The Sorcerers (1967)

The great hypnotist Professor Montserrat has developed a technique for controlling the minds, and sharing the sensations, of his subjects. He and his wife Estelle test the technique on Mike... See full summary »

Director:

Michael Reeves

Writers:

Michael Reeves (screenplay), Tom Baker (screenplay)

Stars:

Boris Karloff, Catherine Lacey, Elizabeth Ercy

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Boris Karloff	...	Prof. Marcus Monserrat
Catherine Lacey	...	Estelle / Estelle Monserrat
Elizabeth Ercy	...	Nicole
Ian Ogilvy	...	Mike Roscoe
Victor Henry	...	Alan
Sally Sheridan	...	Laura Ladd (as Dani Sheridan)
Alf Joint	...	Ron, the mechanic
Meier Tzelniker	...	The Jewish Baker
Gerald Campion	...	Customer in China Shop
Susan George	...	Audrey Woods
Ivor Dean	...	Insp. Matalon
Peter Fraser	...	Detective George
Martin Terry	...	Tobacconist
Bill Barnsley	...	Constable in Fur Store
Maureen Booth	...	Dancer (as Maureen Boothe)

Storyline

The great hypnotist Professor Montserrat has developed a technique for controlling the minds, and sharing the sensations, of his subjects. He and his wife Estelle test the technique on Mike Roscoe, and enjoy 'being' the younger man. But Estelle soon grows to love the power of controlling Roscoe, and the vicarious pleasures that provides. How far will she go, and can the Professor restrain her in time?

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Plot Keywords:

hypnotist | memory hole | mind control | nightclub | murder | 

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Taglines:

Boris Karloff He Turns Them On...He Turns Them Off...to live...love...die or KILL!

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Genres:

Horror | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

November 1967 (USA)

Also Known As:

För ung att dö

Filming Locations:

West London Studios, London, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Curtwel Productions,Global,Tigon

Technical Specs

Runtime:

86 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor) (uncredited)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Catherine Lacey won the Best Actress award at the Trieste Film Festival for her role in this film.

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Goofs

When Mike arrives at Nicole's apartment, she puts a record on the phonograph. Mike sits and looks through a magazine as the song plays. When he leaves, the music has stopped and the phonograph is off with the arm on the rest. Nicole comes in a moment later and the turntable is still moving with the arm in the center of the record.

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Connections

Featured in British Film Forever: Magic, Murder and Monsters: The Story of British Horror and Fantasy (2007)

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Soundtracks

Your Love
Sung by Toni Daly
Played by Lee Grant & The Capitols (as Lee Grant and the Capitols)

User Reviews

Tenser and denser than most Brit horror flicks

Those commenters who have lamented the invisibility of Michael Reeves's second feature will be glad to know it was networked on Britain's biggest channel, BBC1, on 7 January. "The Sorcerers" is one of the movies that makes one feel a fresh evaluation of Tony Tenser's Tigon (and of Amicus, the other little brother of Hammer in the spooky and gory area) is overdue.

No need to exaggerate the merits of this prentice work by the 23-year-old Great White Forlorn Hope. It has the budget and look of a made-for-television movie (Euston Films, maybe?) and falls somewhere between "Peeping Tom" and "Performance" in its conflation of traditional horror/fantasy and Swinging London elements. The first scene of Karloff sparring with a newsagent recalls Miles Malleson poring over dirty postcards in Michael Powell's masterwork. Ian Ogilvy's eternal triangle in and around a nightclub-- interrupted by the increasingly criminal forays on which he is sent by the mind-controlling Montserrats-- has a touch of James Fox's peregrinations as the hoodlum whose brain is warped by contact with Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg.

Like Fox, Ogilvy was a public schoolboy (Eton) here convincingly playing rough trade. His junk shop, cheekily named "The Glory Hole", is in Lisson Grove, not far from the infamous Bayswater pad of "Performance". A comparison of Reeves and Donald Cammell as sceptical observers of the Flower Power era might keep a film studies thesis-writer busy.

However, the film belongs to Karloff and Catherine Lacey, the puppetmasters of mesmerism. Boris, aged 80, is doing his last work in his native land. He is clearly tired and spends most of the runtime sitting or sprawling. He is in his mellow, "Targets" phase: bearded, gaunt, hollow-eyed and lined, that beautifully sepulchral voice still able to veer from sinister implication to moral authority within a few syllables. After a career of kindly spinsters, Miss Lacey must have relished her Grand Guignol, orgasmic turn as the wife who has to dominate her hubby before she can possess a younger male psyche and make Ogilvy into a serial killer.

Connoisseurs of Britflix will enjoy spotting Gerald Campion, the former Billy Bunter of BBC TV, as a queer customer of The Glory Hole; Susan George, junior sexpot, just 17 and already acting like a hardened good time girl; Meier Tzelniker, stalwart of the Yiddish theatre and singer of "Nausea" in "Expresso Bongo", as a café owner; Alf Joint, veteran stuntman, as the repair shop foreman; and Ivor Dean as the archetypal CID man with belted mac and pipe.