FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY
Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, May 5, 1973…it was a big day in our locality. Jeffersonville, Indiana, where I lived, was immediately across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. In most senses, Jeff was a suburb of Louisville (just don’t tell any Jeffersonvillians that I said that). So the doings of Louisvillians were our doings as well and today was the biggest day of the year in our area. It was Derby Day! As the day began, things looked good for the race favorite, Sham. But, unfortunately for that nice horsie, there was a tall, beautiful stallion in the field name of…Secretariat. Arguably—and frankly there’s not much argument about it—the greatest thoroughbred racehorse of all time…
And me? Still married, still between shows, probably working a lot for my dad. Just bein’ an electrician, working long hours, bringing light and heat and power for the toaster to middle America! God bless me!
Today’s movie showed up on Channel 32’s late movie. I was looking forward to this one. It was one of the last films of The King of Horror, Boris Karloff. This night I got to see…
THE SORCERERS
I had no chance to see this in a theater, though I came close. One evening, late 60s, I took a long country drive. This led me toward Paoli, Indiana. I’d passed through the area several times a couple of years earlier when I was doing a show nearby. But this night, I just needed a nice drive and I remembered the roads being good and the countryside attractive, so off I went.
On my way home, I passed the Paoli Drive-in Theater. There, on the marquee, I could read THE SORCERERS. Having heard of it from the monster magazines, I knew it was something of a big deal because of Karloff.
I’m not sure, after 50 years, why I didn’t just pull in and see it that night. Best possibility: Some of these small drive-ins only opened on weekends, so maybe it wasn’t even open that night.
Couple of days later, I drove back to Paoli, in hopes of seeing the movie. The drive-in was open, but an entirely different, and not interesting, bill showed on the marquee. Thus, u-turn and straight home. That was my only shot at seeing THE SORCERERS at a theater.
Between it starring Karloff and my having a short history of missing it, the movie was a double-dang must-see for me.
I enjoyed THE SORCERERS that night but wasn’t blown away. And 50 years later, never having seen it again, I remember almost nothing about it. I can envision Karloff sitting in a small, sad apartment…and, yeah, that’s about it.
So it’s high time to see it again, and here we go…
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It was nice and very surprising to see Karloff walking so much and so well. Strolling through London streets, even with a cane, he seems almost nimble. Most of his latter-year movies find him either in a wheelchair or looking very much as if he should be in a wheelchair…
He does look old as the hills and, probably for the first time in his long career, he seems to wear no makeup at all. His true dark complexion is on full display, blotches, bags, wrinkles and all. Ironic, I suppose, because did any major actor spend more of his screen time buried under gloop and grime?…
This movie, much more than the highly vaunted WITCHFINDER GENERAL, makes me regret the too-early loss of Michael Reeves to the movie world…
The acting is topnotch, at least in the leading roles. Catherine Lacey and Ian Ogilvy are excellent and Karloff is even better, bless him. The old trouper still getting it done. In fact, apart from TARGETS and his small role in COMEDY OF TERRORS, this is probably the best film performance in the last decade of his career. He’s very good…
At one point, Ian Ogilvy speaks the line, “I have my own personal Open Cesare.” Of course, this should be “Open Sesame”. No idea if one should blame Ogilvy or the script, but it does make his character sound a little dopey…
The speeding motorcycle scene is pretty good but kind of dangerous. Clearly it was shot guerrilla style with Ogilvy and his leading lady actually on the bike. I doubt the movie’s insurers (if there were any) would have approved…
The movie is obviously extremely low-budget. Matter of fact, between the skimpiness and the plot line, this could almost have served as the fifth of Boris’s Mexican movies. If not, that is, for the acting and the sheer smarts of the thing…
But it’s not all Peaches and Sunflowers. Some of the sound recording is pretty bad (the result of low budget and real locations, I assume), some minor role actors aren’t really up to it, there are a few slow, unfilled moments (not enough meat on the script to go around), the locations have the benefit of being real, but are, nevertheless, small and tight and drab…
But all those negatives are outweighed by the genuine talent and energy of its very young director and its very old star.
Meanwhile, monsters were everydamnwhere.
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