The Mad Magician (1954)

I love the Halloween season because a lot of the really good horror type movies are shown!! This one is a little under the radar but it is a good one. Vincent Price plays the lead role. He is a great illusion designer locked into an extremely binding contract. When he tries to go out on his own as a magician he is pulled up short by the employer. Vincent goes nuts and kills the man, then his ex-wife, a competing and overbearing magician, the Great Rinaldi, (who tries to steal the secrets and bind Price to his service by deducing that Price is the killer). Vincent then goes on stage using skin tight masks to impersonate the magician. He is finally found out by a detective using the new fangled means of finger prints. Boy has the law been changed since this picture!! The detective actually breaks into Price's apartment to look for evidence!! That sure wouldn't fly today!!! At the end Price is trying to feed the detective into one of his contraptions and is distracted by an insistent knock on the door. As he goes to answer the door a hidden associate springs to action and releases the detective. The two men fight and Price gets fed in to his own machine. So after three murders the mad man gets it, not in the end, but in a fiery flame of fire.

Furious over his boss' repeated attempts to curtain his career, a famous trick maker finds he can utilize his craft to kill for the sake of his career, only doing so requires him to constantly repeat the act in order to stay away from his friend and the authorities on his trail.Essentially a remake of another film by the same star from the previous year with a new profession behind it that powers the revenge motif, there's not a whole lot with this one that really works. The fact that it's so similar with the exception of the profession change does little for this one, requiring it to introduce a few spectacular gags for the revenge aspect when doling out the deaths but beyond that we don't get anything hardly original in here. The 3D gags are lifted straight from the previous film, going around with masks on to commit his crimes is a plot-point from there as well and the romance angle is taken from there as well with just a few minor tweaks that would naturally come about due to the profession rather than anything else. The constant plot of him being under the bosses thumb is nothing more than a requirement to start the rampage and goes on way too long for what it should be, the bumbling authorities accidentally uncover the whole ploy through sheer accident without willfully doing anything to piece the puzzle together and moreso the comic relief couple are rather tired and irritating more than a positive force upon the movie. That said, it's still quite fun with a few good moments here and there, including a few spectacular tricks to be employed by the stage-show, the finale contains quite a bit of action with the brawl in the shop and as usual it's always fun to see Price get to do his thing every now and then where he just gets to monologue for a while spouting off the reasons for his revenge, the end result containing a rather twisted logic behind it all that sounds reasonable enough for the rampage to ensue and not come off like a hokey joke. While it's nowhere near the top of his career works and certainly not near the bottom rung either, there's just too much about it that doesn't work to say it does nothing more than be overall adequate.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

And I do think undeservedly. It is too short perhaps, and a lot of the support characters are rather colourless especially compared to Gallico. However, while the revenge story has been done before many times it is still interesting here with not a dull moment. There are some very suspenseful moments and Gallico's means of revenge are sadistic. The crematorium climax is the meaning of edge-of-your-seat, and the buzz saw that isn't scene is also very memorable. The Mad Magician does look good, the sets are both beautiful and wonderfully macabre. The 3D effects are not as great as those of House of Wax, but still better than a lot of the mostly soulless effects we have nowadays. They do enhance what is going on on screen and apart from a couple that are a little weird often to thrilling effect. Of the supporting turns the best were Eva Gabor, a beautiful woman who plays a character with no redeeming qualities with no sense of blandness or holding back, and Donald Randolph, who is wonderfully sleazy as Ormond. Best of all again is Price, whose presence is genuinely fearsome yet the audience also garners sympathy for him, the sort of role that Price really excelled at. Overall, I like it very much and think it deserves more attention than it gets. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Truly sad is it that a film directed by the caliber of a John Brahm with the star of a Vincent Price could go so sorely unnoticed, overshadowed by the excellent HOUSE OF WAX..that is the case of THE MAD MAGICIAN, a slick Victorian era(Brahm is an absolute master at getting the most out of sets, wardrobe, and extras in regards to period atmosphere and authenticity)horror chiller about a seemingly decent creator of magic show acts which delight the audiences. Price stars as the much maligned Don Gallico, stuck in a contract with an unscrupulous businessman who exploits his brilliance, allowing others to take credit, showmen, like the slimy "The Great Rinaldi"(John Emery; appropriately hissable) who reap the benefits of another's talents. Gallico simply wants to perform his own shows, using the money paid him for his hard work to create a stunning crematorium act sure to wow those in attendance. Angered beyond reason, Gallico kills his boss, Ross Ormond(Donald Randolph), in a fit of rage using a buzz saw act which beheads him! Ormond also seduced Gallico's wife(Claire, portrayed by Eva Gabor, perfectly cast as a golddigger) using his wealth and prominence..without even the slight hint of remorse, Ormond isn't the least bit concerned about Gallico's plight, even telling his despairing employee that he done the man a favor stealing his wife! Claire, only worried about herself, wasn't content with wasting away in the life of a meager creator of inventions. Gallico is highly skilled at creating masks which mimic specific people almost perfectly and briefly assumes Ormond's identity, a disguise which could backfire if Claire is able to catch him, which she does, ending in tragic results. Gallico was using an assistant, Karen(Mary Murphy), for the stage act that was canceled by Ormond and she is dating a detective, Alan Bruce(Patrick O'Neal).Bruce is an advocate for a new forensic tool called fingerprinting which could be what ultimately condemns Gallico who can not help himself when Rinaldi threatens to turn him in if he doesn't hand over the crematorium act. As he did with Ormond(Gallico tosses his boss' remains into a bonfire during a sports festival!), Gallico will assume the identity of Renaldi, but isn't as adept at concealing his own habits during stage acts as the minor night visits to a flat in the role of his former employer. Like many Vincent Price madman, Gallico was a good person driven mad by the indecency of others. Having withstood being taken advantage of time and again, Gallico snaps and it's only a matter of time before he places himself in a bind. You just know, sooner or later, he'll tighten the noose around his neck and hang himself. The masks and acts of the film are really neat(Price's voice is dubbed when assumes the disguises of those he emulates, by the actors)and as I mentioned above Brahm astutely brings alive a whole different era using Columbia studios sets. It's amazing that this film was just thrown together, but if you are to do so who better to hire as director than Brahm and cast as your star than Price? The exciting conclusion has Bruce in a tough situation, strapped to the table of Gallico's crematorium, in perilous danger.Lenita Lane becomes an important character who lends a hand in potentially catching Price as the wife of a man who lets a room to who they believe is Ross Ormond. Lane's Alice Prentiss is a murder mystery novelist who figures Gallico out while pondering her next story. Criminally underrated and well worth searching for.