PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ME (1963) ***

 

Ron Ormond’s Please Don’t Touch Me is a mix of hypnotism propaganda, roadshow ballyhoo, and frigid wife melodrama. 

Things kick off with the rape of our leading lady, Vicky (Vicki Caron) when she was just a teenager.  From there, we get a lecture on hypnotism.  We see Franz Mesmer (Ormond) perfecting the art of mesmerism as well as a demonstration of a needle being inserted into the arm of a hypnotized person.  The best part though is the artist renderings of people who have been helped by hypnotism, including a guy with a “103-pound scrotal tumor”!  Next, we get Mondo movie-style footage of real-life operation scenes, flagellants, and a guy laying on a bed of nails.  Finally, the movie begins. 

The ensuing drama claims to be a case history of a real woman who used hypnotism to cure her sexual hang-ups.  Vicky is worried that her fear of being touched by her newlywed husband will ruin their marriage.  Her meddling mother (Ruth Blair) insists she see a shrink (Lash La Rue!).  He then turns to a hypnotist (Ormond McGill, a real-life hypnotist) to help unlock her psychosis. 

Please Don’t Touch Me plays sort of like a slightly tawdrier version of roadshow movies from the ‘30s like Mom and Dad.  Despite its exploitative foundation, there are some stretches that are surprisingly sensitive (for the time at least).  Other moments are rather hilarious, like when the hubby has a dream where Vicky is tempting him with a striptease, only to have her mother appear in between them when they’re about to get close.

Vicki Caron gives a great performance.  You really feel for her, and it’s a shame she never made another movie.  She also looks great in a series of sexy outfits, negligees, and low-cut blouses, the latter she wears while lying on the shrink’s couch, spilling her ample cleavage everywhere.  Like Ormond’s Monster and the Stripper, there isn’t any nudity, but it’s a bit more revealing than most films of the era.  (We get a bit of side boob during the wedding night flashback scene.) 

Even if Vicky’s plight has been somewhat sensationalized and exploited, Ormond is clearly on her side.  Topics like rape and sexual inadequacy in the marriage bed were certainly taboo subjects at the time, so it’s kind of shocking that it’s all handled as tastefully as it is.  In fact, Ormond exploits hypnotism more than anything.  Hypnotism was all the rage in the late ‘50s (it was shot in ‘59), and the film is mostly a tribue to Ormond’s mentor, Ormond McGill (whom he took his stage name from). 

The rape angle was really there to put butts in the seats.  I mean, who would come to see a movie about a woman using hypnotism to cure… say… smoking…. or snoring?  So, I guess it really is exploitative after all.  It’s just not as crassly done as you might expect.

The harmonica heavy soundtrack was courtesy of The Mulcays, the pair of harmonica players who later appeared in Ormond’s Girl from Tobacco Row and Monster and the Stripper.