![scary hypnotize scary hypnotize](http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/DWM8EqK0Jdg/hqdefault.jpg)
In The Sorcerers, Boris Karloff plays Professor Marcus Monserrat, an inventor who takes control of an unsuspecting victim, Mike, through a new hypnotic process which he promises will offer an extraordinary experience or, to use his words, ‘intoxication with no hangover’ through his ‘multi-coloured miracles’. The appearance of hypnosis in horror cinema of this period, however, is most pronounced in two films of the late-1960s, The Sorcerers and Curse of the Crimson Altar, which like Horrors of the Black Museum, play upon those earlier associations of hypnosis with fantasy and spectacle in order to address contemporary issues relating to the psychedelic experience of 1960s counterculture.īoris Karloff as Professor Monserrat in The Sorcerers (1967) Although Franchel is credited as a registered psychologist within the state of California, the associations between colour, fantasy and the horror genre consequently position him in the role of the ‘carnival barker’, building anticipation for the main attraction. At one point in the prologue, the screen first turns blue, and then red, as Franchel describes the importance of colour in producing specific emotional responses through the power of suggestion.
Scary hypnotize series#
Taking the form of a lecture or instructional short film in its approach, we are guided through the prologue by Emile Franchel, a psychologist specialising in hypnotism, whose words are accompanied by a series of visuals emphasising the application of colour to the practice and experience of hypnosis.
![scary hypnotize scary hypnotize](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kSgivPI5G6s/maxresdefault.jpg)
However, HypnoVista was little more than a 13 minute prologue tagged on to the film by American International after its initial UK run – a decision made in the belief that the film needed an additional attraction for American audiences. The introduction of colour to the horror genre played a key role in re-establishing this connection, partially as a result of the link between colour and fantasy which prevailed until well into the 1960s.Įmile Franchel in the ‘HypnoVista’ prologue to Horrors of the Black Museum (1960)įor the 1959 British horror film Horrors of the Black Museum, the spectacle of colourful hypnotic techniques feature prominently in the film’s promotion of a new theatrical gimmick known as HypnoVista purportedly allowing audiences to experience the physical effect of the action taking place on the screen. These links established between the cinema of attractions and the supernatural realms of the horror genre ensured that hypnosis was most commonly associated with cinematic spectacle and fantasy.Īlthough these associations were briefly broken in the 1940s, when hypnotherapy was afforded a certain credibility following the rise in popularity of psychoanalysis in Hollywood, depictions of hypnotism as cinematic spectacle returned following the resurgence of the horror genre in the late-1950s. Kevin Heffernan draws parallels between cinematic representations of hypnosis and the pre-classical period of the ‘cinema of attractions’ when the moving image was ‘capable of eliciting an immediate physiological response from the spectator in the manner of a fairground spectacle’ (2002: 60). The emphasis upon ‘plots of malevolent males using hypnosis to seduce and control hapless heroines’ accompanied by ‘iconography of swinging watches, twirled spiral disks, and the piercing gaze of the cinematic mesmerist’ ensured that hypnosis became firmly linked to the fantasy realms of the horror genre (2006: 15). The use of colour to emphasise the spectacle of hypnosis set the tone for subsequent cinematic representations although, as Deidre Barrett has suggested, this often played upon some of the negative connotations surrounding the practice of hypnosis. The character Fuller portrayed in the play performed this dance whilst supposedly in a hypnotic trance, wearing a flowing silk costume carefully lit using coloured stage lighting, designed to have an hypnotic effect on the theatre audience themselves. Possibly the earliest use of hypnosis captured on film is a performance of the ‘serpentine dance’ original created by Loïe Fuller for the play Quack M.D.
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![scary hypnotize scary hypnotize](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4xAR3iTrj0Y/hqdefault.jpg)
The use of colour in cinematic representations of hypnosis is as old as the medium itself, often employed for the purpose of theatrical spectacle.