Plot
A wave of beautiful young women are disfiguring themselves in shocking ways. The police eventually determine that all the victims had attended performances of a popular stage hypnotist known as The Great Desmond. Dressed in white tie and tails, the suave and exotic performer genuinely puts on quite a show with his hypnotic exploits, making volunteers from the audience perform ridiculous and/or seemingly impossible stunts on stage.
But in reality Desmond is a sadistic charlatan using his talents for evil ends, whispering secret hypnotic orders to certain female audience members selected to join him on stage – orders that override their willpower and resistance, compelling them to later carry out these grisly self-destructive acts.
But the root of the evil extends deeper still – it turns out that Desmond is in the thrall of his disfigured assistant Justine, who is so jealous of other women’s beauty that she maniacally hunts for victims to be compelled to mutilate themselves.
I want to give each of you the opportunity to experience the sensation of hypnosis...
Critique
4Mediocre B movie from the early 1960s, George Blair’s “The Hypnotic Eye” taps into the sensational topic of hypnosis, unfortunately giving it a shallow, pop-culture treatment. The film proceeds like a boring crime drama until reaching a pat conclusion in a muddled finale that culminates with the doctor in the film breaking the fourth wall to deliver a pseudo-educational admonition against playing with hypnotism (“Never allow yourself to by hypnotized by anyone who is not a medical doctor […] not even in a motion-picture theater“).
The film suffers on the pacing front – too much time is devoted to the hypnotist’s performances in what was a lame marketing gimmick where the audience would supposedly risk falling under the evil mesmerist’s spell, right along with the characters, in a “mass hypnotism” segment. (The movie posters promoted the “HypnoMagic” gimmick as “The Thrill you See and Feel.”) In fact, this nearly 10-minute segment only brings the movie to a screeching halt near its climax, and makes the film feel much longer than its rather short running time.
The screenplay by well-known photographer William Woodfield, replete with numerous illogical and rushed scenes, only serves to foster the feeling of general sloppiness and carelessness that seems to pervade the entire film.
The sole point of interest lies in the film’s uncommon (for the time) focus on lurid, macabre details. It’s something of a preview of things to come as the floodgates of cinematic gore were about to open wide…
More Info
Quotes
- I want to give each of you the opportunity to experience the sensation of hypnosis, to cross the dark, mysterious threshold of your own unconscious mind.
- And now, if you dare, look into the hypnotic eye.
Trivia
- Hypnosis as it applies to the realm of stage illusionism is completely different from hypnotherapy/clinical hypnosis (which uses advanced methods of hypnosis as a therapeutic technique to treat a variety of medical and psychological problems).
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