The Sorcerers

Perhaps the much-touted multiplex generation of movie-brat directors who purport to care so much about British genre cinema should take a look at this picture some time. Reeves directed his first feature when he was only 23, already displaying the virtuosity which would make its most astonishing manifestation in Witchfinder General. The story, adapted from John Burke's novel, follows an ageing couple, the Monserrats (Karloff and Lacey), who have devised a contraption that allows them to control the minds of others and vicariously experience the world through them. This has a particular kick when they find young prey in the form of Ogilvy to experiment on. As the Monserrats play audience to their victims' living scenarios, which the couple write to their own perverse specifications, this psychedelic horror film deals with the apparatus of cinema, and it still puts the mind in a spin.