At one time, long before The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins (pre-knighthood) was regarded as one of the best, most promising actors of his generation. He was mentioned in the same breath as Sir Laurence Olivier and the like, and for good reason. Hopkins could play anything…any role. Likewise, Sir Richard Attenborough, the great Scots director of A Bridge Too Far and, later, Gandhi and Chaplin (and whom is also a fine actor in his own right, having appeared in such films as Jurassic Park and Branagh’s Hamlet), was highly-respected in his field. The pairing seemed natural…perhaps inevitable. All that was missing was terrific, compelling source material. Enter William Goldman’s taut, economical novel “Magic” (1976). Now, dolls and dummies are, have always been, and always will be intrinsically scary...”Chucky” notwithstanding. But, what was magic about “Magic” was the very plausible psychology (or psychosis) at its root. So, take a fine director, an excellent actor, an intriguing concept/source story, mix ‘em all together, and voila, you’ve got a film of sheer, horrifying power. It’s also one of the better mainstream thrillers of the era, and one of my personal favorites. A word of caution: it’s impossible to analyze and truly discuss this film without giving away some pretty strong plot points and/or spoilers, so consider yourself warned. Skip to the last two paragraphs of this review if you’re completely unfamiliar either with the book or the film version of Magic.
The synopsis...
Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins) struggled most of his socially awkward life to fulfill his dream of becoming the best magician alive. When success finally graced him, it was due mostly to a radical change in his “act”…the inclusion of a ventriloquism, magic, and comedy routine featuring a rather unassuming dummy called “Fats” (voiced, ‘natch, but Hopkins). Fats allowed the more brash, vulgar, and moreover confident sides of Corky’s nature to come out, thus ratcheting up his charm factor, and increasing his bankability as a performer. Even Corky’s jaded, old-school agent Ben “Gangrene” Greene (a spot-on Burgess Meredith) is surprised with Corky’s rocketing fame. When a major TV network agrees to give Corky and Fats a shot at the big-time with their own hour-long televised “variety” special…which might or might not lead to a full-blown, mega-dollar television deal that would lead to Corky’s ultimate success and wealth…Corky is thrilled and more than a little nervous. When Greene tells the idealistic Corky about the studio’s mandatory pre-contract psychological and medical evaluation, however, Corky gets the shakes, and decides to skip town to “get his head together”. With Fats and minimal luggage in tow, Corky makes haste to his childhood home in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. After “paying off” his taxi driver…in order to keep the guy quiet as to his whereabouts…Corky pays a visit to a certain woman, Peggy Ann Snow (the delectable Ann Margaret), with whom Corky went to school and on whom Corky had a major-league boyhood crush (perfectly understandable, I might add). Peggy has in the interim gotten married to a rude, crude, lewd dude named “Duke” (or “The Duker”, as he refers to himself)…her own high-school sweetheart, and has set up shop as the proprietor of a Catskill “resort” (really just a ramshackle collection of beat-up cabins on a tiny swamp of a “lake”…like so many Catskill “resorts”). The “resort” has seen far better days, and Peggy’s seriously considering selling the damned thing off to the highest (or, in fact, first) bidder. Her loveless marriage to Duke, who’s a traveling cutlery salesperson (how convenient), is, much like her own business, in a shambles. So, Peggy’s ready for some excitement and change when Corky…with Fats…shows up her door after about 15 years. Seems “the Duker” is on a “business trip” (code for yet another of his illicit affairs with various loose women), so Peggy happily invites Corky back into her life. After exchanging small talk, pleasantries, and catching up for a bit, Peggy proceeds to happily invite Corky into her bed, and both of them are happier than they’ve been in years. Problem is, Corky’s a bit…ahem…unhinged. He’s been spending far too much time alone with Fats…so much so that Fats’ personality has kind of inhabited a certain part of Corky’s mind. In Goldman’s original novel, it’s kind of a surprise when we find out that Fats is, in fact, a ventriloquist’s dummy. I mean, the first few chapters of the book are written as journal entries in Fats’ diary. We don’t find out until the book is almost half over that Fats and Corky are two sides of the same psychological coin, as it were. Not so in the movie, where sustaining that kind of plot point would be pretty much impossible. Instead, Corky’s just an odd fellow whose personality sometimes gets invaded by fear, doubt, and in the case of the Peggy Ann Snow situation, intense jealousy. Suffice it to say that things get a little weird, and much doll-related creepiness ensues, all culminating in one of the more bizarre and powerful finales in horror film history.
What we have here is, ultimately, an obtuse and effective riff on the themes popularized in Robert Bloch’s “Psycho” (followed by, of course, Hitchcock’s historic film by the same title). Like Norman Bates (at least Hitch’s vision of Bates, which differs significantly from Bloch’s), Corky is, on the exterior, boyishly handsome, gentlemanly, kind to women, a bit skittish, creative, well spoken, and charming. Of course, it’s the stuff inside that counts when the proverbial chips are down. When that façade starts to crack, the stronger…more dominant…personality will always win, and it’s no different for Corky/Fats. After seeing Magic, as with Psycho, it’s clear from the opening frames who’s the stronger of the two personalities. There are other parallels between the two films, as well. Certainly, some of the other characters in Magic are virtual reinterpretations of characters in Psycho. The “Peggy” character, of course, is a mirrored version and combination of two characters from the earlier film, notably Marion Crane and her intrepid sister Lila. The “Ben Greene” character is, in many ways, equivalent to Martin Balsam’s “Detective Milton Arbogast” in Psycho. Then, there’s poor old “Duke”. He’s a combination of John Gavin’s “Sam Loomis” (the jealous, semi-concerned boyfriend) and, believe it or not, the Highway Patrolman that pulls Marion over in the early parts of the film. “Duke” is the voice of doubt and disbelief in Magic (both book and film). He’s a jerk, to be sure, but he’s also a reasonably sympathetic character when all is said and done (moreso in the book than in the film, perhaps). That leaves Fats, who is, of course, the parallel of “Mother”…the overbearing, controlling, far more powerful influence over our hapless “hero”. Even the setting bears similarities; a run-down, underused set of cabins bordering a muddy lake mirroring a run-down, underused motel bordering a muddy swamp. The devil’s in the details, though, and the details of Magic make it much more than just a simple rehashing of familiar settings, characters, and underlying psychoses. Take, for example, what Magic says about fame and notoriety. “Fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be,” is what Magic is saying, I think. Corky isn’t an altogether bad fellow, he’s just confused, overworked, underloved, and faced with the possibility of immense fame coming in and messing up his meager, but relatively consistent and stable existence. Magic also has a few things to say about the aging process. These characters, each in their own way, have had pretty rough lives, and they wear it on their faces. Even Ben Greene, who is portrayed as being an incredibly wealthy, jaded “celebrity” type, comes to terms with…and comments on…the fact that he’s not getting any younger. Peggy, too, is starting to show her age, and she’s not happy about it one bit. Whereas once, she was the town hottie…no man could look at her and not want her…by the time we “rejoin” her life in Magic, she’s still outwardly beautiful, if a bit shopworn, but she’s grown cynical and bitter about the hand that life has dealt her. These are three-dimensional characters, to be sure, and while they seem to reflect Bloch’s/Hitchcock’s characters, they are, in the opinion of this writer, more fully fleshed-out than Psycho’s were.
There are elements of Magic that just work, ya’ know? This is a performance-driven film, so it’s only fitting that the performances are, in general, absolutely stellar. Anthony Hopkins really caught on as Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter in 1989’s The Silence of the Lambs, but I contend that his “Corky” is the better role, and by far the stronger performance. It’s nuanced…delicate, even…and as he’s really playing two totally disparate roles here, he’s got a lot more to chew on. Notice his inflections…his affected manner of speaking as “Corky”. While being far from a dish-rag, this guy ain’t the model of confidence. Then, look at Fats. Sure, he’s a dummy, but he’s got more lines in the movie than Corky does. Every little thing that Fats says is telling. Every time Fats “opens his mouth” through Corky, he’s on the brink of revealing everything…of blowing the whole shebang. There’s a lot more going on in Fats’ words than mere insults and repeated used of the word “schmucko”. Then, Ann Margaret, who is perfectly cast as Peggy Ann Snow, is just amazing here. It’s truly sad that Ann Margaret has never been regarded as much more than a killer rack and a pretty face. Here, her character is so like her real persona in so many ways, it’s almost uncanny. Peggy is a character that embodies the “girl next door”…the pretty much unattainable chick you used to know who, though she might have been reasonably nice to you, would never have truly given you the time of day, or god forbid, actually have reciprocated or consummated all of those naughty fantasies you had about her all those years before. By that point in her career, Ann Margaret was getting a little bit old to keep on trying to live up to her “sex kitten” image (a term which, by the way, was pretty much coined in honor of Ms. Margaret), so the parallels are just amazing. I can only assume that Attenborough knew just what the fuck he was doing by casting Ann Margaret in this role. Burgess Meredith does serviceable, subtle work as Ben Greene. In no scene is his skill more evident than when Greene tracks down Corky at the “resort”, pays him an unwanted visit, and sees just how bad Corky’s gotten. Greene give Corky an ultimatum; if Corky can make Fats shut up for five minutes…just five minutes…then Greene will just turn around and go home, and forget about trying to talk Corky into getting some help. If age and experience do truly impart wisdom, then you can see it in Burgess Meredith’s face; he knows Corky is going to fail his little test. That scene, while being one of Meredith’s finest moments as an actor (second only, perhaps, to the beloved Twilight Zone episode Time Enough At Last), is also one of the most suspenseful and downright emotionally excruciating scenes I can think of in a horror film.
So, though I’ve totally belabored the point, Magic is a damned fine flick. Still, it’s got its flaws. The pacing is a bit lackluster at times, and it’s rather dated in terms of style and fashion (hardly the film’s own fault, though). It’s a tough nut, too. The book was able, as books are wont to do, to fly all over the place in terms of time, place, emotional states, and etcetera. There’s far more character-establishing prose and “back story” in the book, and upon revisiting the book, the attention to Corky’s background…including his loveless relationship with his father, his love/lust for Peggy, the surrogate fatherhood provided to him by his mentor “Merlin, Jr.”, and more…is time well spent, dramatically speaking. It would have been almost impossible to cram all…or even most of that information into a two hour movie (give or take), and Attenborough does a commendable job of providing the essential information in the most efficient way. Still, it would have been nice to get a little more information on one or two points, notably Corky’s lifelong infatuation with Peggy. A great deal of time is spent in the book establishing the symbolic importance of Peggy…what she means and represents in Corky’s life/mind. In the movie, it tends to play as if Peggy was just a girl that Corky remembered from school…rather than the literal object of his obsession/affection. So, a couple of succinct, sepia-toned flashback sequences would have been appropriate, I think. Spilt milk, and all of that cal…
Magic is a verifiable horror/thriller classic, and while it hasn’t aged as well as some of its contemporaries and counterparts, it’s still one of the finest psychothrillers of the 1970’s. I’m so thrilled that Dark Sky Films has released it after all these years. The disc, while not the most feature-packed release out there, still provides some interesting tidbits. The anamorphic widescreen transfer itself is wonderful for a film of this vintage, with no noticeable pixelization or “black blocking” in dark scenes (of which there are plenty). The sound is presented in a no-frills (purists rejoice) 2.0 Mono track, but it’s pretty clean and free of pops and hisses, all things considered. On the “supplemental features” front, we’ve got an interesting documentary about the film and about ventriloquism called “Fats and Friends”, a no-sound screen/makeup test with Ann Margaret, an old TV interview with Anthony Hopkins, and the requisite trailers and TV spots (including the infamous and still creepy “Abracadabra…we’re dead!” spot). All told, a nice presentation. A commentary by Attenborough (who’s admittedly getting on in years at this point), Goldman, Hopkins, or hell, even Ann Margaret would have been nice. When I first caught wind of this release so many months ago, I was crossing my fingers for a commentary track by Fats (voiced by Hopkins). That would have been absolutely astounding. I’m not sure how Hopkins feels about Magic now, but surely, that would have been the opportunity of a lifetime…and is a missed opportunity here. Sometimes, we horror geeks are so hard to please…
It’s not for everyone, but Magic deserves status as a solidly entertaining, exciting, and well-written chiller. I’m giving it the Atrocities Cinema.com Essential Award!
|
