Lost Treasures And Guilty Pleasures

I've decided to kick off a weekly (and by "weekly," I mean "whenever I get around to it") feature in which I bring to your attention some things you haven't heard of, but should, or things you have heard nothing good about, but actually are good.

So, in keeping with our "creepy" theme, and because it just came out on DVD today, I thought I'd kick things off with Magic, the 1978 Anthony Hopkins creepshow. The movie tells the story of Corky (Hopkins), a second-rate magician whose act is just as terrible as every other second-rate magician's. So, he does what every crappy magician does: he adds a ventriloquist's dummy to the act. And suddenly, his act is a hit. An agent (Burgess Meredith, in a great toupee) sees his act and catapults Corky into stardom. Pretty simple story, right?

It would be, except that Corky has a bit of a problem: his dummy, whose name is Fats, talks to him. And not just during the act; he talks non-stop. Needless to say, Corky gets a little stressed. So, he and Fats drop out of the spotlight, and take up in the guest cottage of a couple (Ann-Margret and Ed Lauter) out in the middle of nowhere. And when you're stressing, a couple of weeks alone with your living dummy is just what the doctor ordered.

Now, this may sound like a Child's Play-type shocker, but it's not. It's actually more of a melodrama. But what makes it a Horror Movie is that fucking dummy. It is, quite possibly, the creepiest thing to have been created by man. If it were possilbe to see Satan, it would look like this dummy. When I was a kid, I saw an ad for Magic (which looked like the poster posted above) in a magazine, and just that picture freaked me out.

The movie itself is only so-so. It was written by William Goldman and directed by Sir Dick Attenborough (both deserving Oscar winners), but there's only so much you can do with material as goofy as this. Hopkins is great, as always, and Meredith is particularly slimy. Oh, and that fucking dummy; that scary, scary dummy. Throw in some Ann-Margret nudity, and you may have the greatest Talking Dummy Movie ever. Check it out.