'We're gonna be star-arrrs.'
— "Fats"
It had been two weeks after seeing Phantasm that my family's weekly "Movie Date Night" continued on with the next film treat on our list: Magic, the Richard Attenborough directed psychological horror, in which the now legendary Anthony Hopkins stars as Charles "Corky" Withers, an aspiring magician and Ventriloquist, whom, "in partnership" with a profanity-spewing ventriloquist dummy named "Fats", perform their comedy shticks before live audiences and together become a huge success. But the newfound fame - even coming with an offer to star in his own television show - just isn't good enough for the "severely troubled" Corky: For he is a man who has never let go of his past. And that past includes a woman on whom Corky had an intense crush, even from his highschool years. Enter Ann-Margaret, who portrays Peggy Snow, Corky's childhood crush. Corky wants her all for himself, especially now considering his newfound fame. But Peggy is already married to one of Corky's old highschool buddies ... And this realization does not sit well with Corky ... Or with Fats, Corky's wooden dummy...and alter ego. From there, Magic turns horrifying.
Two things about Magic creeped me out prior to the film's theater release: The terrifying trailer ads which featured on the radio, and the film's original theatrical release poster. Just based on the intensity of those two previews, I knew that Magic was going to be a bone-chilling flick. And my instincts proved to be true.
This film boasts a superb dual performance by Hopkins as both Corky and Fats, as does it with a fine supporting cast that, in addition to the storied Ann-Margaret, includes: Ed Later, whom, by the way, plays Peggy's husband Duke; Burgess Meredith, Lillian Randolph, and David Ogden Stiers, among others.
Magic is a genuine classic and a definite must-see for any passionate fan of cult horror.
**_Anthony Hopkins as a schizophrenic magician and Ann-Margret the woman he loves_**
A shy man finds success as a ventriloquist with his dummy “Fats,” but vacations in his hometown in the Catskills where he seeks to reunite with a high school friend. As his agent tries to find him, the woman's hubby might show up. Burgess Meredith and Ed Lauter play the latter two.
“Magic” (1978) is a slow burn Hitchcock-ian psychological drama/thriller that mixes bits of "Psycho" with the creepy mannequins of several 70's movies/shows, like Kolchak: The Night Stalker's "The Trevi Collection." The well-done "Pin" from a decade later was influenced by it. It’s basically a lowkey cabin-in-the-woods flick with the unique dummy angle.
While not great like “Psycho” or even “Carrie,” it’s cut from the same cloth in its unique way with toned-down horror. I respect a movie that has the confidence to take its time and is frugal about thrills. It makes it more realistic. Meanwhile the quiet rural locations are great and it’s interesting seeing Hopkins when he was young and relatively unknown. He was 40 during shooting while Ann-Margret was a couple months shy of 37.
The film runs 1 hour, 47 minutes, and was shot at Blue Lakes in Northern California (substituting for the Catskills), which is a two-hour drive north of San Francisco/Oakland. Other scenes were done at nearby Ukiah (Corky’s childhood home) and Twentieth Century-Fox Studios in Los Angeles, as well as Manhattan.
GRADE: B
After a distinctly rocky solo start, “Corky” (Anthony Hopkins) has become quite a celebrated ventriloquist but that fame with “Fats” has come at a price. Indeed, it’s not always clear who has their hand up whom? In order to take a breather from all this lucrative adulation, and despite the insistence of his more venal agent “Greene” (Burgess Meredith), he seeks somewhere more remote to recharge his batteries. That somewhere just happens to be where his boyhood crush “Peggy” (Ann-Margret) lives with her husband “Duke” (Ed Lauter). Things are tense at the best of times, but made even more so when his agent tracks him down and things take an altogether more violent turn. It’s now that the already anxious “Corky” becomes more unstable as his plastic nemesis starts to resent his friendship with “Peggy” and exert an even more toxic influence on this desperate and dependent man. I don’t think I’ve seen Hopkins give a better performance anywhere and together with Richard Attenborough’s tense direction delivers an uncomfortably creepy film to watch. You can almost see his Adam’s Apple move when his supposed dummy is speaking, and on that front some of the dialogue is powerfully near the bone. I didn’t love the ending really, but quite how else William Goldman could have ended this tale of poisonous symbiosis is a good question. In many ways it’s similar to “Jekyll and Hyde” only this monster hides in plain sight.
