"Hey-a, Shmucko!": Magic (1978)

Magic (1978)
Rating:****
Starring:  Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith

Abracadabra, I sit on His Knee! Presto! Change-o, Now he is ME! 

Hocus Pocus, We Take her To Bed! 

Magic is FUN!...you're dead... 

I recall a time when I was terrified of ventriloquist dummies. Though a short phase, the lifeless eyes and their childlike stature unnerved me as a kid. Now, I come back to tackle that fear again and I'm doing it with style.

Seeing Anthony Hopkins in a young age is a quite a treat for me as this also happens to be one of his early horror movie roles. Here he plays Corky, an insecure magician whose failed first attempt to do a magic trick made him drop a rage bomb upon his audience. His mentor would later instruct him to do a better business gimmick, an advice which brought him huge success a year later in the form of a ventriloquism and magic act put together.

Soon, Corky, and his dummy Fats (who's foul-mouth brought more laughs than nuisance) are being talked into having their own television show, something Corky is unsure of as he states his fear of success is overwhelming for the moment. With this, he decided to take big breather all the way off to the Catskills, where he meets up with a high-school crush, Peggy, who's in a stale marriage with her husband.

Things are bound for the worse when Peggy's husband is stricken with jealousy and Corky's agent tracked the magician down and uncovers a secret between him and Fats: Corky's unstable and suffers from a split personality which he implies through Fats. All the pressure soon goes to both Corky and Fats, sparking a murderous intent...

Magic, as they call it, is a terrifying love story. It spends more time focusing on Corky's character and his relationship towards people, many of which are his attempts to repress his condition for his own good and theirs. Unfortunately, these attempts are thwarted by his separate persona, Fats, leaving his already unbalanced psyche more unhinged, continuing to dominate him no matter how many times he try escaping from it.

Right from the beginning, we are already given a glimpse of how troubled Corky is through an intertwined flashback-present conversation between Corky and his mentor; it builds a brooding tension between him and his audience, all of it muted to give more emphasis on the present conversation wherein Corky's temper is discussed, hinting a nature that would later escalate and make him a very vulnerable yet dangerous lead.

Interestingly, Fats himself also becomes a character of his own caliber, a swearing show persona brought in "flesh" through a wooden dummy that's just unnerving to watch once it starts to think for itself and act as a separate conscience. A production mistake left in the film sort of emphasized this, even; one scene have Fat's eyes blink by itself seconds after Corky removed his hand from the dummy, making it look "alive" and play a neat mind trick on us, possibly to make us wonder just how far off the deep end Corky fell?

The film succeeds with well-acting talents despite a small cast; Hopkins was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a mentally disturbed magician here and a handful of praises were made for the film's supporting lead Ann-Margaret as Peggy, a rather calm and patient character who provided Corky his one source of sympathy which made the ending all the more shocking and effectively depressing.

Magic may stand at one flaw depending on your taste and that is the lack of blood. True, Corky did kill but it was a rather defensive act than a cry of fury. Because of that, the story is relatively bloodless but pays fairly back with a well written tragic plot with effectively down-beaten mood to make it all more memorable. It may lack a big credibility as a horror film, but a murder of two, disturbed ramblings, and one of the more memorable creepy dummies is all enough on my book to bring both sorrow and delight for fans alike!

Bodycount:
1 male bludgeoned with ventriloquist dummy, drowned in lake
1male stabbed to death with pocket knife, throat cut
1 male stabbed with pocket knife
Total: 3