"Hypnotic Madness of Massacre" is a strange small film with minimalist budget which tried to capitalize on the success of the Franco-Italian coproductions Fantomas, while quoting the contemporaneous studies of Herbert Krugman and Marshall McLuhan upon the "hypnotic impact" of the "vast wasteland" television and its "subliminal stimuli".
Alas on one side Bava's Diabolik talent has not yet come, and on the other side we stay far far away from Videodrome or even the French Kamikaze. There was however a group of actors which we could have appreciated in another context, but here they appear in a quite random and disparate mood along unlikely situations, linked through an approximate montage within a script which scatters in confusion and waste of time.
Nicole (Rada Rassimov, Il Gatto a nove code) and Henry (Robert Woods, L'Amante del demonio) are both psychoanalysts working in a medical office and able to develop a romance together. But one evening, as they watch a teleromanzo on TV, Nicole has a "sudden raptus of murderous madness" and begins to stab her friend, before fainting and remembering nothing. This incident takes place in a serial of mysterious murders in Rome on Thursdays evening when people are watching TV.
The police commissioner Casares (Piero Gerlini, Crimine a Due) and the inspector Griffi (Giovanni Cianfriglia aka Ken Wood, Danza Macabra) are seeking usual suspects for motiveless killings, but our couple of psys are determined on their side to lead an inquiry upon "phenomena that science could not explain". Nicole retrieves an old book about the power of distant hypnosis written by the professor Harold Kemnitz (Fernando Sancho, Nelle Pieghe della carne), and finds him retired in his "garden of stone simulacra".
But Kemnitz's invention has been diverted by a criminal organization led by a masked mad scientist who wants to induce an apocalypse through global TV hypnotism. As Nicole is abducted by the henchmen and taken to the high-tech lair of their masked chief, Henry and the police will have the perilous task to rescue her and to prevent the upcoming catastrophe. (Viewed in Italian 1h26 version.)
