The Sorcerers (1967) stars 79 year-old horror icon Boris Karloff in one of his last fully ambulatory roles; while shooting Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968) later that same year, the actor was significantly more limited in his movements and by The Crimson Cult (US: Curse of the Crimson Alter, 1968) he was confined to the wheelchair in which he ended his lengthy and laudable career. The second feature film by British up-and-comer Michael Reeves, The Sorcerers marks a return to Karloff's genre roots as a brilliant, misunderstood and ultimately misguided scientist years ahead of the curve, but with an emphasis on sexual frankness and violence that was light years beyond his classic assignments for Universal, Columbia, and RKO Radio Pictures. A precursor to the virtual reality thrillers of the New Millennium (yet with a backward glance at Michael Powell's controversial 1960 shocker Peeping Tom), The Sorcerers finds Karloff and sickly wife Catherine Lacey living vicariously through the decadence of bachelor guinea pig Ian Ogilvy, whom Lacey (in full-on Lady Macbeth mode) pushes towards escalating cruelties that culminate in serial murder and a fiery climax. Michael Reeve's next film was the equally grim Witchfinder General (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968), with Ogilvy and Vincent Price but his cinematic ascendancy stopped cold at age 25; Reeves' death by accidental barbiturate overdose in February 1969 came only a week after Karloff's passing from natural causes at age 82.

By Richard Harland Smith