"Eye"'ll Be Seeing You!

Today's featured movie feels like one of William Castle's many gimmick flicks, but it's not. The Hypnotic Eye (1960) is from the folks who gave us House on Haunted Hill (1959), so a camp aspect is practically guaranteed. Where Castle reveled in providing his audiences with some sort of wacky tie-in or unexpected shock, this movie featured an audience participation segment called "HypnoMagic." (This is often misinterpreted by reviewers as a filming process, which it is not. It's just a type of viewer engagement.) As the movie is a crisp 79 minutes, it may take you longer to read this post than to watch it for yourself! Ha ha!

Things get off to a roaring start - so to speak - as a pretty blonde walks towards the camera about to wash her hair. She lathers up, then bends forward not to turn on any water, but rather to ignite her gas stove which immediately sets her head on fire!!

Once the ambulance arrives along with police inspector Joe Patridge, we find that this sort of thing has been emerging as a pattern and this is number eleven. Lovely young women have been inexplicably maiming themselves! One used a straight razor as a lipstick brush, one swallowed lye... (Some of the changes in language since this have led to the hooty situation in which one gal mistook an electric fan for a "vibrator!" - it was indeed her face that took a beating, though.) Incidentally, the doctor shown to the left here is child star Jimmy Lydon, who had a long, prolific career and is with us still today at ninety-five!

Rather dense inspector Patridge decides to call upon police psychologist Guy Prescott for some help with the series of mystifying cases. Prescott has a habit of closing his eyes and tossing a dart at his bulletin board in order to select topics for his upcoming writing projects. This time he misses Jayne Mansfield (!) and lands on Dr. Sigmund Freud.

Patridge happens to have a date that night with his girlfriend Marcia Henderson and her pal Merry Anders. They are slated to watch a hot local attraction, Desmond the hypnotist. (Actually, I was a wee bit attracted to the "male couple" two rows back, at least one of who seems to have his eye on Patridge!)

Here, we're introduced to the film's top-billed star Jacques Bergerac as Desmond. He's seen with four hapless male audience members up on stage, deep in a state of hypnosis. One by one, he barks in their faces that they cannot open their eyes or are feeling hot or cold or that they are in actuality a vicious dog.

His heavy French accent and his acting choice of loudly screaming his lines combine to create titters for the viewer. "Harder... HARDER!!" he bellows in one man's ear, as the guy rolls his eyes back in his head.

Still, Bergerac is damned good looking and palpably charismatic despite his lack of smooth gentleness towards his subjects. For his next trick, he calls for three ladies from the audience. (As an aside, the aforementioned gents behind the leads both raise their hands!!! I'm not making this up.)

He's subtly aided in his selection by his curvaceous assistant, Allison Hayes. Hayes sports an eye-popping highlight job along the lines of Julie London and a prominent beauty mark. She clearly wants Bergerac to choose the prettiest participants for this stunt, especially as the third one.

Anders is persuaded to raise her hand as a volunteer. Hilariously, the lady next to her raises her hand, too, and thinks Bergerac has chosen her, rising from her seat until he screams, "NO! The pretty redhead!" (This actually happened to me a long time ago... Richard Simmons chose me out of a room of 300 people to join him on stage and a woman near me thought he meant her... He screamed out loudly, "NO! The guy in the red fleece!" Ha ha!)

Anders is brought up on stage and is given the dramatic once over by Bergerac. He is undeniably arresting as he gazes at her and begins his spiel. Before long she is "under" and he's able to make her light as a feather, the other two ladies enlisted to pick her up by gently holding her feet and head... He whispers in her ear before bringing her out of the trance.

Afterwards, skeptical Patridge and intrigued Henderson invite Anders to go with them for coffee, but she declines. She's somehow drawn to Bergerac and his looming posters which are plastered about nearby.

Sadly, for her, she is seen later than night washing her face in sulfuric acid! She only comes out of her post-suggestive state when she looks in the mirror and sees the mess she's made of her face. She collapses onto the floor face down.

Presumably, some of the acid has dripped down her back (?) because she's next seen in the hospital where the doctor (Fred Demara) is spraying her with paraffin, presumably the approach to a cure for burns then (and now? I don't know!) The heavy Massachusetts accent of the doctor comes through loud and clear when he exclaims, "Let the parfen hahhden."

Henderson and Patridge are appalled at what has happened to their friend. Patridge still stubbornly refuses to believe that hypnosis has anything to do with this rash of mutilation crimes. And just because Anders doesn't fess up to having seen Bergerac again after the show, he's content to let it go.

Henderson has other ideas, however. She decides to head back to Bergerac's show and see what she can ascertain about his little operation there. She manages to get selected as the third female volunteer in the same trick he did with Anders.

Again, he turns his piercing gaze onto this latest subject, but Henderson manages to keep from going under. She fakes her way through the whole thing.

After the show, she and Patridge meet up at Prescott's place. Hilariously, she looks over his expertly appointed (confirmed!) bachelor pad and exclaims, "I just love your apartment!" She also reveals that Bergerac had earlier whispered into her ear that she was to come backstage to meet him in his dressing room at midnight.

This really peeves Patridge, but he agrees to let her go along with it in order to find out what is happening, so long as he and Prescott can follow her and keep an eye on things. She heads down the alley to Bergerac's stage door, which is plastered with advertising. (Wouldn't these posters do better out front or elsewhere than on the way to the back alley stage door?!)

Inside, she'd left to her own devices for a while as he's changing (something that we, sadly, don't get to see happening!) She opens a box on his dressing table and discovers the title device, The Hypnotic Eye! Bergerac emerges and begins to hypnotize her for real this time.

 Mommie Dearest (1981) during the scene in which she heads to Perino's and encounters a swarm of fans.

What truly struck me about this entire sequence is how Henderson is dressed and coiffed in a nearly identical fashion to that of Faye Dunaway in the cut of the outfit, the placement of the brooch, the hairstyle, earrings... all of it right down to the rectangular clutch purse!

Perhaps black and white will emphasize the similarity even more.

I happen to be one of a handful of people on earth who, though I worship and adore both Crawford and Dunaway, see no similarity to speak of between them. Everyone always marvels at how Dunaway "became" Crawford and I have never been able to see it. But apart from that, the Mommie scene is supposed to be set in the early-1940s and the outfit on Henderson is from 1960! ??

In any case, next, in what is one of the most annoying segments of the otherwise mostly engaging movie, Bergerac takes Henderson out on the town for a flambe dinner, followed by a trip to a beat club. There, amid the smoky innards of the rundown place (as Patridge and Prescott watch them through the smoke) they are treated to some beatnik poetry as provided by real life "beat poet" Lawrence Lipton.

The one point of minor interest for me here was the blond, shirtless patron in the background! Fun Fact: Lipton was the real-life father of actor and instructor James Lipton, who hosted the durable television interview series Inside the Actors Studio.

Bergerac takes Henderson back to her apartment, with Patridge and Prescott in tow and watching from the street (a lot of good that would do if he decided to hack her to pieces!) She's all frisky now and ready to mingle. She's practically pussy putty in his hands at this point.

Bergerac demonstrates some of the seductive moves that made him a sought-after lover in Tinseltown and it must be said that his dark, sensuous looks are pretty desirable.

Unfortunately, it's going to be blue balls for Bergerac because also inside the apartment is his lovely assistant Hayes. She makes it known that it's time for him to go beddie-bye so that she can do her own bidding. (Why he had to take her out on the town for hours rather than just take her home and disfigure her, with or without molesting her, is anyone's guess! Why be seen publicly with a potential victim?!)

Hayes begins to run a scalding hot shower for Henderson to step into, causing her to singe off the first (or fifth!) layer of skin, thus becoming the latest mutilation victim! Hayes is pretty creative, coming up with new and different scenarios for scarring all the beauties of the world one day - and one way - at a time!

Just then, Patridge knocks at the door, insisting that he see Henderson. Hayes passes herself off as a visiting old school chum of Henderson's and puts that same suggestion into Henderson's psyche in order to back up the lie. She then slithers out the bedroom window, unable to complete her horrible task.

Patridge heads over to Prescott's pad for another discussion about what could possibly going on. Amazingly, Prescott is seen playing the piano in a slinky robe, a gargantuan pinky ring and with a fluffy dog atop the instrument. The only thing missing from this scene is a candelabra and maybe a half-dressed pool boy emerging from the bedroom!

Prescott's robe reminds me of the time on The Golden Girls when Blanche was deciding what to wear to meet Burt Reynolds. "Dorothy, do you think Burt will like this dress?" - "Oh, yes, and that plunging neckline will really show off his chest hair..."

Anyway, the two of them head out to interview all the prior victims of the mutilation incidents. They seem to finally be coming to the realization that Bergerac is involved in it all, which is good since the town is probably running out of attractive women (not that Prescott would worry about that much...)

They interview each gal in turn and none of them ever claim to have been hypnotized or of having ever gone to see Bergerac's show. This one was the one who swallowed lye. She still got to keep her face, though, which sort of makes her perfect wife material. She looks all right (I guess), but isn't able to nag constantly! LOL

None of the women shown look as if they'd have been threatening beauties, even before their faces were mangled by the crazed tag team of Bergerac and Hayes. I mean, does the chick at the window look like she'd give Hayes a run for her money? And the one with no eyes just isn't screaming "Miss California" to me...

Finally, Patridge and Prescott head to see Anders and ask the doctor if they could hypnotize her in order to get to the truth. He says they may soon, though they really don't actually have to. They feel they have it worked out (finally!)

The gentlemen head to Bergerac's show with Henderson already there on her own and here is where (at last) "Hypno- Magic" is unleashed onto the viewer. There's really not much to it. We watch the show, which we've already seen twice, practically, but this time it is performed to the camera (i.e. - to us.)

The whole "effect" of trying to induce hypnosis to the movie theater crowd is surely undone to a certain degree by showing the stage show's audience doing what Bergerac says (barks!) rather than staying focused solely on delivering lines and flashing lights to the camera! He instructs his audience to inflate a balloon, then fail to be able to move it because it's so heavy. Real life audience members of The Hypnotic Eye were also given balloons.

Anyhow, the wheels come off and the show is interrupted. Hayes grabs Henderson and drags her up onto a tenuous backstage rigging platform. The exact nature of how she got the way she is and why Bergerac goes along with her mad scheme is never revealed.

On the ground, Prescott seems to have Bergerac just exactly the way he wants him...! In the aftermath, he turns to the audience for a quick public service announcement about hypnosis. I'm sure everyone in the audience was under the spell by then... NOT!

If the makers of this movie were looking for a bland, forgettable man to portray the ostensible leading man role, they could hardly have done better than Patridge. The very run-of-the-mill actor was mostly a walk-on player in TV series such as Highway Patrol, 77 Sunset Strip and quite a few western shows, with an occasional supporting role in a feature. His career was over by 1965 after just eight years, though he is still alive today at age seventy-eight.

Henderson was also a frequent TV performer, but her career was a bit longer - at thirteen years - and more prolific. She actually played Rock Hudson's leading lady in Back to God's Country (1953) and had supporting parts in several 1950s movies including All I Desire (1953) and The Naked Hills (1956.) In 1957, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which eventually began to affect her work. She retired in 1962 and passed away in 1987 from complications of lupus.

Anders began with small roles in the early-1950s and graduated to supporting parts in movies like All Heaven Allows (1955) and Desk Set (1957), eventually starring in the syndicated TV shows How to Marry a Millionaire for two years. Many other TV guest roles and film parts followed but she receded from view in the early-'70s to work on stage instead. She died in 2012 at age seventy-eight.

Prescott at this point was close to the end of a decade-long career of many bit roles (doctors, policemen, military men, etc...) and would leave acting after only a few more parts. He had a brief part at the start of one of our favorite camp classics, Queen of Outer Space (1958.) He died of undisclosed reasons in 1998 at the age of eighty-four.

Demara was a hot celebrity at the time for acting that took place off-screen rather than on. In fact, this was his only "real" acting gig. His claim to fame was the fact that he impersonated a raft of people and professions in his life, actually performing surgery during the Korean War despite having had no medical training whatsoever! (He'd read up on the procedures while the wounded were being prepped... None of the men died from it!) This same year, Tony Curtis played a fictionalized version of him in The Great Imposter (1960) and the producers sought to capitalize on that by using him in this film. The hefty impersonator died of a heart attack in 1982 at age fifty-nine.

The strikingly beautiful Hayes is immortal for having portrayed the title character in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958.) As the pics below will attest, she was a provocative, sensuous model (with some great accessories!)

Unfortunately, apart from 50 Foot Woman, few of her movies have endured with any significant popularity. She did land a recurring role on Bat Masterson with Gene Barry, was a frequent guest on Perry Mason and popped up (as did Merry Anders) in Elvis Presley's Tickle Me (1965), but was off screen by 1967. In 1977, the former beauty was dead at only age forty-six of blood poisoning (though some sources list leukemia.)

I saved Mr. Bergerac for last because I wanted to share more information and photos of him with you. The French-born actor was spotted by not only MGM talent scouts in their European offices, but by Ginger Rogers, who fell under the 6'3" hunk's spell and quickly married him and then saw to it that he was cast in her thriller Twist of Fate (1953.)

Their relationship (controversial at the time due to the fact that he was sixteen years her junior - snap, Ginger!) was heavily covered in the fan magazines and movie rags of the time. He had a slow start apart from this, but did play Armand to Signe Hasso's Camille on Kraft Theatre in 1954.

His marriage to Rogers was over by 1957, the same year he won a role in Les Girls (1957.) He popped up in Best Picture winner Gigi (1958) the year after. He's seen here with Gigi costar Eva Gabor, though he also made time with (and likely made!) her sister Zsa Zsa as seen in the inset.

In 1959, he married his second Hollywood blonde, Dorothy Malone. Again, he found himself splayed across magazine features, though this time his wife was but three years older than he.

They never acted together, but they had their fun at various awards ceremonies, on game shows like Stump the Stars and in publicity stunts such as the one noted below.

They also had two daughters together, who became the focus of a particularly drawn-out and nasty custody battle when the two divorced in 1964.

By that time, movie and TV roles were becoming harder to come by. He was forced into drek like Taffy and the Jungle Hunter (1965), Unkissed Bride (1966) and bit roles on Batman. His final acting gig was as a French actor on The Doris Day Show.

He didn't wind up destitute or anything like that, however. He found success as the head of cosmetic company Revlon's offices in Paris. He died very close to the same place he was born in 2014 at the age of eighty-seven, having never remarried after Malone.

One of his more successful movies (one which put his French accent to good use) was Thunder in the Sun (1959) in which he played one side of a love triangle with Susan Hayward and Jeff Chandler. The western action flick included Basque immigrants as it's story hook and for this he was perfectly cast (though the movie was criticized for its lack of accuracy with regards to customs and weaponry.)

I actually prefer my retooling of the above publicity photo in which the title is now "Thunderin' the Son" and focuses on the silver daddy Chandler's relationship with younger, humpy Bergerac! How's that for something hypnotic?  LOL  Till next time....