Sob o Poder da Maldade

Anyone even vaguely interested in British horror cinema will be well acquainted with the resume of Michael Reeves. Retrospectively crowned the great white hope who-never-was by genre commentators like Kim Newman and Allan 'Dark Side' Bryce, Reeves' work showed the promise of an English Spielberg. Or possibly just another Peter Sasdy. Unfortunately we'll never know, as his life was truncated by an overdose of sleeping pills. But on the evidence of this film and it's successor,'Witchfinder General', it's clear that he possessed a genuinely cinematic imagination to rival young Steven's. A quality all too rare in British film.

'Witchfinder' is good. Very good. But on balance I prefer this piece. Perhaps that's partly a personal reaction to the rather inflated claims made for Reeves' last film by certain critics, who seek to present it as the work of a suicidal soul-in-torment auteur. C'mon fellas. 'The Sorcerers' is quirky and takes itself slightly too seriously, resulting in a strange, enjoyably naive atmosphere. I particularly enjoy the unique screen presence of Victor Henry, who plays Ian Ogilvy's ginger haired friend Alan. I was saddened to learn (via the ever-educational IMDb) that he was involved in a road traffic accident not too long after making this film, and spent the last 17 years of his short life in a vegetative state. Another potential talent lost.

Ignore the wits who claim that this is a work which dissects and critiques the function and form of cinema itself, etc, etc. These people create subtexts for Pete Walker films in their spare time. Enjoy it simply as a movie where Ian Ogilvy listens to Cliff Richard's 'Out in the country' on his dansette, and then slashes up Susan George with a pair of scissors.

Hey. 'Wired for sound' gets me the same way.

A decent low-budget horror-thriller given extra class by the presence of Boris Karloff and Catherine Lacey.Future Saint actor Ian Ogilvy is hypnotised and brainwashed by the above elderly couple into committing increasingly violent acts,as Miss Lacey gradually succumbs to megalomania and madness,while a gentle,stable-minded Boris is left helpless in stopping his wife's crazy actions.

Some of the pop music and the labyrinth Night-Club is interesting,as is the appearance of a young Susan George,whose grisly fate was to repeated in subsequent roles through her film career.Notable also for Victor Henry,a young actor whose promising future was tragically cut short several years later by injuries he suffered in a road accident.He spent the rest of his life in a coma before dying in 1985.

In London, the merchant Mike Roscoe (Ian Ogilvy) and his girlfriend Nicole (Elizabeth Ercy) go to a nightclub to dance. When they meet their friend Alan (Victor Henry), he dances with Nicole while Mike goes to a nearby bar. Meanwhile, the hypnotist Prof. Marcus Monserrat (Boris Karloff) has developed a piece of equipment for controlling minds and decides to seek out a guinea pig on the streets to test the device. He meets Mike in the bar and invites him home, where he introduces his wife Estelle Monserrat (Catherine Lacey) to the youngster. They test the system on Mike, controlling his mind and sharing his feelings. However the wicked Estelle enjoys the sensation and decides to use Mike in evil acts, and Marcus is incapable to control his wife. What will Estelle do with Mike and will Marcus succeed in stopping his deranged wife?

"The Sorcerers" is an atmospheric horror movie with an original story. Catherine Lacey has an impressive performance in the role of a wicked old lady that becomes addicted in sensations of the youth and transgressions. Susan George has a minor part in the beginning of her successful career. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Sob o Poder da Maldade" ("Under the Power of the Malevolence")

The once great hypnotist Prof Marcus Montserrat has fallen on hard times since being ridiculed by the press. He now lives in a tiny flat with his loyal wife, selling his services in the window of newsagents. His master project of mind control sits without a subject until wife Estelle hits on the idea of offering the mind-control device as some sort of wild new trip to a generally disaffected youth looking for the next thrill. With this they manage to recruit one Mike Roscoe and find that they can influence his actions and also experience the sensations that he is feeling, whether it is washing his hands or the flutter of desire for a young woman. The power of the device demonstrated, Marcus has plans for the direction it will go but Estelle finds the ability to experience youthful sensations again in your young body to be a great gift that she is unwilling to part with so easily.

Everything about this film screams that it will be poor. From the very start we learn that it is dated by throwing in so many "hip" aspects in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience while also being a film late in the life of Boris Karloff where it appears he has selected it because it means most of his scenes are done indoors. The gaudy colour/cinematography doesn't help either and within about ten minutes I could feel my brain writing this review already – dismissing it as a trashy piece of 60's trash, trading on "hip" clichés of youth and music while also alluding to better by having Karloff at the head of the cast. To some extent this first impression is correct because it is very much all of these things but yet it manages to have enough about the central plot to prevent it being a cheap and easy horror film but is something better.

It does this by making the scenes with the Monsterrats the most important and engaging scenes in the film and all the 1960's trimmings and young people remain just that – trimmings. The real battle is occurring within this tiny front room and somehow the two cast members manage to make this work despite spending most of their time pretending to feel stuff or concentrating really hard with their eyes closed. Sure Karloff is the star here and does do good work but the film is stolen by a great turn from Catherine Lacey as his wife Estelle. Her fall into madness is well delivered and she becomes the dark heart to the story, even overpowering Karloff himself. Outside of these two the film is generic young people. Ogilvy does reasonably well to convince at being controlled, Ercy and Henry run around and Sheridan looks drop-dead gorgeous. As director Reeves is guilty of some obvious shots and places but when he is in the flat with just Lacey and Karloff, he does manage to produce a genuinely tense atmosphere that is maintained in that room all the way to the memorable final shot.

The Sorcerers is not a perfect film by any means but it is much better than I thought it would be and much better than all the trimmings suggest it deserves to be. It has dated and is deliberately "hip" but it works thanks to Karloff, Lacey and some genuine tension in the confines of a grotty little flat.

It is really astonishing to see how movies from the sixties could get to be very exciting in the horror genre, hardly using any special effects and relying exclusively on the acting of the cast. In this goo die, the old lady really scared me with her eager emotions and the well played desire to live a more dangerous life. Though not really exceptional in one way or the other, the movie creates a very realistic and horrid atmosphere, based upon the simple assumption of mind control. When compared to modern horror movies where bad acting seems to be a basic requirement, the attention is constantly drawn to the tits of the leading, utterly stupid actresses, and the only -supposed to be - scary effect is raised by some fast moving camera shots and horrid gore scenes, this film is a real gem. It furthermore charmed me as a documentary of the sixties, as in a no nonsense style the popular youth culture is shown as it must have been...