Sat 16 Apr 2016
THE MAD MAGICIAN. Columbia Pictures, 1954. Vincent Price, Mary Murphy, Eva Gabor, John Emery, Donald Randolph, Lenita Lane, Patrick O’Neal, Jay Novello. Story & screenplay: Crane Wilbur. Director: John Brahm.
If stealing ideas and pieces and pieces of various scenes from other movies were a crime, The Mad Magician would seriously be on the verge of being sent up for a ten-year stretch. Crane Wilbur, who wrote the story and screenplay also did the screenplay for House of Wax, which came out the year before, but for Warner Brothers, and probably not so coincidentally also starred Vincent Price in the leading role.
Both films were also in 3-D, though this one is in black-and-white, while House of Wax was in color. In both films the theme is that of revenge. In both cases it is Vincent Price’s character who is wronged, but getting even is where the fun comes in, at least for the viewer, if not his victims.
Director John Brahm, among other films, did both The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945), two films which take place in roughly the same time period as this one, or the turn of the last century, and one scene in The Mad Magician, in which Price’s character rents a room as part of the plot he is perpetrating, is more than strongly reminiscent of a similar scene in The Lodger.
As the fledgling magician Gallico the Great, Price’s character is taken advantage of twofold, first by the owner of his contract that says that all the tricks Price creates belong to him, then by a rival magician, The Great Rinaldi, who then appropriates them to use in his own act.
The new science of fingerprints has a great deal to do with solving the case (murder), which is investigated by Lt. Bruce (Patrick O’Neal), the boy friend of Karen Lee (Mary Murphy), Gallico’s very comely assistant, along with the mystery writer wife of the couple who own the house in which Gallico rented the room.
It’s a complicated story, and maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but where this movie goes off in another direction from the others I’ve mentioned, is its arch sense of humor and fun behind the mayhem. I wish they’d showed the audience how the “Lady and Buzzsaw” trick in real time, though. The “Crematorium” is just as deadly, one assumes, but if they’d wanted to have made a sequel, Ã la all those Freddy movies, I really think they could have.
April 16th, 2016 at 10:13 pm
Let’s call this “Mary Murphy Day” today.
April 17th, 2016 at 8:02 am
I seem to recall there’s a scene in MM of throwing a dummy (with a body in it) on a bonfire, lifted from THE LODGER…..
Or did I dream it?
April 17th, 2016 at 8:11 am
No. You are quite right. In MAD MAGICIAN it’s a bizarre highlight of a rather unusual movie that doesn’t quite come together, but one that has stayed in my memory a lot longer than I expected it to.
April 17th, 2016 at 1:08 pm
Sounds like another movie I should avoid.
April 17th, 2016 at 3:08 pm
Actually, it’s a fine time-killer if you’re in the mood.
April 17th, 2016 at 3:09 pm
There is a sense of fun to this that almost lifts it above itself, but in the end only makes it at most palatable.
I’ve always wondered about Brahm, who started out so strongly, with a real eye for cinema and fine accomplished style and then just went downhill, ending up doing things like this and television (though he did show a good eye in a few television jobs). I know nothing about him, but it seems like a tragic career whether his life was tragic or not. He started so well, and went downhill from there never able to repeat those early successes.
April 17th, 2016 at 4:47 pm
Two episodes Brahm did for Alfred Hitchcock TV are especially good:
THE FIVE-FORTY-EIGHT
DEATH AND THE JOYFUL WOMAN
These both take place in the contemporary USA.
April 17th, 2016 at 8:11 pm
Some of the Brahm episodes for Karloff’s “Thriller” are very good ones, too.
April 18th, 2016 at 11:11 am
Brahm also directed the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode “Time enough at Last”.
April 18th, 2016 at 1:23 pm
Patrick O’Neal’s first film part.
April 18th, 2016 at 1:26 pm
That helps explain why even though he had a fairly substantial part – way more screen time than Eva Gabor, for example — his name is way down in the credits.