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I checked my blog: the last entry was from 2024, and, before that, 2021. There are a two big reasons for that.
First off, COVID. That was depressing enough that I focussed on other things. I was also busy with those other things that I didn’t think about writing on here at the time. (It can be rough, because it is sometimes difficult to concentrate for the long periods of time necessary to write.)
Secondly, there were serious problems with the back end of the website, and I didn’t want to take the time to investigate them. When I finally cataloged the big bookcase, stuffed full and then some, holding most of The Collection, I selected several to write short pieces about over on BlueSky, but there were some that were too involved for that short format, so, one night, I delved into the error logs. Mainly, the problems were with a couple of the plugins, one of which was mine. That one was easily dealt with: it was a mistake I corrected elsewhere, and neglected to do here. The other problems were with another plugin: the coder used some very out-of-date conventions in string handling and some ‘fancy’ coding using trinary expressions that should have been handled with straight-forward if/then/else structures. I also took the time to clean up some of the corrupted characters: somewhere along the way, some of the left and right double quote marks got changed to weird characters, so I went through some of the posts to clean them up. Sometimes, just the thought of fixing everything was enough to turn me away: not sure what happened, but I am glad it did happen.
I still need to go through the broken links and clean them up and look at using a better theme, so if things look a little wonky at times, its just the outward signs of the back end construction.
“Love and Passion Under Hypnosis” (1956) by Walter Hale, published by Playgirl.
“Are Helpless Girls Betrayed By Hypnotists?”
“Stranger Than Bridey Murphy”
This 48 page mazagine promises a lot but does not deliver. The enclosed articles on hypnosis are pretty generic, the photography average or worse, and the layout and production is low quality.
There are several articles, almost all dealing with the main topic in general terms with anecdotal and contrived stories. There is the requisite article on hypnotizing people, and one article on stage hypnosis that appears to be clipped straight from a newspaper.
The purported pictures of hypnotized women are, with a couple of exceptions, just show mostly or entirely naked women, without any way to actually tell they are hypnotized, as there are no inductions shown; the exceptions show the women in which could be in some form of a trance, laying with their eyes closed, or extending their hand and arm as in a catalepsy test. However, the photographs are of poor quality and poorly printed. There is also a copious amount of bad clip art, too.
Last but (not) least is the eight pages of the typical kinds of ads of all men’s magazines of the period: books on how to improve your sex life, movies and stills of beautiful women, health nostrums, etc. There is another such full-page ad on the inside of the front cover.
Basically, it looks cheap, with sloppy layout in general. The middle eight pages are printed on a light blue paper stock, as opposed to the white paper of the rest of the pages, for no apparant reason. This is a hodgepodge of various articles pasted together (with the indicia typed on an old typewriter and clumsily pasted at the bottom of the last page of text, so as not to cover any of the ads.
Life has been hectic and crazy, but I am still here. I’m mostly posting on Bluesky, so if you want to catch up on what I’ve been doing (which is mostly cataloging The Collection), stop by.
Oh, and the website itself is acting up, too. I am not sure how to proceed.
Take one stone-cold killer, four criminal mind controllers, and add a comedy relief villain in a comic without comedy, and the sum is murder and mayhem.
“Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum” is a prequel comic series to the “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” video game. The prequel series shows how members of the Suicide Squad are recruited by Amanda Waller and Colonel Rick Flag, Junior, to form the team which is meant to save the world by taking down the Justice League, DC Comic’s premiere superhero team. This series and the video game takes place outside the regular DC continuity. This particular issue involves the recruiting of George ‘Digger’ Harkness, a.k.a. Captain Boomerang, a strong B‑class villain in the Flash’s Rogues Gallery. Captain Boomerang is an expert, not only with throwing boomerangs, but crafting specialized boomerangs. He is also an experienced burglar, tactician, and engineer.
⇒ Continue reading ““Suicide Squad: Kill Arkhan Asylum” #4”
The January, 1960 (Volume 5, Number 4) issue of The Lowdown magazine includes a three-page (just under one page of text and backed by a lurid double-page spread image of staring eyes) relating the “personal” experience of “a young and pretty former prostitute who was hired by THE LOWDOWN to track rumors that doctors were hypnotizing housewives and seducing them.”
The text does not offer any proof that there were even such rumors, only mentioning a doctor in New Mexico who allegedly hypnotized several women, including getting one of them pregnant: no other details were included. Instead the story reads like a “true confessions” personal story about two different encounters that are light on specificities that could have been pieced together from any number of period resources about hypnosis.
⇒ Continue reading “The Lowdown: “An American Tragedy: Rape Under Hypnosis””
The December, 1964 (Volume 5, number 6) issue of Bachelor magazine published a five page photo spread of a “hypnotism party”. The photographs include female nudity.
“What will they think of next? Among the arty set, the old party pickups like alcohol and marijuana just can’t hold a candle to the kicks one can get from a candle-waving hypnotist.”
“During soiree at sculptor Ed Lass’ apartment in N.Y.‘s Lower East Side, dull moments were ended when hypnotism began.”
⇒ Continue reading ““Bachelor Goes to a Hypnotism Party””
I’ve looked, and there is no museum devoted to hypnosis anywhere in the world, at least nothing with any kind of web presense or news stories about it. The best I found through a web search was a short-lived exposition almost 20 years ago.
This is disappointing, since there are plenty of museums to even the most trivial of subjects, so why not hypnotism? Plus, I’ve spent the past *mumble mumble* decades collecting The Hypnosis in Media Collection, and I’ve invested a lot of time, money, emotion and devotion to it and I want to see it in the hands of people who would be as committed to it as me: I want it to be continued, maintained and used. I just don’t have the time, the energy, the contacts, the funds or the expertise to do it.
So what would the Hypnotism Museum look like? Possibly a location like a movie memorabilia store I found in Los Angeles over a decade ago, when I was looking for hypnosis-related movie memorabilia, publicity photographs, posters, etc. It was literally on the bottom floor of a two-story urban mall, with ethnic stores around it and a Japanese restaurant / bar on the upper floor that overlooked the hall on the lower floor. Only in Los Angeles …
Anyway, I can dream, though, and I can imagine, and I can convert those dreams and imaginings into words. (And maybe, one day, into reality.)
Here they are:
⇒ Continue reading “The Hypnotism Museum — A Dream”
“The Lust Sleepers” (1964) by J X Williams
 A classic example of the 1960’s hypno-porn. John Thursday, the protagonist, makes a living providing hypnotic services for voyers and subjects. When one of his subjects commits suicide, he flees to New York where he gets blackmailed to assist Reich, who runs BDSM parties at his remote manor with a heavy emphasis on B and S.
The inside cover text reads:
CONDITIONED FOR LOVE?
John Thursday has a special trick. His sincere looks mask the ability to hypnotize any unwilling wanton until she casts aside all her inhibitions to perform any shameful set Thursday can think to command. Like Greta, on the office couch, who goes through such throes of ecstasy there is nothing left for her … but the long fall outside the office window. Like Rita, the redhead on the plane, who shows Thursday what love / hate really means. Like Mae, whose trance revealed a degradation that was alarming in its intensity. Or like Reich, the twisted degenerate who used extortion to persuade Thursday to do his evil bidding.
The back text reads:
TORTURE CELLAR… That’s where the sadistic Reich kept all his little impliments [sic] of pleasure. The shackles, the cells, the whips. Right there beneath his palatial country estate. And it is so easy for him to find guests to people his weekend orgies. Each of them going through their shameless paces at Reich’s bidding, never knowing what exquisite pleasures waited below… pleasures for Reich, that is… as the whip tenses in his hand. Into this hell-hole he blackmails John Thursday… to perform Thursday’s special degrading trick on Mae Davis… while all the other changing partners watched in delight…
GoodReads has a very good description of it here.
I believe J X Williams is a house name, because there are far too many books with that name listed from this and allied publishers.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”
“The Shadow knows”
With that, one of the most successful pulp characters was introduced to the radio and magazine audience. Even today, that phrase is recognized and the character remembered: the Shadow, who possessed the hypnotic power to “cloud men’s minds”.
But The Shadow had a convoluted history: he didn’t always have that power; in fact, he wasn’t a pulp character in the first place!
⇒ Continue reading ““The Shadow” — The Origin”
There was a change in cartoons in the 1970’s, following a misplaced furor about violence in children’s cartoons. Violence, even cartoon violence, was suddenly forbidden. That was the reason you never saw Thundarr the Barbarian decapitate anyone with his Sun Sword. It was why Cobra pilots always bailed out before their jets exploded. It was why GI Joe and Cobra used laser weapons that only seemed to affect tanks and jeeps instead of ordinary rifles and machine guns. (The latter was also cheaper to animate.)
It forced writers to develop new and different (or old and different) stories and plot devices on a weekly basis.
Enter Mind Control.
⇒ Continue reading ““Masters of the Universe: Teela’s Secret””
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