And For My Next Trick!

Welcome back, hope everyone had a good winter break and rang in the new year with style.

I spent my vacation catching up on movies and finishing off last entry's cliff hanger by watching Death Defying Acts. And, well, I didn't die watching it, but I wouldn't say I thrived.

I think the biggest misstep the movie made was trying to have its story both ways. It starts off with Benji (Saorsie Ronan), the daughter of Catherine Zeta-Jones' Scottish medium, Mary, describing that she has a gift to see things other people don't. But, she says, as she's grown up, she's lost the gift just as her mother said she would. So they set it up straight from there that they are not magically psychic, but maybe they kinda are? It's confused from the start.

Then they show that mother and daughter are con artists, with Mary doing literally everything from pick pocketing and music hall performance, to letting randy librarians peek up her skirt. Benji is her accomplice in most of this, especially the music hall performance, where they perform a standard issue psychic show. They present a man with a watch from his dead wife "on the other side" (which is of course a watch they had earlier fished out of his pocket).

Is your name Mark, by any chance?

Houdini arrives in Edinburgh and presents the big challenge: He will award $10,000 to any medium who can tell him the last words his mother spoke to him on her death bed, proving his skepticism wrong and the Spiritualists right.

Cue hilarious montage of people applying for the test while a bored Houdini watches. Then Mary shows up, and spouts off some generic details about his mother that Houdini's manager, Sugarman, calls shenanigans on immediately. And though he agrees, Houdini is instantly like "HER! I WANT HER TO DO THE TEST! AND IT'S CERTAINLY NOT BECAUSE SHE'S SMOKIN' HOT."

Schwing! She's the hottest medium ever.

This comes off as a huge issue to me. Mary is routinely called out by the manager for being a scam artist, yet Houdini would have been the loudest decrier of everything she did. But in the movie, he's so smitten with her that he's taking her to dinner, dancing with her, frolicking with her and Benji, and all around utterly forgetting his carefully cultivated image that he falls for a major deception that I don't think he would have ever fallen for. But more on that later.

I couldn't get a screen cap or find the image, but the musicians in this scene are blindfolded for no good reason, other than to add mystery to Houdini. But really, it just makes it look like he's going to kill her later because he's a complete lunatic.

Houdini and Mary fall in love, bond over being poor (or formerly poor in Houdini's case) and get to know each other well, which Mary warns against since it could be considered "cheating" when it comes to the test. And all the while, she's uncertain about if she should go through with it. Benji and Sugarman urge her on, and Sugarman even sneaks her the key to the mysterious trunk in Houdini's room that holds the secrets to Houdini's personality and the secret to guessing his mother's final words.

The trunk contains Houdini's mother's wedding dress, photos and other mementos. Then they go down the weird path that a lot of Houdini stories want to go and point out, "Hey, his mom looked a lot like you Catherine Zeta-Jones!" They even say "He doesn't want me, he wants his mother!" and other things to basically imply that Houdini was obsessed with his mom, in the extreme Freudian sense (think cigars and tunnels). To get rid of the meddlesome Scots and get his client back on the road, Sugarman tells them the secret to Houdini's mother's final words: Harry was touring when his mother passed away, and so there were no final words that he would have personally heard. That is very true, and was in fact one of the biggest regrets of his life.

To really drive home the ick factor, the day of the test, Mary wears Harry's mom's wedding gown, to "channel the energy." Like Houdini would have EVER believed that!

You want me to WHAT at the test?

Mary starts the test by entering like she's walking down the aisle, like some kind of sick wedding ceremony. I understand their point, but I think this was a little much. Mary sits in a chair, and starts referring to Harry as Ehric (his real first name) and acting very possessed. Abruptly, she decides she can't do it, and hops out of the chair. Everyone is shocked, and that's when Benji drops to the ground and starts speaking in German-accented English. "Ehric, where are you? I need you Ehric, Why are you not come to me?" she asks. Harry gets on his knees in tears and apologizes in German and English to his mother. Then Benji sits up and cryptically warns him to beware of the angel with fire red hair, the sun will go black and to be careful.

The test ends and reveals to the press that Houdini was never at his mother's side when she died. And Houdini seems to buy ever moment of Benji's demonstration, and it's fairly convincing, since to Houdini's knowledge, Benji's never claimed to be a medium. But having read everything I read and having seen some of his correspondence in museums, it's hard to believe that he would have ever been taken like that. I feel like he would have found out that Sugarman leaked the information. Also, Harry's mother spoke NO English. None at all. And Benji's performance featured a lot of English from the ghost of dead woman who only spoke German.

Anyway, they win the money and Houdini and Mary have sex. Then he leaves in the morning for Montreal. Benji and Mary watch him go, and Benji mentions that she did the little poem about the angel just like her mother told her to, indicating that it was all a fake and they successfully duped Houdini. Mary walks away sadly, lamenting the great love lost.

THEN they go another step and have Benji narrate that the psychic ability she claimed to have lost in the beginning, she never really lost. Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh!

The movie is still not over at this point by the way, and they begin the sad montage Houdini in Montreal, greeted by spectators. Meanwhile, Mary and Benji are presenting themselves as psychics in Edinburgh. The clock strikes noon. Mary faints. As she faints, a red headed man in Montreal (hey! angel with fire red hair coming full circle audience!) comes through the crowd and delivers the fatal blow to Houdini. He dies on the steps of the theater in Montreal (not true). Sometime later, Benji and Mary are watching a newsreel on Houdini's death, crying silently in the movie theater.

You've been a fantastic audience!

So, Benji was faking being psychic by being actually psychic and successfully fooling Houdini with her mother's help. WHAT?

I understand that the filmmakers were aiming to get past the man, the myth, the legend, but the myth and the legend were heavily cultivated by the man himself. He was his own greatest hype man. If he were a rapper, he would somehow magically be the guy on his own song shouting, "YEAH!" and "WHAT!" at every opportunity. The manager shuttles him around and seems to be very controlling of Houdini, when I've never had that impression. As the manager points out, Houdini was spreading the message that he had been there and heard the final words, so the movie is aware that he's his own hype man, but it seems to downplay how incredibly skilled he was at it. They made it seem almost more like he was just a pathological liar instead of a savvy showman.

It also committed the same sin that every magic movie ever makes.

Mary: How did you do that?
Houdini: Magic!

You've gotta be kidding me. To quote a superior magic movie, "A real magician tries to invent something that's new!" (The Presitge will be an entry unto itself, believe me.)

So concludes part two of the Houdini two-parter on Oh My God Rewind That! It was worth checking out since it's the only modern Houdini movie I'm aware of, and didn't receive much attention in America. Which is odd, considering how American Houdini and his persona were.

Abracadabra.

Up next, I'll look at the joys of horror movies, Disney, the mafia, and the saddest movie ever.

And look for more regular posting, I promise this time!

That Voo Doo That You Do So Well

I don't know about you, but I think stage magic is cool. It takes so much talent and skill, and even though now we know it's a trick and we think we know how it's done, it's still impressive. To me, it's cool to see someone escape, or make your card appear out of nowhere, or see a rabbit pop out of a hat. I've been to the Magic Castle and sat less than two feet from a performer doing card tricks, and I still can't tell you how he did it. And that is amazing.

I really got hooked, as I'm sure many did, when I saw Houdini, starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. It's a very romantic telling of the life of Houdini, from how he met his wife, Bess, to how he died. But it's so entertaining, especially when you're whatever young age I saw it at, that you just don't care. Tony Curtis is incredibly charming as Houdini, and his relationship with his on and off screen wife is pretty adorable. There's a whole scene where they do a trick where he levitates her on the edge of a broom, and the whole time they're bantering back and forth. It's very sweet and charming, making his dramatic death on stage all the more sad.

Check out this cool straight jacket scene from the movie:



And of course, the real deal:



After seeing the movie, I became pretty interested in magic and the whole era that Houdini lived through. I read an amazing biography on Houdini, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, one of the more comprehensive and interesting books on the guy. While it puts forth a hard to believe idea that Houdini was an early CIA agent or spy, the rest of the details and information are fascinating. I had a job where I was able to read while I was working, and I just plowed through that book like there was no tomorrow.

After reading the book, I rewatched the Houdini movie and I realized just how heavily romanticized it was. I kept muttering, "That didn't happen," "That didn't happen," and, "That DEFINITELY didn't happen." But it's still a fun movie and I think an underrated one Tony Curtis' catalog. It's also one he's said to have really enjoyed doing, and he strongly identified with Houdini, both being the children of Jewish immigrants from Brooklyn.

I got a chance to see the Houdini exhibit here in Los Angeles, and it was amazing! It had tons of items that I had read about, including theater posters from the era that are fantastically over the top.

Will he hold out? Can he hold out?

It also featured quite a bit of modern art mixed in, most of which I liked. But there was one piece that just irked me good. It was a lengthy clip of a woman not escaping a straight jacket, but putting it on herself. When you initially watch it, all you think is "Huh, this lady can't pull off the trick. Guess it was really, really hard to do." As it turns out, she fails to get the straight jacket on, throws it on the ground and walks away. Which is, apparently, a feminist way of rejecting masculinity and the masculinity presented by Houdini.

First of all, it really just looks like she can't do the trick. And I'm not judging her for that. Houdini was almost impossibly fit and skilled at what he did, and there are few, man or woman, who can match that. Second of all, the whole video seems to imply that Houdini was some sort of HUGE misogynist, which he just wasn't. He was devoted to his mother, loved Bess (apart from some affairs, but rumor has it she cheated on him as well), and generally just didn't hate on women at all.

*"For my next trick, I'm going to prove that women are incapable of escape and math!"

*Absolutely not an actual quote.

But other than that, the exhibit was fantastic and well worth the visit. It's a traveling exhibit from the Jewish Museum of New York, so if it comes to your city, by all means go!

Also at the exhibit, they played clips from several Houdini movies besides the Tony Curtis one, including one from Fairy Tale: A True Story. The movie is loosely based on the two girls who claimed to have taken photographs of fairies in their garden. Houdini is played by Harvey Keitel in a few brief scenes where he meets the girls and talks with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) about the photos (Doyle was a believer in the photos and had them published). I thought it was decent movie overall, Keitel and O'Toole are great in their parts, and it does briefly address the feud between Houdini and Doyle over Spiritualism.

I created one of the most logical characters in history, but I'm pretty sure that guy was a wizard.
Also, my mustache is fantastic.

Houdini was a steadfast skeptic, while Doyle was a firm believer in Spiritualism, a loose collection of beliefs that focused primarily on contacting ghosts and performing seances. Many people turned to it in the wake of World War I, including Doyle, who lost his son and several other members of his family. He even believed that Houdini himself was truly "magical" and capable of materializing and demateriliazing to perform his escapes. Houdini felt that it was all essentially a scam, preying on grieving people and using the simple trickery he often performed to produce communications from the spirit world. He traveled around debunking these seances and exposing the tricks of the trade.

The Secret Life of Houdini has a fantastic quote from Houdini after he performed a "psychic" trick for Doyle, which I thought was both interesting and a little heartbreaking that he had to put it so bluntly to his friend:

“Sir Arthur, I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion; I have been working at it, on and off, all winter. I won't tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery. I did it by perfectly normal means. I devised it to show you what can be done along these lines. Now, I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily 'supernatural,' or the work of 'spirits,' just because you cannot explain them. This is as marvelous a demonstration as you have ever witnessed, given you under test conditions, and I can assure you that it was accomplished by trickery and by nothing else. Do, therefore, be careful in future, in endorsing phenomena just because you cannot explain them. I have given you this test to impress upon you the necessity of caution, and I sincerely hope that you will profit by it."

Doyle had his wife perform a seance for Houdini where his beloved mother supposedly wrote a letter to him in English. Too bad that Houdini's mom couldn't write in English and barely spoke it to begin with. This, among many other arguments about Spirtualism, led to the failure of their friendship and they became bitter enemies.

The history lesson is over, but if you paid attention, a lot of that information will come in to play very shortly.

One of the other clips they played at the exhibit was from a movie I had never heard of called Death Defying Acts, starring Guy Pearce. They showed a clip of Pearce doing the Chinese Water Torture escape. First I thought "How on earth did I miss this? I thought I was a Houdini super fan! Oh, how I've failed!"

Then I thought, "Guy Pearce is a good head taller than Houdini." I told my friend as much, and she replied "Well, Tony Curtis can't play Houdini forever!"

After that, I further thought, "Wait a minute, why haven't I seen or heard of this? That can't possibly be a good sign..."

Here is the plot description from IMDb:
"During Harry Houdini's tour of Britain in 1926, the master escapologist enters into a passionate affair with a Scottish psychic. The psychic and her daughter attempt to con Houdini during a highly publicized séance to contact his mother whose death has haunted him for many years. However all does not go to plan..."

Oh boy. Oh dear. If I thought the Tony Curtis movie was inaccurate, I can't even imagine what this one would be like. It sounds pretty cheesy, in a romantic melodrama sort of way. Especially considering how much of a skeptic Houdini was. If this movie tries to imply that he experienced some supernatural event not too long before his death (he died on Halloween in 1926) I'd like to refer the filmmakers to the quote above. And also, where the hell is Bess in all that? She was always, always with him (except that time he nailed Jack London's wife).

So this brings me to my first ever Oh My God, Rewind That! two parter! I will rent Death Defying Acts from Netflix and report back. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it so bad that it swung back around to good? Was it so utterly frustrating in its inaccuracy and conjecture that it resulted in my yelling at a TV for two hours?

Find out after I mail back Highlander, which will undoubtedly be a post unto itself!

Will it be a death defying act to watch this movie?
Also, ta-da! Full circle from all that information presented earlier!