morrison-dylan-fan Learning of a sale on UK DVD company Network's page,I quickly looked for titles to pick up. Previously seeing him in the very good British Film Noir The Dark Man,I was pleased to spot another Noir co- starring William Hartnell, which led to me getting hypnotised.The plot:Hurt doing a test run, pilot Valentine Neal becomes haunted by past events in his life. Wanting to help her boyfriend, Mary Foster arranges for Neal to meet psychiatrist Doctor Francis Pelham. Hypnotising Neal,Pelham begins to explore his dark childhood memories. Finding Neal easy to hypnotise,Pelham decides to put Neal in a trance for his own use.View on the film:Bringing the title out of a trance,Network deliver an excellent transfer,with pristine sound and picture quality. Adapting Falkland L. Cary's play,the screenplay by writer/director Montgomery Tully partakes in an impressive level of psychological depth, as gripping exchanges between Pelham and Neal dig up the Noir horrors laying in Neal's sub-conscious. Giving Neal ambiguous shakes,Tully disappointing calms things down far too early,with the mysterious doubt between Neal and Pelham being explained 20 minutes before the end. Gliding round on the streets of late 1950's London,Tully sets his sights on glimpses on Film Noir stylisation,via shots spanning Neal's flat,and icy flashbacks unveiling the inner workings of Neal.Playing a similar role to the one in The Dark Man, William Hartnell gives a good, gruff performance as Detective Inspector Ross,whilst the very pretty Patricia Roc gives a clever performance as Mary Foster,who raises questions to how helpful Pelham is being to Neal. Playing off each other, Roland Culver & Paul Carpenter give great performances,as Culver gives Pelham an unsettling,calculating calm,and Carpenter brings out the hypnotised fears of Neal.

JohnHowardReid It's hard to decide which is worse – Montgomery Tully's inept, wait-for-the-B-grade-pause direction, or his incredibly rambling, disjointed screenplay (spun out from a stage play by Falkland Cary) with its compendium of dialogue clichés. The music scorer has tried vainly to give the film pace and atmosphere, but is largely defeated by the heavy hand of Mr Tully and his cast of largely flat-footed, second-rate players. In fact, it's a shame to find a fine actress like Kay Callard mixed up – if only briefly – in this woefully extended quota quickie. Patricia Roc and Roland Culver are usually featured in much better films too. Normally bottom-of-the-barrel "B" efforts like The Hypnotist don't waste more than an hour of a picturegoer's time, but this one is spun out to an incredible 92 minutes. (At some stage, the producer had mercy on cinema patrons and shortened the movie to 73 minutes, but I and my brother big-city critics were forced to sit through the full-length version). Production values are negligible.

howardmorley I rated this film 6/10 as just above average.The other reviewer disclosed the murderer but anyone who watches this film could easily work it out.This because there are relatively few characters to choose from and apart from the obvious "red herring" it could only be one person.Audiences are so versed and educated in modern crime thrillers so they steer past the obvious, to wit: 1.Do not suspect the obvious hero whom the author points you towards.2.Ignore slightly sinister extras who have little or no dialogue - the audience cannot feel a rapprochement with them.3.When the motive appears in the screenplay suspect the character with the most to gain.I vaguely remember Paul Carpenter (the lead actor) who was a Canadian actor from Montreal and who appeared quite regularly on British TV in the 50s and early 60s but his resume is strictly "B" rated and the British actors are similarly not of the first box office magnitude.The whole film reminds me of a typical "B" feature production value and budget film of the 50s in my youth (I am 64 now) when the cinema goer first had a cartoon, then Pathe News, then the "B" feature and finally "The Big Film", for the price of admission.I always like to look at the cars, taxis, lack of parking restrictions in London shown in films during the 50s and of course the clothes fashions and manner of speaking.It's part of the fascination for me and why I like to buy dvds of this vintage.

fillherupjacko Aka Scotland Yard Dragnet (a slight oxymoron as it features neither a police dragnet nor, till the final part of the film, anyone from Scotland Yard.) Val Neal (Paul Carpenter) is a pilot who ejects after a test-flight goes wrong. "He'll break his neck at that speed" exclaims some bod at ground control. We see, potentially, a dead man floating on a parachute, lord of the flies style. Carpenter isn't dead though (it's just his acting – bum tish!) although he suffers fits; blackouts which he's unaware of. These are hilarious to watch - all phoney hyperventilation and swooping orchestral soundtrack. This is all consistent with a general bemusement about mental illness. When his fiancé (Pat Roc) is informed that his illness is psychosomatic, she replies: "What does that mean?" Pat brings in her uncle (Roland Culver), a sort of psychiatrist/ hypnotist, to treat Carpenter; although his treatment appears to involve having Wang the houseboy serve up cigars and fortified wine in the smoke-filled library.Pretty soon we realise that something's amiss – not so much with the patient but with sinister Dr Culver; his intimate questions reveal a less than wholesome interest in his niece. Thrown into the mix is annoying bitch Miss Barbara Barton – "she writes lurid love stories and sells them by the hundred thousand" – who Culver strangles before offering Carpenter up to the cops (she's the doc's ex wife).In the meantime, Carpenter has wondered off round London, still hypnotised, and ended up in the Downbeat Club. It's all coke (no, not that kind) and coffees here but he still manages to get himself picked up – by a character billed only as Jazz Club Blond.All in all, this film does for hypnotism what Reefer Madness did for marijuana.