AN APPLE FOR THE DOCTOR
Dr Sex & Wanda The Sadistic Hypnotist – Something Weird Video
I’ve complained before that hypnotism is a stubbornly pale, stale, and male pursuit. So it’s inspiring to see a vintage hypnotic lesbian bikini cult holding their own as masters mistresses of mind-control in this 1960s American skinflick.
Kev had popped the contents of the 2003 ‘Something Weird Video’ DVD double-feature presentation of Dr Sex (1964) and Wanda The Sadistic Hypnotist (1969) onto a USB stick – presumably in hopes of some hotel bedroom couple viewing hanky panky to come… Alas, I take the study of these mesmeric American motifs seriously, and so please rest assured, Dear Readers, that no orgasms were procured in providing this insight into the hypnotic techniques featured.
We began our study with Wanda. Voyeuristic footage of topless young ladies sunning themselves in an idyllic garden is interspersed with a man visiting a theatre to watch just the sort of full-colour skin-a-rama movie we’re awaiting. Groovy music segues to a car crash that sees our protagonist, Sylvester, ‘rescued’ to wild-eyed Wanda’s sprawling mansion home. The gold lamé wearing, riding crop wielding mistress of hypnosis keeps the mild-mannered man prisoner, ordering her lingerie-clad blonde paramour, Greta, to restrain and strip him.
“When are you going to try the hypnosis?”, Greta enquires while wrangling with a protesting and injured Sylvester, lying on the bed, wrists tethered. Wanda’s approach clearly requires a lot of preparatory spanking. It’s soft, farcical, silly, fun stuff.
A convertible car pulls up outside packed with Wanda’s lingerie-clad cult members. A topless pool party occurs and then the giggling group assemble, post showers, in Wanda’s salon. Wanda, a brooding brunette, holds court from her wicker throne; her hypnotic powers emitted through her intense glare (and grouchy disposition). “Look into my eyes!” she commands, and her nubile frilly girlfriends do her bidding. One is instructed to be a go-go dancer; another is transformed into a nymphomaniac in search of a man. She finds Sylvester – who’s been fending off Greta in betwixt Wanda’s hypnotic punishment sessions – and pounces upon his helpless body.
“Lady, you don’t understand! I’m a Republican!”, he protests as the lesbian-nympho overcomes him. Perhaps Sylvester’s political affiliation explains why he is so susceptible to Mistress Wanda’s kinky hypnotic manipulations: next, he’s parading around the house in a leather bikini for the gratification of her lesbian coterie while begging for mercy. The poor man.
News reaches the cult that a sex maniac is on the run from the local state loonie bin! Moments later, said maniac is running amok in Wanda’s salon. After jumbling everybody’s boobies, he frees Sylvester so they can restrain Greta and Wanda. Our cowed Wanda is spanked with her whip by Sylvester while the maniac ransacks for drugs. A big bottle of LSD, a potent hallucinogen, is found, and the men and girls party in a naked messy surreal paint orgy that one can only imagine culminated in the men sucking each other’s dicks so that someone could escape and call 911.
The cops collect the maniac the next morning, and Sylvester returns to his chaste, straight Republican life. The cult members dress and disperse. Wanda and Greta continue their hypnotic sado-erotic mansion cult untroubled by the authorities. Maybe Wanda was a Republican, too..?
Next up is Dr Sex, featuring a Freudian style hypnotherapist complete with comedic European accent and professorial glasses.
Tantalisingly described as a “wacky Nudie-Cutie cross between a skinflick and The Twilight Zone,” it features short psychotherapeutic vignettes with fun surreal twists… and plenty of boobs and bodies! There’s a talking poodle obsessed with his pretty female owner who longs to be a man, as well as a love-sick psychiatrist who wants to be a poodle. In another story, a patient is haunted by beautiful semi-nude lady ghosts who tend to his home. And there’s a particularly twisty tale of a male department store worker whose mannequins come to life when he undresses them, who meets his match in a female hypnotherapist – only for her to become a dummy.
“Therapy can be fun!”, says Dr Sex encouragingly to his group of stripping, partying, hypnotised patients. “We shall do some more research!”
Hypnotherapy never looked so tempting…
