THIS IS NOT PORN
Please, Don’t Touch Me – Ron Ormond
I’d assumed this was a vintage porno DVD when Kev first put it on the telly several Sundays ago. But it’s, um, not..? And yet the trippy thing about this 1963 USA ‘Hypnoxploitation’ film is that it feels that at any given moment as if it is about to become porn..? Or at least ye olde ‘softcore’ jumblings..? But it simply wafts infuriatingly at the edges of the lost art of hypnotic-erotic ‘titillation’ (a favourite genre of ours) like its heroine’s endless sheer negligees, leaving me wondering yet again about my hypno-nemesis: Ormond McGill.
McGill’s reputation proceeds him, of course. I must confess that I underestimated the old codger when I first encountered him; his ‘encyclopaedic’ knowledge failed to wow me, as did his wild claims about magically bending time and space to suit his Master Hypnotist will. I was, however, moved by his enduring love for his wife and, for reasons, began to wonder what sort of swinging cocktail parties they were part of back in the day..? I had visions of pampas grass and keys being tossed into a punchbowl in betwixt McGill’s magical performances of his famous cigarette-from-aspic-jelly trick…
So when the name ‘Ormond McGill’ appeared in the opening credits to Please, Don’t Touch Me I was, and wasn’t, surprised! Directed by American B-movie-maker Ron Ormond, aka Vittorio Di Naro, (1910-1981), the production values of this part-educational movie are something to behold – I note from the back-cover blurb that Ron Ormond was a McGill “protege” whose filmmaking style has been compared to Hollywood legend Ed Wood’s. Whether that’s true or just a Master Hypnotist’s PR spin, the film has that fuzzy, lurid, nostalgic vibe and aesthetic that I associate with peak vintage Americana hypnosis.
The opening sequence sets the tone for the this-is-not-porn mindf*ck effect. A beautiful wandering wench dressed in sexy Bo Peep garb gets jumbled about by a bandit before being found by a good samaritan. We then segue sans explanation into a potted history of hypnosis: the dramatised romance of Franz Mesmer’s time and the mysteries of Egypt are juxtaposed with real footage of Indian fakirs, self-flagellation, tribal ecstasies, spinning hypnotic disk machines, and gruesome (“painless”) surgeries – including illustrations of James Esdaile’s famous giant scrotal tumour surgery, for good measure.
It’s a jarring assault on the psyche and senses, which I personally think makes for a fantastic introduction to what the film is actually about: the ‘hypno-analysis’ of Vicky, a newly married suburban housewife suffering with a mysterious sexual aversion to her husband, Bill. This buxom red-head maintains a state of sexy 60s girlish confusion as her overbearing Mother and Bill seek to rid her of her headaches and hysteria, with Mother – straight out of a RuPaul soap acting challenge – insisting her teenaged jumbling (“rape”) is at the heart of her problems, despite Vicky’s semi-innocent uncertainty.
The attention to psychological detail and human disfunction is right up my street. Mother buys Vicky an intimate jewellery gift of a necklace to stay (inappropriately) close to her daughter, while stirring up pregnancy and divorce topics. We’re then treated to dreamily conceived scenes of the promise versus the reality of Bill and Vicky’s attempts at love-making – Vicky is shown dressing and undressing in pastel hazes and sheer fabrics, dancing and posing, only for the implied subconscious intrusions from Vicky’s trauma and/or from Mother put a dampener on proceedings. Bill is petulant and unsympathetic in the moment, as well as a mediocre kisser. I feel that Vicky and her smashing knockers are wasted on him.
The next evening when Bill returns home from work, he finds that Vicky has fled to Mother’s. He calls Mother in a funk, suspecting another man. Mother – serving full evil-eyed malevolence – instructs him to stay away for the sake of Vicky’s health. Bill retires to bed, with only a cigarette for dinner, and fantasises of sexy-dancing-Vicky… only for Mother to intrude even in his head. He falls asleep alone, tearing at Vicky's French knickers as he clutches them to his chest in a despair of unspent sexual passion.
A doctor, played by Western film star Lash LaRue (1917-1996), is consulted, who investigates using a skin conductance ‘stress test’ machine for a Q&A with Vicky as a politer way of simply announcing that her Mother is a meddling witch. Doctor Warren decides that hypno-analysis and ‘age regression’, courtesy of Master Hypnotist Ormond McGill – playing himself – is the best treatment for Vicky’s confused feelings about her husband and her Mother’s insistence on the veracity and significance of the ‘rape’.
With the aid of a spinning disk hypno-machine, McGill commands Vicky into a state of hypnosis in the doctor’s office while Bill and Mother wait outside. McGill is the picture of professionalism in spite of the ever-present distractions of Vicky’s resplendent breasts as she reclines upon the couch, with the watching cowboy-doctor only adding to the but-is-this-gonna-be-porn precarity of the scenario. Having lulled Vicky into his hypnotic thrall, McGill transfers command to Doctor Warren to revisit the ‘rape’ memory.
Vicky, however, was not a victim of rape – just of a vintage innocent-passing-bandit jostling that in no way spoiled her enthusiasm for men or, indeed, Bill. Instead, a hypnotic regression back to her wedding night reveals that it is a creepy snake ring that Bill wears on his finger that upsets her so. Doctor Warren gives Mother a thorough ticking off for her possessive infantilisation of her adult daughter and instructs her to leave the newlyweds alone for several weeks, which, with a red gleam in her witch’s eyes, Mother agrees to. Bill surrenders his mystical snake ring to the doctor before leaving – a devilish detail that makes me wonder whether this is all just a piece of Ormond McGill witchcraft to ward off his own personal matriarch problems; a driving force for most Master Hypnotists, it seems.
Flash forwards a few weeks and Mother telephones the American Dream couple while they’re canoodling in bed. They sportingly invite Mother to dinner before Vicky drops that she’s pregnant. I think that 99% of vintage Americana hypnosis is older white doctorish dudes persuading ‘hos’ corrupted as teens by Elvis and rock-n-roll to be a housewife, so Dr Dre’s 2010 track ‘Housewife’ started playing in my mind as I contemplated this, the ultimate solution to Vicky’s sexual dissonance: a baby… Thus her sex life is curtailed for nobler and ‘normaler’ reasons than a malevolent mother-in-law and subpar snogging, as The Universe demands of women fitting their prescribed mother/carer roles. The film’s voiceover announces the success of the hypnotic intervention accordingly.
Overall, this film is a masterclass in hypnotically persuading women to settle for a life that is, IMHO, only half lived. The newlywed ‘Vicky’ remains trapped as a fantasy of Bill’s fantasy just as she is propelling into motherhood and a humdrum real life without him truly by her side. Paradoxically, then, it’s also a masterclass in preserving and teasing just that fantasy – via the dying art of screen/literary hypnotic-erotic ‘titillation’.
With younger generations reportedly turned off by the hard-soft-everyday-screen-porn-gorn we’ve become desensitised to, I wonder if we might see a resurgence in content that leaves more space for human imagination and innovation. Cue hypnokink!
