The Hypnotist's Revenge (1907)

• 66%
• 1907
• Drama
• Joseph A. Golden

Most of us have at some time attended an entertainment given by some wonderful exponent of the mysterious art of hypnotism, and have always noted the presence of some cynical sciolist who would brand the professor a blatant fraud. Such an incident opens this picture. The producer of "brainstorms-while-you-wait" is entertaining his audience with the antics of those under his soporific influence, when the fellow with the not-if-I-know-it expression appears and challenges the professor. What follows is most cogent and convincing, but he takes his conviction with such an ugly grace that the hypnotist becomes his avowed nemesis, and so follows him for some time. First, the professor, disguised as a musician, attends a dance, where he turns his victim into a veritable whirling dervish, and in the midst of his gyroscopic evolutions wakes him to fully realize his embarrassment before an almost panic-stricken assemblage. Next he appears at a banquet disguised as a waiter. Here he induces the cynic to become crazy drunk, and after attempting to kiss the ladies present, he leaps on the table, kicks the dishes in all directions and performs such feats on the chandelier that would cause the most wonderful trapeze artist to turn green with envy. Again, the awful awakening. During a wedding service the professor makes him believe he is the bridegroom, and before he can be restrained he rushes up, hurls the happy man aside and takes his, place at the altar beside the trembling bride-elect, to the consternation of all present. As he regains his normal senses he espies the cause of his plight just leaving the church. He dashes madly after him, out of the church, and down the street after the cab into which the hypnotist jumps to elude him. As the professor alights from the cab our friend rushes up, but is again put under the egregious hypnotic influence and made to chase the professor's cane, which is carried off by another man. Down the street they race, into an apartment house, then out through a window on the lower floor, up the fire-escape and through a window on the top floor of an apartment, throwing the occupants into a tumult of excitement At the entrance he is seized by a couple of stalwart policemen and dragged off to the Insane Pavilion of Bellevue Hospital, where he is relieved of his hallucination, now a firm believer in the theories of the venerable Dr. Mesmer. While the above is a chronicle of events, it but feebly describes the continuous laugh-producing situations of the film.