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film ReviewsAn Instructor’s Guide to Psychic Movies
Colette Kelso
The following reviews are designed to give the interested teacher some exposure to the limited number of informative yet entertaining professional films in the field of paranormal investigation. All the movies are in color and except for those distributed by Bruce Raymond Co. can be rented for a three day period. Films were made available for screening by funds from the New School for Social Research.
Matthew Manning: Study of a Psychic Bruce Raymond Company 27 minutes, $375 (no rental) 207 Queen’s Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J 1A7, Canada.Matthew Manning, referred to as the most gifted psychic in the world
by Dr. George Owen, tells his story. His father recalls how the strange events began first with mysteriously overturned furniture and rearranged rooms. Later, when he was in school objects began to fly through the air, always barely missing his classmates. Reports from the headmaster of the school, his roommate and members of his family, all document the unexplainable incidents which have followed him wherever he went, since the onset of puberty.
Scenes of an empty room which when left unattended would magically be covered from wall to wall with signatures of some unknown entity make quite an impression on the viewer. Matthew displays his talent for automatic writing and drawing. He is capable of reproducing exact replicas complete with authentic signatures of the works of great artists such as Picasso and Beardsley, as well as many unknowns.
Matthew Manning’s story is indeed amazing. The film is intriguing, enjoyable and refreshingly humorous. The last long shot of Manning’s eyes is mesmerizing. For a moment you may be confused as to who is watching whom. There is an innocence in style which makes the phenomenon extremely believeable and demonstrated with exceptionally good taste. Manning himself sets the tone of the movie by admitting that he does not want to do something as dull as bending spoons and forks psychokinetically all his life.
144 Journal of Occult Studies
PSI: Boundaries of the Mind BFA Educational Media, 25 minutes, $20, 2211 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, California 90406
One of the better attempts to show scientific research with an interesting and visually satisfactory format. Dream telepathy and remote viewing are two areas investigated both in the laboratory and in the field. The film visits research facilities at Maimonides Hospital and SRI and follows several convincing experiments from start to finish.
The style is a matter of fact approach to psychic phenomena and there is less of a sensationalist or believe-it-or-not effect. Some of the editing seems questionable since research in these areas seldoms goes as smoothly as the action in the picture would imply. Nevertheless, many of the top names in parapsychology are represented and they try to put their best feet forward in presenting the most impressive of their contributions.
Hartley Productions - Films for a New Age, Cat Rock Road, Cos Cob, Connecticut 06807, (203) 869-1818, Catalogue available The Ultimate Mystery 40 minutes, $45
Edgar Mitchell, once Apollo 14 astronaut, now parapsychology advocate, narrates this film. He tells of his experience as an astronaut with a force which he calls “primary perception” or the “nature of consciousness.” He believes that all living things have in common the capacity for emotional response and that we are all somehow cosmically tied in with each and everything by this consciousness.
He reports, uncritically, on Cleve Baxter and the amazing results he has discovered by attaching a polygraph machine to a plant’s leaves. Interesting experiments are shown which supposedly indicate that plants react emotionally much in the same way as humans do to various stimuli. A faith healer works on her patients using the laying on of hands, which is a show in itself. A famous scientist demonstrates the effect of such healing energy on enzymes and another experiment shows that even common yogurt bacteria has an “emotional” response capacity.
Mitchell concludes that the result of all these findings reinforces the notion that consciousness acts as a universal connector; another way to look at the concept of the oneness of life. This could be a good primer film to get beginning students excited about the “mystery. Some of the material is now dated and some results are not as readily accepted as they were when the picture was first made.
Expanding the Limits of Consciousness 35 minutes, $40This is a fairly thorough job of exploring the more practical applica
tions of altered states of consciousness. It is a useful film for those interested in going beyond the popularized version of psychic phenomena. It is suggested that we all have an innate capacity for psychic abilities and that this is something which can be developed. Individuals may then begin to utilize their natural powers.
Film Reviews 145
A gym teacher guides her students thru exercise and meditation in order to quiet the left brain and develop the right brain. Doctors are now helping children with reading problems using a mild hypnotic technique. A professor helps the local authorities recover stolen goods with the aid of a divining rod. Doctors and musicians are shown benefiting from the harnessing of their subsconscious and a faith healer performs a very impressive small miracle cure.
The film shows us the endless possibilities. A refreshing movie because it deals with more than just the phenomena itself and offers possible direction to a student of parapsychology. Especially useful is the large number of scenes which show positive results from the implementation of a variety of psychic techniques.Meditation: The Journey Inwards 20 minutes, $30
A brief, general overview of various techniques of meditation. The imagery includes: the Muslims reading and living the Koran; the Sufi whirling dervishes with beautiful shots of their flowing white gowns; Christians in silent prayer; and the Buddhists with their auras of serenity. Finally after an animated segment depicting all the mundane worries and pressures of an ordinary day, a man finds peace while walking through a snowy forest in the wilderness.
Appropriately, the movie attempts to tie all the methods of mediation together thru the use of many long, but aesthetically pleasing views of nature and peacefulness. The overall effect is very slow and soothing as is the process of meditation. However, it is not informative for those eager for knowledge of possible psychic links thru the practice of meditation and it would most likely bore anyone who was slightly skeptical. Sacred Trances in Bali and Java 30 minutes, $35
As an alternative to meditation, hypnosis, or drugs, we have a look into ways to attain altered states of consciousness in another culture— a sort of ethnological viewpoint of parapsychology. Based on the belief in “animism”, that all living things have souls which roam and that one soul may enter another’s body. We see native Bali and Java men dance themselves into trance. Once they have gone into these states, their souls escape and their bodies are taken over by the soul of a horse! They are shown eating hay, tearing coconuts apart with their teeth and rolling in broken glass.
The film is quite colorful, one can’t help being reminded of a National Geographic short. The men perform these superhuman feats on and on throughout the movie and some of them are even brutal. It could be especially useful for anyone anthropological-psychically inclined, for °fhers it was a spectacle of primative activity. The only weakness was the brief treatment of the methods of trance induction. We are shown people in deep trance, but are left in the dark about how those states were created; the implication was drugs, hypnosis and dance.
146 Journal of Occult Studies
Philip: The Imaginary Ghost Bruce Raymond Co., 15 minutes, $225A group of ordinary people, none of whom are mediums, got together
under the auspices of the Toronto Psychical Research Society, in an attempt to hold seances and make some kind of connection with the world beyond. When their efforts failed to produce worthwhile results, they decided their approach was too serious and they went about inventing their own ghost. A picture was drawn of Phillip and a story was written which detailed his entirely fictitious background. They slowly began bringing him to life, using a more jovial and light hearted approach.
The film is slightly amateurish and not really very convincing at first glance. There are many shots of the group singing gaily, levitating the table all around the room, back and forth, but never completely off all four legs. Nonetheless, their story is a happy one and the members seem satisfied. As yet no one has found evidence of fraud and their ability to produce acostical rapping sounds seems quite authentic.
The movie is light and somehow the amateur and unconventional style of filming makes it easier to believe that this group really have created an imaginary ghost. Perhaps a warning about the dangers of creating spiritual phenomena from the subconscious should have been included. Mapy authorities now feel that treating such parlor games as Ouija Boards too lightly can cause trouble and while no problems are evident in the situations depicted, more caution might have been exercised. As a how-to-do-it lesson, this movie offers good tips for entertainment on lonely nights since it presents techniques from which anyone can get results.
Cosmic Zoom McGraw-Hill Films, 15 minutes, $21, 600 Grand Avenue, Ridgefield, N.J. 08657Unquestionably the most thought-provoking short subject production
available on the market. Through a series of very convincing photographic techniques, including animation, the viewer is literally transported from the mundane activities of the physical world into alternate levels of space and time.
As the camera “zooms” back from the tranquil fishing schene of a Canadian lake, we are treated to a macro view of first the earth and eventually the cosmos. In a matter of seconds we propel back down the space-time tunnel and without hesitation enter the equally fascinating micro world. In the same number of steps it took to view the whole universe, the camera explores the invisible world of the electron and beyond.
Few visual experiences can so totally capture the whole gamut of alternate levels of consciousness in such a crisp and concise manner. Possibly a prism with its enormous unseen ultaviolet and infrared ranges separated by the “insignificant” white light band comes closest to capturing the feeling created by this movie. “As above, so below was never more accurately symbolized.
We don't have all the answers. But, we’re trying!The world is filled with books about occultism that tell us WHAT has happened; WHAT is happening; WHAT will happen. But, there are few books indeed that tell us HOW and WHY such things as palmistry, pyramids, and psychic phenomena are valid and meaningful. We have a book about psychic phenomena that tries to explain this HOW and WHY. It has no final answers, but, from cover to cover, it seeks persistently for such answers. So, if you want to know, not only whether there are actually such phenomena as thought transference, psychometry, thoughtography, clairvoyance, telepathy, but also HOW and WHY such capacities exist in, and are a part of human nature, then, here is a book thatwill helpyou.
A QUEST BOOK
D. Scott Rogo
exploring
Beyond Mind and Matter
by D. Scott Rogo
The author is a Consultant for the Psychical Research Foundation, and Book Review Editor for New Realities (Psychic Magazine). He is the author of An Experience of Phantoms, and A Study of Some Unusual Otherworld Experiences. Rogo knows his subject well enough to be aware of how much we still have to learn about it. Working within the framework of well substantiated case histories, he helps us with this learning.
“ • ■ excellent . . . ”— Paperback Review “ • ■ well written and provocative . . . ” —Dr. Stanley Krippner “ ■ • profoundly informing . . . ’’—The Mail, Madras, India
A/—N| |rCT Dh~\r~\\/ At bookstores, or postpaid promptly from Ul Jr ; A JK Quest Books, Dept. JOS, 306 W. Geneva1 L-'V-yV-y|X Road, Wheaton, III. 60187
