User Reviews

This film is a lot of fun, mostly because it is so very bizarre. It's about a mad hypnotist who leaves a trail of disfigured beauties in his wake, women who apparently performed acts of self-mutilation while in a hypnotic trance.

I first saw this on TNT when they ran a series called "100% Weird", and boy they weren't kidding. This is a camp classic, right down to the period hairdos and the stereotypical characters (the stupid cops, the beautiful woman in peril, the suave euro-trash magician, the jealous woman with a secret).

It's a painless experience due to the short running time; in fact, several scenes are obviously padded in order to make the film feature-length, such as scenes of an entire audience being hypnotized and a sequence inside a beatnik jazz club that's a real hoot. It's even got a Scooby-Doo ending involving a character who tears off a false face. Unbelievable. There's no way you could take it seriously, and no way you won't enjoy it either.

... and that's too bad since for schlocky horror at its spartan best you just can't do any better than 50's and 60's vintage films like this one, Macabre, and From Hell it Came. This was never intended to compete with the likes of Universal's Frankenstein.

The central issue of the plot is that the great beauties of the town are mutilating themselves. One puts her face in a running fan, another washes her face with acid, another shampoos with the flames of a gas stove. None of the girls remembers doing what they did much less why they did it. Police detective Steve Kennedy is running into a bunch of brick walls in his investigation when one night his girl takes him to see a show featuring a hypnotist. The next day the girl that was with them during the show, and one of the guests that was invited on stage as a subject for hypnotism, is found mutilated too. The detective and his girl begin to suspect the hypnotist, but still the questions remain - why and more so how, since all of the girls were found alone.

The film is full of the kind of stream of consciousness dialogue and wooden acting that was a trademark of Jim Abrahams and the two Zuckers, except they were doing this kind of thing on purpose often as a spoof of these kinds of movies, and in these old B horror films it works well. Plus this old film is loaded with scenes that were knocking on the door of breaking down the old production code once and for all such as Desmond the hypnotist putting his subjects in a sexually receptive trance so that he can make out with them while a deliberate yet passive Justine looks on vicariously.

The film has been splendidly restored by the Warner Archive, and I highly recommend that copy as everyone else who is peddling DVDs of the movie is using third rate unrestored copies. Not just for Halloween, this one is for anytime you're in the mood for a guilty pleasure.

...this brainless cheapie would deserve a much lower rating. Everything from unintentional laughs like the line about the lady who mutilated her face because she thought her electric fan was a "vibrator" to the bogus "Beat" poet at an even more bogus "Beat" nightclub to the obviously closeted psychiatrist to the blatantly misogynistic tenor of the entire proceedings just, shall we say, screams? It's all the fault of a terrible script, of course, one that was apparently written by and for the mentality of the children who were likely the primary audience. The ostensible hero is a clueless dolt, the women aren't much smarter, the central topic of hypnotism is handled with no genuine understanding whatsoever, and the ludicrous plot is rife with gigantic holes and glaring inconsistencies. Still, if you turn off your brain, the film has its charms, mostly for the nostalgia value. Pretty strictly MST3000 viewing only, but one could do much, much worse.

WARNING!! Do Not Try These "Specialized" Beauty Treatments At Home! (1) A sulphuric acid facial. (And/Or) (2) A flammable shampoo while standing over a lit gas burner.

Believe me - The overall effects could be devastating!

The reason why I say "specialized" beauty treatments here, is that these particular treatments, believe it or not, are especially designed to ruin beauty, rather than enhance it - Which is the very reason why these sorts of treatments are being so sadistically administered in The Hypnotic Eye (a somewhat sleazy, but often amusing Horror/Thriller from 1960).

As the story goes - Something (or someone?) very sick and twisted is driving beautiful, young women into grotesque acts of self-mutilation. Careful police investigation inevitably leads handsome Detective, Steve Kennedy, to a debonair stage hypnotist named Desmond and his glamorous assistant, Justine, who harbours a deep and, yes, very deadly secret.

In a nutshell - The Hypnotic Eye is nerve-frying, unintentionally humorous, Horror, played out alongside a beatnik culture, that's combined, and then neatly mixed in with a predictable "women-in-peril" storyline.

In this surprisingly watchable chiller from 1960, a hypnotist Desmond (Bergerac) gets his entertainment by having beautiful young women disfigure themselves in pretty graphic ways—setting their hair on fire, washing faces with acid, drinking lye, putting their faces in fans—well, you get the idea. With all of this going on, the local police send a detective and a police psychologist out to solve the cases.

This movie features undoubtedly the dumbest duo of police officers ever, detective Steve Kennedy and Dr. Philip Hecht. These two guys are such idiots that their incompetence is fascinating to watch. At first, they can't decide whether all of these disfigurement cases are related (duh!) and spend the rest of the movie trying—sort of—to catch the perpetrator.

The many unintentionally funny scenes include Steve's girlfriend (Henderson) being kissed and groped by Desmond (while Steve blankly watches from a distance), the first hypnosis scene ("You are the meanest of all the dogs!!"), the beatnik bar scene, and the final scene at a theater, where the "secret" is revealed, but only after the audience is mesmerized into doing pretty outrageous things—like bad acting.

Released during the hypnosis and beatnik crazes of the early 1960s, this bizarre movie is an interesting time capsule and stars cult actress Allison Hayes. Be sure and catch Hecht's (Guy Prescott) jaw-dropping closing line…it's guaranteed to leave you speechless.

The part that is so irritating is how the main cop not only is slow to get what's going on, but allows his girlfriend to pretty much become a victim...without interference. You spend a lot of the time calling him a moron as he seems very clueless. The two cops together should've been on Car54. Then there is a long sequence where the audience is being group hypnotized. It is filmed in such a way that the actual audience in the movie theater watching the film could participate. However, since the movie is just a movie and no one is really hypnotized and no one in the audience watching the movie is hypnotized, it's just one long boring sequence. And yet, the film somehow entertains if you don't think so much.

...this movie remains, given the genre, age, and production values, eminently watchable.

Sure, the plot has holes and incongruities one can drive a Mack truck through, the acting is for the most part wooden - but it all winds up being part of the fun. And, it stands out for two other aspects.

(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS MAY BE CONSIDERED A SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THIS MOVIE!)

On the one hand, the sexual content. Not only Desmond's seduction of Marcia (although he never gets to, er, consummate it - and it's left in the open whether or not he managed to do so with his other "subjects"), but also the relationship between him and Justine. And, of course, there's the rather equivocal character of the Doc. Nothing explicit or groundbreaking, but again, in context...

Second: we're blissfully spared any detailed explanations, of the one-trauma-fits-all kind, about the origin of Justine's predicament, or about her hold over Desmond. Maybe the producers just ran out of celluloid; whatever the reason, it goes against the grain of the typical Hollywood movie, B- or otherwise.

So, if you can get a copy (good luck...), plant tongue firmly in cheek, turn the IL' suspension-of-disbelief on and just plain enjoy it.

I just caught this movie on TMC . . .

First - I think a lot of people missed the fact that it was NOT Desmond making the women hurt themselves, it was Justine. It seemed clear to me, she controlled & used Desmond.

Which leads me to how irritating this dumb movie was . . .

It could've been so much better if it had been complete . . . But there's no back story - or end. Just a middle.

I kept waiting for the detective guy to flesh out the story - tell us who these two were, where they came from, what drove them, etc - all we know is he hypnotizes people and she's (apparently) the lady 'stage' assistant - but after Justine & Desmond both die, the movie just suddenly ends with the psych doctor giving cheezy warnings about hypnosis

So you will never know; Who were Desmond & Justine? Siblings? Husband & wife? Just co-workers?

How did Justine get scarred up? (which would have explained why she perpetrated the same fate on so many women) And, did Justine actually have Desmond hypnotized, to do her bidding? Because, again, it seemed pretty clear she controlled him, and she controlled the women . . .

Anyway - that's my review-rant . . .