Sadistic Hypnotist, The (1969)

... aka: Wanda (The Sadistic Hypnotist)

Directed by:

Greg Corarito

After peering in a store window and envisioning figurines of nude women are actual nude women, a man in sunglasses (played by the director himself) dips into an adult theater to watch a double feature. First up is something about the "Bare-Fax Nudist Camp," featuring a voyeur stalking some young women back to their camp and watching them lounge around as nature intended (with strategically placed newspapers, magazines, towels and hats covering their fronts and some of the more embarrassed ladies hilariously covering up their own faces!) through a knothole in the fence. A monotone female announcer then comes on to introduce the next feature: "Perverted Films has a treat in store for you. That six foot two inch love goddess Miss Dikey Dikeman is the star of our feature presentation. I'm sure you'll find it very hypnotic" and a title card for "Miss Dikey Dikeman and Her Friends???" (!!) appears on screen.

While driving down a secluded country road, Sylvester ("Dick Dangerfield" / Richard Compton) is in an off-screen car accident but gets "rescued" by "tall, harsh-looking brunette" Wanda (the almost freakishly long-legged Katharine Shubeck) and "rather sweet-looking blonde" Greta (Janine Sweet), who take him back to their home. The man, falling in and out of consciousness, also provides hilarious, double entendre-filled narration which includes lines like "a blinding shaft of sunlight brought an enormous mansion into view!" and "the throbbing in my head proved too much and, with a final attempt to rise, I gave in." Sylvester also recalls being taken into an S&M-themed bedroom ("I must admit, there were many leather objects") and that he was "vaguely aware of female hands taking my clothes off."

Fifteen hours later, Sylvester awakens from his stupor, but weakened and with a severe concussion. He's told that he crashed into a sand dune and that his car will be ready sometime soon so he can leave, but that all turns out to be a ruse. Queen Bee Wanda has no intentions of letting him go and makes him the unwilling submissive in her bondage games. He's tied down to a bed and repeatedly smacked with a riding crop, is forced to go on long walks with heavy iron shackles attached to his ankles and is almost drowned in the swimming pool. Greta, who is much more sympathetic than Wanda, realizes this guy isn't like most of the others they've kidnapped: He actually seems to be enjoying most of this!

Wanda leads an all-female cult, which does not have any defined purpose aside from them all taking off their clothes a lot. Half a dozen other ladies swing by for a visit and start out with a game of "Rip It Off," which finds them all stripping off their bikinis in the swimming pool. Later that evening, Wanda uses her hypnotic powers to make a door-to-door cosmetics saleslady (Sheri Jackson) strip down to lingerie and perform a wild go-go dance for her and her pals at their lingerie slumber party. Wanda then uses her powers to make one of her girls take her top off, makes another envision she's an invincible karate master (!) and then turns to the short-haired Zelda and says, "Even though you're a lesssssbian, let's try this. You know, forget about that... You're really a nymphomaniiiiiiaaaac!" She then sends Zelda to the bedroom to ravish a tied-up Sylvester, who screams "Lady, you don't understand! I'm a Republican!" in protest.

But the fun and games can't last forever, can they? A radio announcer comes on and proclaims: "Just minutes ago, a maniac escaped from the state funny farm! The sadistic rapist is mentally demented! He is complete unbalanced! He cannot control his emotions, especially when he is near attractive females! Be on the lookout for this man!" The escapee, Jack Strange (Daryl Colinot), shows up at the home wearing a white coat that reads "State Fun-ee Farm" on the back, lest we get confused about who he is. He first raids their liquor cabinet and makes himself a drink. Then he goes through their record collection, stopping in disgust when he finds Dylan and Sarah Vaughan albums. Finally, after going through a trunk filled with S&M toys, he makes his presence known by leaping out and vicious whipping all of the ladies. The women are then all tied up and subjected to more whipping and rape, plus hallucinogenic drugging.

Under the condition he won't refer to him as insane, Jack unties Sylvester and he ends up assisting him in terrorizing and abusing the ladies for revenge. A drug and alcohol fiend, Jack discovers a hidden stash of LSD (in a large black bottled labeled "LSD" no less!), which results in a long trip out sequence filled with flashing red and green lights, someone peaking through a glass pot of boiling water, nude body painting, strange psychedelic garage rock noise and rapid fire editing. The "maniac" then turns to Sylvester and asks, "If you had a choice of these beavers, which one would you take?" and promises they're "gonna wear them out, daddy-o!" However, the ladies eventually regain control and there's a twist at the end involving the porn theater patron.

I was actually pretty impressed with the across-the-board technical incompetence on display in this pseudo self aware trash! It's ineptly directed, written (with awkward and clearly improvised dialogue), shot (with lots of boring medium and long takes, blurry shots and shadows of the camera operator), lit and edited (by Gary Graver, no less). The sound, with a generic intrusive music score constantly drowning out the already muffled dialogue, is equally awful. And then there's the cast. There's not a convincing performance in this entire film and it's clear no one - in front of or behind the camera - is taking a minute of this seriously. Lines are flubbed, people look right at the camera and laugh and everyone's basically just goofing off the entire time. The T&A is wall-to-wall for the duration so if that's what you're looking for, you'll get your fill here.

Though the two female leads are completely unknown (this is the only known credit for either), some of the supporting females are played by late 60s / early 70s skin flick regulars like Lynn Harris (The Sexcapades of Don Diego) and Vincene Wallace (Russ Meyer's Vixen!). The male lead went on to a prolific career as a TV director and was married to actress Veronica Cartwright for 25 years until his death in 2007.

Director / writer Corarito made a few other films of this stripe: Diamond Stud (1970), the X-rated Hard on the Trail (1972), featuring Lash La Rue, and Delinquent School Girls (1975), which also featured young women terrorized by mental home escapees. This film is supposedly also based on his "novel" of the same name, though there's no evidence that book was ever published. Robert Vincent O'Neil, who went on to direct the underrated THE PSYCHO LOVER (1970) and the popular and profitable 80s exploitation film Angel (1983) as well its first sequel, Avenging Angel (1985), was one of the producers.

Not surprisingly, being right up their alley and all, this was a Something Weird acquisition and they issued both a standalone VHS release in 1992, followed by a DVD release in 2004, which pairs it up with Dr. Sex (1964).

★1/2

Necromancy (1972)

... aka: El hechicero (The Wizard)
... aka: Horror Attack
... aka: Il potere di Satana (The Power of Satan)
... aka: L'uomo che fa rivivere i morti (The Man Who Revives the Dead)
... aka: Nec'ro·man'cy
... aka: Necromancy - A Life for a Life
... aka: Rosemary's Disciples (new footage added)
... aka: Toy Factory, The
... aka: Vida por vida (A Life for a Life)
... aka: Witching, The (new footage added)

Directed by:
Bert I. Gordon

"Witchcraft is the only honest religion that makes things happen now; in this life."

Lori Brandon (Pamela Franklin) wakes up in the hospital in hysterics and discovers she's just lost her baby. Her doctor recommends she leave hectic Los Angeles and go somewhere a little more laid back and quiet so she can get over her trauma. Coincidentally (well, maybe) her husband Frank (Michael Ontkean) has just accepted a new advertising executive job that will relocate them to Lilith; a small community located four hours away. Though Lori doesn't really want to go, and is perplexed about some of the job interview questions her husband had to answer to even get the position (like whether or not they were atheists), Frank promises that once they get settled they can try to have another baby. On the drive there, the two are nearly run off the road by a speeding car that ends up going over a guardrail, explodes and kills the driver. Lori finds a doll at the scene of the crash and decides to take it along with them; later discovering it has fingernail clippings tucked away in one of its pockets. After their car mysteriously runs out of gas on a desolate road and Frank has to walk to town, Lori hears voices, follows them up a hill and then has a vision of a funeral taking place up there and of her inside the coffin.

Upon arriving in Lilith, Frank meets his new boss Mr. Cato (Orson Welles), who owns the local toy factory, seems to have great power and influence over the entire town and has an unusual interest in black magic and the occult. He gives disbeliever Lori a book called The Grand Guimoire, a text of invocations, and asks her to read through it. She is immediately wary of him, especially since he keep eyeing her up. The more Lori learns about Lilith and all of its strange rules, the less she wants to be there. For starters, outsiders must pass a checkpoint with an armed guard to even enter the town. Second, no new construction is allowed there and all of the homes are old. And then there is a local law that forbids women from becoming pregnant and giving birth there that Lori learns about after running into another young woman named Georgette (Lisa James) who's just learned she's expecting. Lori also discovers that the car crash victim they encountered on their way over used to live in the same house she and her husband have been put up in.

Cato's personal assistant Priscilla (Lee Purcell), who runs a local toy shop (which is bizarre in itself since there are no children there) informs Lori that her boss not only owns the factory and all of the real estate in town, but also all of the people. Cato is also the only person there over age 30 as he wants nothing to "belong to the past." Priscilla believes it has something to do with Cato having lost his beloved young son Timothy (Teddy Quinn), whom Lori keeps having visions of, years earlier. Lori talks Frank into leaving the town but he keeps putting her off. In the meantime, they attend a party at Mr. Cato's full of astrology charts, tarot cards and far out young folk, where she has visions of blood drinking, her husband taking up a lover, a Satanist wearing a goat headdress and Mr. Cato as the devil himself (seen as a vision superimposed over a tarot card). Later, local doctor Jay (Harvey Jason) and his wife Nancy (Sue Bernard) try to get the new couple to join their religious group, which they dub "the true religion" and "the mother of all beliefs." Fancy talk for a Satanic cult.

As we soon discover, Lori's been lured there for a specific purpose. She was born with a veil, which means en caul, which means born still completely encased in the amniotic sac. Though, physiologically speaking, this is perfectly fine (though rare), old legend has it that a baby born this way will be blessed with psychic abilities and other supernatural gifts. During a flashback to her youth, we see that Lori has already revived a dead girl who's drowned simply by power of mind. Cato knows all of this and is hoping to blend her natural-born gifts with necromancy, "a ceremony dating back to the pre-Christian era that is the art of reviving the dead." The catch to the ceremony is that the one who successfully performs it must die so that the other may live. Or as the ancient rule states, a life for a life.

This is one of a number of occult / Satanic chillers made in between the two touchstones of this genre: ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and The Exorcist (1973). Unfortunately, it doesn't stack up to many of the other, more interesting films from this same time like THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1971), THE MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971) or George Romero's Season of the Witch (1972). Though blandly competent, the biggest issue here is the general lack of creativity coupled with direction that does little visually to perk things up. There are next to no surprises plot-wise, suspense and shocks are virtually nonexistent, the editing is awful and Lori's endless "visions" become tiresome. Incorporating voodoo dolls (to cause a car accident and make a woman have a miscarriage) into the plot and including a weird magic mushroom trip sequence don't even help matters and the "here we go again" ending is terrible.

The wide-eyed Franklin is perfectly cast in the central role though and does her best to keep things chugging along; even appearing topless a number of times. She and future husband Jason (who are still married to this day) met on the set and I did get some amusement out of seeing her attacked by rats in the cellar, seeing how a few years after this she'd face off giant rats in Gordon's FOOD OF THE GODS (1976). Bernard, a 1966 Playboy Playmate, also provides some nudity here and, fittingly enough, went on to marry Exorcist star Jason Miller a few years later. This isn't a very good showcase for two of its other appealing stars: the beautiful Purcell, who got to play another witchcraft-practicing teen in the TV movie SUMMER OF FEAR (1978), and the handsome Ontkean, as the characters they're stuck playing lack dynamics. As for Welles, he's, uh, big, but not on screen enough to make an impression one way or another. We also never even get to see his damn toy factory!

There are a number of alternate cuts for this title. It was initially rated R but the nudity was removed so it could be released theatrically with a PG rating instead. There was a third alternate cut of this prepped specifically for the home video market as well. Gordon himself re-cut the original film, reinserted previously cut bits and shot brand new scenes, including a lot more nudity, and then wedged those in. This "new" version, which runs eight minutes shorter despite the newly added stuff, was first issued on home video by Paragon in 1983 reusing the theatrical re-release title THE WITCHING. This same cut was later re-released on VHS under yet another new title (Rosemary's Disciples) by Magnum.

★★