The Hypnotic Eye (1960) The Psychotronic Femme Fatale

"Hypnomagic" an "Amazing New Audience Thrill"

Directed by George Blair, written by Gitta Woodfield and William Read Woodfield. Cinematography by Archie R. Dalzell, Music by Marlin Skiles. 

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

The Hypnotic Eye stars Jacques Bergerac as Desmond the Great - Hypnotist. Allison Hayes as Justine, Marcia Henderson as Marcia Blaine, Merry Anders as Dodie Wilson, Joe Patridge as Det. Sgt. Dave Kennedy, Guy Prescott as Dr. Philip Hecht, Fred Demara (The Great Imposter) as Hospital Doctor, Jimmy Lydon as Emergency Doctor, Lawrence Lipton as King of the Beatniks and Eric "Big Daddy" Nord playing the bongos. 

The IMDb log line reads "A mysterious hypnotist is suspected by the police for being responsible for a wave of female mutilation victims."

We are dropped into the middle of an investigation of eleven cases one of which when the victim dies is now a murder. We get a lot of style in the various self mutilation sequences, and are treated to both a vintage late 1950s hypnotic stage show/lounge act, and a peek into a beatnik coffee house with a bongo player Nord accompanied by a baseman and a beatnik jive poet "King of The Beatniks" Lawrence Lipton. 

Jacques Bergerac as Desmond the Great

Allison Hayes as Justine

Marcia Henderson as Marcia Blaine

Joe Patridge as Det. Sgt. Dave Kennedy

Merry Anders as Dodie Wilson

Guy Prescott as Dr. Philip Hecht

It all very entertaining, however I  can't believe after all these years how everybody's missed a crucial part of this Horror Noir and that's the nature of the psychotronic femme fatale Justine played by Allison Hayes. The reason everybody mentions the unexplained relationship between Justine and Desmond is because they didn't get it. 

It is Justine who is the master hypnotist. She has Desmond hypnotized. It is she that has made him Desmond the Great. Justine is the one with the jealous vendetta against beautiful women.

Desmond is her suave pawn. It's easy to imagine, after watching the opening theater demonstration of the power of hypnotic suggestion, that Justine, could have even given Desmond, if that is even his real name, his French accent. He could be a cabby, her grease monkey, or a plumber who came over to unlog her pipes, wink, wink.

Remember that during the act it is Justine who is picking out her victims. She, signaling through probably pre determined eye gestures, or facial expressions, like a lift of an eyebrow etc., etc., her audience choices to Desmond. Desmond is her lure. He wines and dines and sexually excites Justine's victims so that it is they who invite Desmond to their place. 

At this point in the film, had it been made five years later, we most probably would have gotten some creative sexploitation. But it isn't. So it still has some of the classical teasing subtext and innuendos. So when Marcia Henderson, playing Marcia Blaine, takes off her heels and dances with Desmond we can if we want to, is kinkily pretend, now, that she has done what would be the equivalent of her slipping off her panties and is now dripping with anticipation.

When they get out of the cab at Maria's place, she, still in her stocking feet, is dragging Desmond up the steps. She wants it bad. I guess  Det. Sgt. Dave Kennedy ( Joe Patridge) isn't satisfying in the sack . It's a funny sequence because Dave and Dr Phil (Guy Prescott) have been tailing Marcia and Desmond on their date all night. Davy can't believe how easy a time Desmond is getting down the highway to third and home. It's chuckle inducing. Two Silhouettes on the Shade. 

Desmond and Marcia making out by the couch.

Before things get too far, Justine already in the building, lets herself into  Marcia's apartment calls off her boy toy, and takes over. 

Again jumping ahead seven-eight years  you can just imagine, the lesbian sex scene that would have been de rigueur if this was a grindhouse Sexploiation Noir. Its how it would have rolled if made at the end of the 1960s Sexploitation.

Anyway, now we know that this has been the MO of the mutilation crimes. 

What Justine has install for Marcia is a skin scalding scalding shower. She takes her into the bathroom has Marcia strip naked while she gets the shower hot and steaming. But there is a knock on the apartment  door.

It goes Noirsville because, after seeing Desmond leave the apartment house, it is Davey who comes a knocking. Justine goes to the door cracks it open tells Davey that Marcia is in the shower

Davey asks who she is? Justine says  she is a roommate from school. Davey asks to be let in to wait. Justine tells him to wait, that she is not dressed. 

She closes the door and goes back to the bathroom. Justine tells Marcia to wrap a towel around herself and to get rid of Davey. But Davey  suspects something is fishy because he knows that Marcia never went to boarding school or had a roommate. Justine panics and scoots out the fire escape. When she leaves the hypnotic spell over Marcia is broken.

Noirsville

Tail Fins

Jacques Bergerac born in 1927 in Biarritz, France does a very convincing job as the charming hypnotist. His natural accent only adds to the character. He was a law student when he "met" a vacationing Ginger Rogers. Their "meetings" went so well that she brought him back to the states and got him a screen test. They get married, he gets an acting career. Four years later it's splitsville. In 1959, he married actress Dorothy Malone in Hong Kong. Another four years and he shucks the film biz for France and becomes the head of Revlon's Paris office and also a perfumer. 

 Allison Hayes of course will always be known as the ionic fifty foot woman in  Attack of the 50 Foot Woman  (1958). Again, if there was ever a film that should have been made during the Sexploitation era coming up on the horizon it should have been that one. I figured out in my dirty teenage mind, that a fifty foot woman would have had about a five and a half foot vagina. In my Sexploitation version of the film, the Nancy Archer character would play the whole fifty foot part of the film butt ass naked, I mean come on, she couldn't find a thing to wear, no? Maybe a sail from a sailboat would be big enough for one bra cup, lol. All the men would become paralyzed drooling fools gazing in mind numbing wonderent upon a giant vagaina. You would need an army of heterosexual woman the fifty foot Nancy Archer, would have no sexual power over. lol (see imaginary photoshopped image at end of piece)

Hayes plays Justine for most of the film as your typical air head eye candy assistant, it's a good cover if the shit hits the fan Desmond gets all the blame, and she can fade away to another town and get another boy toy to become the next great hypnotist. 

Marcia Henderson playing Marcia Blane had a 13 year career as an actress, she appeared in two Film Noir  The Glass Web (1953) Naked Alibi (1954). Merry Anders was in  Death in Small Doses (1957), Transitional Noir 20,000 Eyes (1961) and had a mostly TV career including appearing on the Noirish Mike Hammer TV show starring Darren McGavin. Joe Partridge had a 21 credit TV career, Guy Prescott who plays Dr. Philip Hecht can come off as a pipe smoking, robe wearing Hugh Heffner type playboy, or weirdly effeminate, it probably depends on which way your wind blows. 

Rounding out the cast is " The Great Imposter" Fred Demara, he plays a hospital doctor. At first I thought that he was one of The Three Stooges doing a side gig, He looked like Curly Joe with a surgical cap. He was played by Tony Curtiss inThe Great Impostera story about Demara similar who was similar to the imposter played by Leonardo Dicaprio in Catch Me If You Can. 

Next time you watch it think of Justine as the behind the scenes femme fatale manipulator. Anyway it's an entertaining 7/10. I only wish that as Desmod lays dying on the stage he comes out of his hypnotic trance and says in a Brooklyn accent, "All I did was ask her to pass me dat wrench?"

Beatniks Eric (Big Daddy) Nord and Julie Meredith at the Gas House in Venice Beach, Calif., 1959

Lawrence Lipton  in cap giving a talk | Lou edwards

“Get out your riot guns citizens, call out the militia. The poets are coming! Sound all the atomic sirens. The painters are making holy vessels out of the garbage cans of Venice West. I hear America singing! ” ( Lawrence Lipton)

We leave you with the minds eye of teenage imagination of a depiction of what could have been a Noir-ish Sexploitation "Attack of the Bare Ass 50 foot Woman." lol

What could have been - P.S. like the subtext?