As Good As It Gets

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Prof. Marcus Monserrat (Boris Karloff) is a nice old hypnotist who has been working on a strange experiment. He's found a way to use his powers and some machinery that would allow someone to plug in to another person and experience what that person experiences. His idea is to use it to allow the elderly and infirmed to experience life. An example would be having a young person go on a wonderful vacation and the controller could stay home and have the same experience. However, there's a problem....his wife Estelle (Catherine Lacey). She is not such a nice and selfless person and she wants to use this machinery to control their subject to commit a theft and later have sex. And, she finds the thrill of this exhilarating. Will this be enough? And, if not, what's next? Plus, the Professor is very weak willed...and the further she goes, the more he allows himself to be pulled in with her...to a point. But is his will as strong as hers and just how far is she willing to take her subject?I like this film because it has a lot to say about human nature...and the worst of it. Estelle turns out to be a truly vile individual...and it's entertaining to watch her. So, instead of a traditional monster, like you'd expect in many Karloff films, she's a supposedly normal person who does monstrous things. While the film glosses over it, it's also interesting because when she uses her subject to have sex, she is experiencing sex as a man with a woman...something rather risqué for the 1960s. I also like the film because although the budget appears to be minimal, they make the most of it. Good writing, writing and direction can do a lot to make up for this shortcoming. Because of this, I was pleasantly surprised...especially quite a few of Karloff's later films (with a few exceptions, such as "Targets") were pretty bad.

Yes indeed, the Swinging Sixties were sexy, years before life-threatening STDs, political correctness and exploitative commercialism ruined it all. And pop music was great too, before it was compromised by self-indulgent overproduction and that same rampant commercialism.Ian Ogilvy (much cooler than David Hemmings as a prematurely jaded hipster) and the luscious Euro-babe Elizabeth Ercy make appealing leads, and get to strip down to their undies for a furtive swim that is simultaneously erotic and innocent, like Weissmuller and O'Sullivan before them. She also gets to wear a knockout peekaboo mesh outfit later on. A teenage Susan George shows off her bedroom eyes and flashes her yellow panties to great effect in the film's most effective thrill scene. And pouty-lipped Sally Sheridan (mom of Nicolette) coolly lip-syncs to a great garage tune (actually sung by a wonderfully brassy Toni Daly), with the low-angle camera appreciating how she sports her clingy chiffon mini-dress. Check out all those turned-on necking couples in the background. (By the way, I think Karloff is in the film, too.) It all brings to mind Mimsy Farmer's outrageously provocative LSD-fuelled dance in "Riot on Sunset Strip", Jane Asher's sultry seductiveness in "Deep End", and all those whacked-out Sergio Martino giallos.

The Sorcerers is directed by Michael Reeves who also co-writes the screenplay with Tom Baker from an original idea written by John Burke. It stars Boris Karloff, Ian Ogilvy, Catherine Lacey, Victor Henry and Elizabeth Ercy. Music is by Paul Ferris and cinematography by Stanley A. Long.When aged scientist Marcus Monserrat (Karloff) tries a new hypnosis machine on bored young man Mike Roscoe (Ogilvy), he and his wife find they can control his actions and experience what he is experiencing. Initially this breakthrough is a rewarding one, but Marcus' wife Estelle (Lacey) wants more and soon things start to get decidedly amoral.Michael Reeves sadly died of an accidental drug overdose aged just 25, this having crafted the Cruel Britania brilliance that was Witchfinder General. Prior to that he helmed The Sorcerers, an equally great production, a sci-fi horror fusion that pulses with a pessimistic tone. There's no great budget for the talented young director to work with, but it barely matters, in fact it benefits the film greatly, as the two elders (Karloff wonderful, Lacey magnificent) live vicariously through Roscoe's (Ogilvy fresh faced and perfectly exuding a bored man after further thrills) misadventures. But the kicker here is that it is Karloff's scientist who recognises things are going out of control, and it is he who strives to stop his obsessed wife from committing heinous acts.Set to the backdrop of swinging sixties London, with mini skirts, Brit pop music and Norton motorbikes firm period reminders, The Sorcerers captures the zeitgeist of the time. Blending psychedelia with sci-fi and amoral horror with wistful yearnings, film comes out as an original piece of work. Thematically, as has been noted by the critics who have afforded this under seen classic some time, it says youth is wasted on the young while also planting us the film viewer in the metaphor chair. If Reeves was being caustic we will never know, sadly, but it does bear thinking about in light of how horror films, and their blood thirsty fans, would evolve come the millennium. Michael Reeves a visionary?From Lacey bringing one of horror's forgotten monsters to life, to a no cop out ending of pure bleakness, The Sorcerers never lets up on gnawing away at the senses. An original film made by an original director, and deserving of more widespread exposure. 8/10

This is a long way from 'Performance', even further than Lisson Grove (St. John's Wood) is from Powis Square (Notting Hill).Watching on BBC2 in 2008 one immediately supposes that the motive for th elderly couple will be to experience something erotic but it is very British, and very 1960's that the only seduction is that of the Professor's initially benign wife into avarice and violence. The film is misogynistic and of course sensational but the subtext that subversion of free will - and there are clear parallels and references to hallucinogens and other 'recreational' drugs - leads to suggestibility and is close to inviting mind control.The denouement is comical as the Police Inspector ushers the two protagonists back to the patrol car - superbly driven in the chase scene, its lumbering spin off the road is memorable - and instructs the driver to chauffeur them home. Case closed.