Review of Sorcerers, The

Introduction

Director Michael Reeves is best known for the infamous Witchfinder General, a movie that wasn`t particularly popular with the British Board of Film Classification when it was released due to strong violence. I`m not familiar with any of the other movies he made in his short career, so did not know what to expect from The Sorcerers.

The movie features Boris Karloff as Professor Montserrat, who along with his wife Estelle, played by Catherine Lacey has developed a machine to control the mind and share the experiences of other people. They choose Mike Roscoe, played by Ian Ogilvy as their first patient, and both enjoy living the life of a younger man, but the power of control soon becomes too much for Estelle.

Video

The video is presented in full-frame and is not particularly impressive. For a start there are more speckles than you`d find on your average hen, and the image is very grainy and lacks both detail and focus. Other problems include a dull image, lacking in contract and colour, and a lack of image stability at times, which isn`t helped by what appear to be missing frames, which cause the film to jump on occasion.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital Mono, replayed through the front stereo pair. As you might expect from a 1967 movie with mono sound, there`s not much to say about the sound quality other than that the dialogue is clear and understandable, the music and effects are replayed to the limit of the source material.

Features

Extras consist of trailers for this film and The Witchfinder General, filmographies, production notes, an image gallery and a documentary called "Blood Beast: The Films of Michael Reeves". The documentary is very interesting and gives an insight into a director who tragically died young, only having made four movies but widely considered to have considerable talent.

The menus are static and easy to navigate.

Conclusion

This is a very bleak and frankly desperately uninteresting film, which was so dull that I almost dosed off at times. If you cast you mind back to the last offbeat sixties British movie you saw and didn`t enjoy, you`ll know what I mean. The only positive aspect of this disc is the documentary about Michael Reeves which is a great deal more interesting than the main feature, and well worth watching whether you are a fan of his movies or not. Aside from that, abysmal video quality and mediocre mono sound coupled with the exceptionally dull film make this an unattractive proposition, even at the low £12.99 asking price.

One for fans of the movie/director only.