“The Mask of Fu Manchu” (1932)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023194/]

Cap­sule Descrip­tion: The malev­o­lent Man­darin, Fu Manchu, attempts to ral­ly the hea­then Asi­at­ic hordes under his ban­ner by way of the leg­endary Sword and Mask of Genghis Kahn, pro­claim­ing him­self the rein­car­na­tion of the leg­endary con­queror. But his oppo­nent, Sir Nay­land Smith, is there to oppose his scheme.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““The Mask of Fu Manchu” (1932)”

“Hypnotique” by Max Factor

For the women born to enchant men. Max Fac­tor’s Hyp­no­tique … the new fra­grance that’s cap­tured the very essence of wom­an’s pow­er over men. Cool­ly and with great ele­gance Hyp­no­tique attracts … holds … per­suades … and then! Any­thing can hap­pen! (Adver­tis­ing copy from the first mag­a­zine ad.)

Descrip­tion: All cos­met­ics, includ­ing fra­grances, are designed in part to attract and focus atten­tion on the wear­er. Some fra­grances are just a lit­tle more bla­tant about it. Fra­grances with names like “Spell­bound”, “Hyp­nose”, “Mes­mer­ize” or “Hyp­not­ic Poi­son”  bla­tant­ly sug­gest the pow­er of com­mand­ing and con­trol­ling men (although Avon’s “Mes­mer­ize”, which was orig­i­nal­ly a wom­an’s fra­grance, is now being more direct­ly mar­ket­ed toward men, strange­ly enough.) Even fra­grances not so named are fre­quent­ly adver­tised using hyp­not­ic ter­mi­nol­o­gy and imagery.

But one of the ear­li­est and cer­tain­ly one of the most bla­tant of the hyp­not­ic cos­met­ics was “Hyp­no­tique” by Max Fac­tor. Released in the late 1950’s, the hyp­not­ic imagery was very notice­able in the mag­a­zine ads:

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Hyp­no­tique” by Max Factor”

“How I Am Making My Selections”

Cur­rent­ly, I have no set order in which I am writ­ing and pub­lish­ing my blog posts here. What has been hap­pen­ing is that I will start pulling items of inter­est from the col­lec­tion, exam­in­ing them and then start writ­ing on a par­tic­u­lar item; oth­er times I will start arti­cles as I think of them. At present, I have about 15 dif­fer­ent posts in some degree or anoth­er of com­ple­tion. Then I will select one at some time before the sched­uled pub­li­ca­tion date and do the research and writ­ing to com­plete it. 

But some­times things can come straight from left field. For Instance, I was in the mid­dle of writ­ing a post on anoth­er movie (tak­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion from the online poll) but I hap­pened to think of the movie “Our Man Flint” and sud­den­ly the first para­graph almost wrote itself in my head. Once I thought of that, I just had to fin­ish it.

Out­side events can also affect the selec­tion. Right now, I am try­ing to get a copy of the nov­el “Thir­teen Women” by Tiffany Thay­er, the source for the Myr­na Loy / Irene Dunn movie of the same name, through inter-library loan. If I am able to get that then I will be able to com­plete the post on the movie and maybe do a sep­a­rate one on the book, too, depend­ing on what all is in it. 

The same is true for a post on a non-fic­tion arti­cle I am research­ing: i am wait­ing to see if I can get a copy of a book the author of the arti­cle wrote to see if the arti­cle is includ­ed with­in, and to see if I can get any fur­ther bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the author from the book, as there are ele­ments of the arti­cle that try­ing to con­firm. I orig­i­nal­ly want­ed this post to be the sec­ond one I wrote but details of the research have pushed back the fin­ish time. 

I am try­ing not to do all of the easy stuff first: part of the intent here was to get me to seri­ous­ly read or review the unfa­mil­iar stuff and I do need to start doing more of that. Besides, there will be times when I won’t have the time for the research or writ­ing and will need some­thing easy then, so I’m sav­ing those up for the future. 

So, I would like to say what I will be post­ing next week, and I do have some­thing sched­uled but still in pro­duc­tion, so that may change. That is like­ly to remain the sta­tus quo for the fore­see­able future. 

“Our Man Flint” (1966)

His­to­ry: The year is 1966. Amer­i­ca is under­go­ing the throes of the British spy inva­sion. James Bond 007 leads the assault from the movie screen and book racks every­where, sup­port­ed ably on the small screen by “The Avengers”. Amer­i­ca coun­ters with its own home-grown tele­vi­sion spy series. “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and “Get Smart”, but who shall chal­lenge the fore­run­ner, the invin­ci­ble 007 him­self, on the big screen?

In answer to Amer­i­ca’s call comes Derek Flint, super­spy, mar­tial artist, bal­let mas­ter, speak­er to por­pois­es, mil­lion­aire, gour­mand, man-about-town, ladies man, etc. In effect, every­thing James Bond is, and more. Armed with his trick lighter, which can per­form 82 dif­fer­ent func­tions (83 if you include light­ing a cig­ar,) his quick wits and flash­ing grin, Flint saves the world from poten­tial con­querors and nuclear dis­as­ter in “Our Man Flint” (1966) and “In Like Flint” (1967).

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing ““Our Man Flint” (1966)”

‘Hare Brained Hypnoist’ (1942)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034829/]

Cap­sule Descrip­tion: Bugs Bun­ny’s eter­nal neme­sis, hunter Elmer Fudd, tries a new tac­tic this time: hyp­no­sis. Using a book on hyp­no­sis, he first hyp­no­tizes a bear then tries to hyp­no­tize Bugs, only to be hyp­no­tized in return. Bugs turns the tables on him by com­mand­ing him to be a rab­bit, but, when turn­ing the tables, Bugs dis­cov­ers that the tables can be turned in both directions.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘Hare Brained Hyp­noist’ (1942)”