'The Recruit' with Al Pacino and Colin Farrell - Pacino does a torn and restored newspaper !

He did not say that...

Nightmare Alley

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned "Terror Train" yet.

In "Terror Train," a class of seniors are having their graduation night party on a train, but someone is going around murdering the students. As part of the entertainment on the train, there is a magician who entertains them.

Playing the part of the magician is none other than a very young David Copperfield.

Actually his computer generated hand does.

This isn't a movie...but in the final Episode of "Freaks and Geeks" (my favorite show), there is a humorous situation where a disco dancer performs plenty of magic. Appearing Cane from Silk, Card productions, etc....while dancing to some disco.

I don't know about flourishes or anything but one of my favorite lines in a magic type of movie is from "Magic" when Anthony Hopkins yells at Anne Margaret telling her to concentrate, CONCENTRATE! Your'e not concentrating enough!!! As he is trying desperately to divine her card.
It cracks me up everytime I see it and I am just waiting for the opportune moment to spring that one on an unsuspecting spectator or fellow magician who I may be showing a card trick to and he tries to foul it up!

GlenD

Having Wonderful Crime...magician murdered for overcharging...exposes sub trunk

Well, it's not a movie, but Nickelodeon's "Drake and Josh" (a TV show) has magic. Josh does magic as a hobby.

"Mask of Diljon" (c. 1940's?) has a few tricks in it including Chair Suspension and Zombie.

John Calvert's, "Devil's Cargo" has much magic in it, including appearing ducks, and cigarette manipulations.

"Turnaround" has Eddie Albert as the patriarch magician with Doug McKeon as his grandson, an up and coming magician. Lots of magic here.

"A-Haunting-We-Will-Go" with Laurel and Hardy had much magic with Dante.

"The Ranger, the Cook and a Hole in the Sky" has a good card sequence by Ricky Jay.

There are actually many more that I have seen, but I am shooting from the hip here and can't recall them all now.

I can't believe no one has cited "Penn and Teller Get Killed." There is a lot of magic in this film. Some of the best is when Penn says to Teller, "Show them why we hate magic," and Teller puts on this fey smile and starts mincing around producing silks.

Yours,

Paul

I saw "Penn and Teller get Killed" many years ago, so my memory is a little foggy.

Doesn't Teller walk into a feeding flock of pigeons in the park, startle them, and reach out and catch one? I thought, people will never know how he did that. They'll think he really reached out and caught one. What a brilliant use of dove work, a natural application!

BTW, in the beginning scenes of Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban, one of the magic tricks that are performed (non camera trickery) is that someone vanishes a Nielsen bottle off a table, when wiping the table off with a cloth, in the scene in the pub. At least, that's what I saw.

- Donald

Donald,

Also, who can forget the stage act scene in which Teller's failure to escape results in a bunch of big drill bits driving through his body. In the interest of good taste, at the last minute a modest white screen pops up around the device and is promptly splattered with blood.

As an audience member has been lowering a rope the whole time following Penn's instructions, the responsibility is suddenly on them. How could they have just blindly followed instructions?

To me, this routine sort of summed up the whole middle part of the twentieth century.

Yours,

Paul

The Chiodo brothers' "Killer Klowns From Outer Space!" It has great set-up lines as well:
"You're not going to make a dummy out of me!"
"What are you boys going to do with those pies?"
"What are you gonna do... knock my block off?"
It's my camp classic favorite.

"On golden pond" the whole film was magic


Paula

"Brother From Another Planet"... a kid on a bus does a routine that, if not Sam the Bellhop, darned similar. (Been a long time since I've seen it.)

Television again, "McMillian and Wife" had an episode with a deranged magician as did "Knight Rider" (the latter being a very young Lance Burton.)

There's also one plot that got retred three times. "Burke's Law" had a magician's convention where a magician did an endurance test, placed in a metal coffin emerged in a swimming pool. When he's brought out, he's been shot dead! They reused this plot for the pilot of "Blacke's Magic" and again in the remake of "Burke's Law." (I don't remember if there were any plot changes from 1st Burke's to Blacke's, but from 1st Burke's to 2nd Burke's they made an odd decision. In the first story, the magician was killed because he was going to expose the murderer's past. In the second one, he'd gotten off on a drunk driving charge that had resulted in a death, and the murder thought he was extracting justice!)

"The Defenders" had a segment in which a magician dies via an underwater escape stunt. As a spoiler: the investigators conclude it was a high-profile suicide.

"Columbo" once had a segment where he matched wits with a murderer/magician, played by Jack Cassidy.

In 1972 there was a TV movie (unsold series pilot) called "Escape," which starred Christopher George as an escape artist named Cammeron Steele. It was sort of a specialized precursor to Bill Bixby's series "The Magician."

Then there was Vincent Price's thriller, "The Mad Magician."

Steve

Oh, and the dubbed Czech (?) film, "Hanussen," about the infamous German mystic who was murdered by the Gestapo after he 'predicted' the Reichstag fire.

Steve

Who handled the card work for Paul Newman's character before he joins the card game on the train in "The Sting?" Was it Scarne? Thanks!!

I vaguely recall a film called "Quicker Than the Eye" which involved a James-Bond style Illusionist played by Ben Gazzara. Been too many years since I've seen it, though.

"Waiting for the Light" features Shirley Maclaine as a birthday party Magicienne...presenting a classic sawing in half, but complete with blood a'la Richiardi. Needless to say, the kids freaked.

Don't forget Billy McComb's appearance in "Lord of Illusions."

Didn't River Phoenix vanish from a box at the beginning of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?"

If we go back further, Laurel and Hardy did a film with Dante' that featured magic...and Houdini did some film shorts, himself.

"Three Little Words" features Red Skelton and Fred Astaire as songwriters Kalmar & Ruby. Skelton does some magic in that one...and in his first TV shows, Red played a character that was a bumbling magician.

"Ghostbusters" used an Aga Levitation to raise Sigourney Weaver off the bed. And although not presented as magic per se, The early "Nightmare on Elm Street" films did many of their special effects live due to budget constraints and utilized magician's principles. In "Poltergeist III" all of the effects were also done live using magical concepts. (Some really cool mirror stuff in there, too.)

"Just You and Me, Kid" features George Burns as a retired Vaudeville magician, if memory serves. I seem to recall Brooke Shields being levitated to the ceiling to hide her at one point. Carl Ballantine also makes an appearance in that one...I remember his magic on the McHale's Navy TV show, too.

And although not a theatrically released film, Doug Henning filmed a version of "The Magic Show" after the show closed on Broadway. The illusions from the show are there (most of them) and some of his later work was substituted for the others. Just to have his wonderful work archived on DVD is great. It's got a special spot in my collection.

A film that SHOULD feature some magic is "Smoke & Mirrors," a project that has been in production since 2001 but is still on hold. It's based on the life of Robert Houdin and stars Michael Douglas as Houdin and Catherine Zeta-Jones as his wife, Collette.

There's also a rumor of a film called "The Magician's Wife" starring Geoffrey Rush...but only a rumor.

Dan Wolfe, aka. "The Amazing EARL"