A string of eleven horrifying self-mutilations by women is investigated by Detective Sergeant (Joe Patridge) and his psychiatrist buddy Dr. Philip Hecht (Guy Prescott), with the meager clues pointing toward Desmond (Jacques Bergerac), a stage hypnotist. Using his girlfriend Marcia (Marcia Henderson) as bait, the detective soon unravels the mystery with the trail taking some very dark turns indeed, inclduing a very much hypnotized Marcia falling into the clutches of the hypnotist, but is Desmond the true mastermind behind the mutilations? And if not, then who is, and what is their twisted motivation?
Released the same year as PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM, THE HYPNOTIC EYE is a more humble, less impactful shocker, but it's still pretty dark and sick for its era. I first heard of it somewhere around 1986, when I saw the bad movie documentary IT CAME FROM HOLLYWOOD (1982) late one night on cable, when its intriguing trailer was included among a slew of clips from notable examples of terrible cinema, and I only just got around to finally seeing it for myself. It was worth the wait.
The film opens with a hypnotized woman returning home from a Desmond performance, drenching her hair in a flammable substance thinking it's shampoo, and setting her head on fire with the burner on her apartment's stove.
The film opens abruptly with this, and when I realized what was about to happen, I let out a spontaneous "HOLY SHIT!!!" The effect is rather cheesy, but it's shocking nonetheless, and it must have been quite a jolt for audiences sixty-five years ago. And though we are told of mutilations involving a woman drinking lye, one obliviously washing her face with pure sulfuric acid, another stuffing her face into the spinning blades of a fan (thinking it was some kind of face massager), one slashing up her face with a straight razor while believing it was a makeup pen, and yet another who gouged out her eyes, we thankfully do not witness those dire events, as they likely would have been too much for the 1960 audience, plus to say nothing of the censors.
Clocking in at a brisk 79 minutes, THE HYPNOTIC EYE has little fat on it — the lone bit of filler is a performance by Desmond during the final act, but it serves the climax — gets right to the point, the plot moves at a lively pace, and it concludes in a satisfying manner without wearing out its welcome. Now largely forgotten, especially in the wake of its two game-changing contemporaries, THE HYPNOTIC EYE is worthy of rediscovery, and its sleazier aspects would make it a good double-feature with THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE (1958).
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