by Dreams End » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:32 pm
Light years ahead of me...as usual. Here's McGowan on an individual he actually learned about while researching a movie called "Peeping Tom" that he got from Netflix. Short version...British intel agent on FILM in the documentary that comes with the DVD that he made women "forget" what they did for him as agents in Nazi Germany AND two of the women themselves admitting they couldn't remember what they'd done and how this guy Marks had a way of making you forget things he didn't want you to remember. This guy was also involved in creating this film, which is the tie in...fascinating, chilling...and I'd put it on the Derren Brown video thread except that one sprouted a hundred heads with no Hercules to slay them.<br><br> <br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>Sometimes you find essential truths about that world in the most unexpected of places. Take, for example, an obscure motion picture bearing the not-very-promising title of “Peeping Tom.” I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that none of you have ever heard of this film, unless there happens to be a hardcore 'film geek' or two in the crowd.<br><br> <br><br>I stumbled across it largely by accident. The wife, you see, bestowed a Netflix membership on me this past Christmas. And after several weeks of renting movies, “Peeping Tom” came up on my list of recommended rentals (which probably tells you more about my viewing habits than you really need to know). Based on the title and the brief synopsis provided by Netflix, it didn’t look to be of much interest, but it had received good reviews so I decided to give it a chance. After all, how bad could it be? It’s not like Charleton Heston was cast in the starring role.<br><br> <br><br>As it turned out, “Peeping Tom” is a remarkable film with a curious history. As the story goes, this cinematic gem was almost lost to the world forever, and remained virtually unseen for the first twenty years of its existence. Upon its release in the UK (it was a British production), it was immediately attacked by the media. The assault was so harsh and unrelenting that the film was pulled from theaters within a week and the movie’s director, previously one of the most highly-regarded film directors then working, left the country and moved to Australia, his career and reputation in ruins.<br><br> <br><br>The year was 1960. Three months after “Peeping Tom” was pulled from theaters, a film that it is now frequently compared to by film historians, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” arrived in theaters and received a considerably more favorable response. By then, “Peeping Tom” had disappeared and wouldn’t be seen again for two full decades, when it was apparently rediscovered by American filmmakers Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola. Though the film is now available on DVD, it remains a largely buried treasure.<br><br> <br><br>The film's plot-line revolves around a protagonist named Mark Lewis (seen here in the film's brief nude scene - the first in a major studio production - which I have included here in an obvious attempt to increase traffic to my website), an oddly sympathetic psychopath played by Austrian actor Karl Boehm. By day, the creepy yet charismatic Lewis works in the mainstream film industry as an assistant cameraman. But by night, our anti-hero pursues other interests – such as soliciting the services of prostitutes, shooting pornographic films, brutally murdering a series of attractive young women, and, last but certainly not least, producing snuff films.<br><br> <br><br>Quite a heady mix, I have to say, for a film that appeared on movie screens (albeit very briefly) nearly half-a-century ago. And there’s more! As is noted in a British television documentary that is included on the DVD, the Mark Lewis character was “driven to voyeurism and murder by traumatic childhood experiences at the hands of his psychologist father.” Huh?! Traumatic childhood abuse at the hands of a psychologist? ... resulting in the spawning of a serial killer/snuff film maker? Who would have ever guessed that?<br><br> <br><br>In the film, Mark Lewis’ father is depicted as having devoted his life to studying the human reaction to fear. Of particular interest was the fear reaction in – you guessed it – children. And being the depraved and sadistic sort of guy that he was, his favorite test subject was his own son, whom he systematically traumatized throughout the boy’s childhood, while, naturally enough, carefully documenting each act of abuse on film. So now the son, having been properly conditioned by the father, carries on the family tradition by filming the fear on his victims’ faces at the moment of their violent death. To pass the time between kills, our leading man spends endless hours viewing his sizable film library, which includes both the films of his own torture as a child and his own self-produced snuff films.<br><br> <br><br>And where, you may be wondering, did such a deranged, disturbing, yet oddly familiar storyline come from? To answer that question, we must turn to the bonus documentary entitled “A Very British Psycho,” produced for British television in 1997. There we learn that although the film is most closely associated with disgraced director Michael Powell, it was actually the creation of Leo Marks, described by the documentary’s narrator as “a figure as secretive and mysterious as his near namesake, Mark Lewis.”<br><br> <br><br>Mr. Marks, as it turns out, was at one time a high-level intelligence operative. Imagine my surprise at that revelation!<br><br> <br><br>We also learn that Leo Marks spent a considerable amount of his childhood in a bookstore co-owned by his father. From the age of eight, young Leo’s dad took him to work daily, where he spent his time reading through the store’s three-story collection of rare books. The entire third floor of the store, as Marks recalled, was filled with “occult and Masonic books.” The store, by the way, was named Marks and Co. Booksellers, but it later became much better known by its street address, 84 Charing Cross Road.<br><br> <br><br>Just after the onset of World War II, Leo Marks was put in charge of a division of a newly established British intelligence entity known as the SOE, or Special Operations Executive. Considered to be a master code-breaker, Marks was said to be obsessed with creating increasingly sophisticated codes, his ultimate goal being to create an unbreakable code. Though quite young at the time, he was placed in charge of all codes and ciphers for the SOE. That, at least, was his official assignment.<br><br> <br><br>It appears, however, that Marks’ true goal was not so much to create an unbreakable code, which he acknowledged was not possible, but rather to create unbreakable agents. The same kind of agents, in other words, that George Estabrooks discussed in his seminal book, “Hypnotism.” The kind of agents that famed covergirl Candy Jones later revealed herself to be. The kind of agents who will not give up information even if subjected to severe torture, because they’re not even aware that they are carrying information. The kind of agents who are not just unwilling, but unable to give up their data without the proper, uhmm, ‘handling.’<br><br> <br><br>As I have written several times before, Estabrooks, a prominent American military psychiatrist, claimed that programs aimed at creating such agents were fully operational during World War II (contrary to the claims of the vast majority of MK-ULTRA researchers, who claim that Western intelligence agencies didn't even begin researching such programs until after the war). Leo Marks, operating on the other side of the Atlantic during WWII, seems to have been working on a parallel course. Many of the agents who worked under Marks at that time, perhaps not surprisingly, happened to be attractive young women. And many of them worked on highly-classified assignments that took them deep into Nazi-occupied Europe.<br><br> <br><br>The documentary filmmakers located and spoke to a couple of these women, many decades after the fact, and they had some rather revealing recollections – or perhaps I should say non-recollections – of their days spent working under Marks in the SOE. One of the women, speaking of her former boss, recalled that he “had a way of, of talking to you and you forgot the first bit he said. You know what I mean? You just simply forgot it. It’s a sort of knack he has. If he doesn’t want you to remember it, he sees that you don’t.” Another shared the fact that she has very limited recall of her SOE days: “The strange thing is that, although I remember it all very clearly – the interview, where we worked, which was on Baker Street – I can see it all. But the actual work, I can’t remember.” She added that it made her wonder if maybe Leo Marks had “some sort of Svengali influence.”<br><br> <br><br>Marks himself shared with the filmmakers that there “was an attempt made to help them [the female agents] to forget.” He then quickly added, with a sly smile, “But if you are on the verge of asking me what it was, I have brainwashed myself into forgetting it.” He also offered a cryptic description of how he would prep his agents before sending them on assignment: “Before going to brief an agent for the last time, I tried to develop an inner ear, because the best communication is unconscious. It’s what the unconscious says to the unconscious.”<br><br> <br><br>You don’t have to read too deeply between the lines to recognize that Leo Marks and the agents he was 'prepping' were deeply involved in a World War II mind-control project – a project that involved sending young female couriers deep into Nazi territory. And it was that very project, appropriately enough, that provided the inspiration for the movie “Peeping Tom.” As Marks candidly told his interviewer, “the idea of writing ‘Peeping Tom’ was born in the briefing rooms of SOE.”<br><br> <br><br>Let’s briefly review the major thematic elements of this curious story that was “born in the briefing rooms of SOE”: if I recall correctly, we begin with a mixture of serial murder, snuff films, sadistic psychiatrists and ritualized child abuse; we next toss in a little pornography and prostitution, and then serve up the vile mix over a hidden subtext of occult influences, Nazis and mind control operations. And all this, mind you, in a feature film released in 1960, many years before such terms as “mind control,” “serial killer” and “snuff film” would enter the Western lexicon.<br><br><br><br> <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr82.html">davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr82.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>The thing is...in the synchronicity that is starting to go stronger again in my life...the way these women describe how Marks would get them to forget things is EXACTLY the kind of thing I was talking about in the Derren Brown thread...very quick and very easy ways to induce trance. Now, if they were Manchurian candidates, it would take more than a handshake induction to get them to that level, but still....chilling. <br><br>There's another bit of synchronicity about this particular McGowan post, but I'll leave that for alert readers to notice...However, it was NOT the reason I linked to this article...in fact...I wish it wasn't in there. <p></p><i></i>
