Along with the more outlandish attempts on the part of William Castle, this film remains among the most memorable of the gimmick film cycle that assaulted the box office in the late fifties. Just as Castle was emerging as Hollywood's most notable exponent of gimmick cinema, the producers of The Hypnotic Eye were determined to pull out every horrific stop in order to compete at the box office. Consider the opening scene: a woman enters her apartment, massages a flammable liquid into her hair, leans calmly into a roaring gas stove burner and immolates herself. It gets grizzlier from there. This has been described by many fright film devotees as a terrific party tape. Have fun. Bring me a piece of cake. I won't be going to that party. Horrific disfigurement might be a compelling way to launch a horror film, but as a party theme it strikes me as something less than festive. The film is entertaining without a doubt, but I can't imagine enjoying it with a roomful of hooting drunks. The audience-grabbing gimmick is introduced by way of a smarmy stage hypnotist played as your stereotypically amorous Frenchman by the impenetrably-accented Jacques Bergerac. Rambling through an abbreviated American movie career, Bergerac found time to marry both Ginger Rogers and Dorothy Malone. As The Hypnotic Eye's 'Great Desmond,' Bergerac's vaudeville routine includes demonstrations of mass hypnosis which include flashing a blinking eyeball at the crowd, inducing them to perform mind-numbing shenanigans in unison. This is the mysterious "Hypno-magic" process that, it was hoped, would seduce so many ticket buyers. The audience lifts their arms -- they lower their arms. They lift their legs -- they lower their legs -- faster -- faster! Supposedly it was hoped that movie audiences would participate in this mesmeric form of Simon Says. By means of post-hypnotic suggestion, Desmond brings voluptuous female "volunteers" to his apartment. Invariably, the following day, they turn up horribly mutilated by various methods. One steps up to her medicine cabinet and douses her face with a bottle of acid. Another is lured to a scalding shower. The etched beauty of Allison Hayes is seen to good advantage as the hypnotist's wife and stage assistant. In several puzzling shots she's seen in close-up, leering daggers at Desmond's shapely audience participants. This heavy-handed foreshadowing leaves little room for surprise when she's revealed as the disfiguring murderess. Her motive, however, is reserved for the film's lurid yet curiously anticlimactic conclusion. Merry Anders, a reliable veteran of numerous B film heroine roles, is an acid-scarred victim who spends much of the film mummified. When the force is helpless to halt the disfigurements, her best friend, who happens to be dating the chief investigator, devises a renegade plan of her own. Stringing Desmond along with her false affections, the pair do the town, ending up in a seedy sub-culture bar where the "king of the beatniks" recites some dumbfounding poetry to a bongo backing. Naturally, this strong-willed woman ends up in dire peril. She eventually succumbs to Desmond's gaze and is promptly led by Hayes to the aforementioned scalding shower. In the nick of time, her cop amour pounds on the door and the killers flee. Desmond's next performance proves to be his swan song. Cornered by cops following one last ludicrous show, he's easily captured, as his wife flees to the theater catwalk. Frantically she claws away the lovely rubber countenance of Allison Hayes, revealing the ghastly, scarred face beneath. To say the very least, the film's horrific elements are unrestrained. But just when it has a hope of building some genuine suspense, all shock value is undermined by another protracted segment showing gullible theater patrons making fools of themselves. How many audience members actually gazed into Desmond's blinking eye and tumbled helplessly before his seductive power? Perhaps the same patrons that bolted the theater when William Castle's "fright break" stopped a film dead in its tracks. Hollywood's affection for the Svengali theme is undying. Producers have long been intrigued by the plight of desperate males resorting to mental means in order to possess the woman they love: Svengali (1930) A quirky film enhanced by eerily effective photography and surreal miniatures representing the Paris rooftops. Barrymore is at his fruity best as the master mentalist, but the movie as a whole is a precarious mix of chills and broad humor. Acting: B+ Atmosphere: A+ Fun: B- The Mad Genius (1931) Michael Curtiz directed this stylish follow-up to Svengali, which centers around Barrymore's obsessive control of his dancer son. A strange and eminently watchable film with a great cast featuring Karloff in a smallish role as a brutish father. Acting: B+ Atmosphere: A Fun: B The Black Cat (1934) Much has been made of the sexual and psychological aspects of this undeniably bizarre classic. Its twisted scenario concerns, in part, satanist Boris Karloff driving Bela Lugosi to madness by stealing his wife and daughter and enslaving them in a trance-like state. Acting: A Atmosphere: A+ Fun: B+ She Creature (1958) Chester Morris is the great Carlo Lombardi and lovely Marla English the woman he seeks to enslave. Through hypnotic regression, he produces her prehistoric alter ego, a scaly, fanged killer of Paul Blaisdell's making that's at once ludicrous and endearing. Acting: C Atmosphere: C+ Fun: A-