The Mad Magician

Infobox Film
name = The Mad Magician

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director = John Brahm
producer = Bryan Foy
writer = Crane Wilbur
starring = Vincent Price
Mary Murphy
Eva Gabor
music = Arthur Lange
Emil Newman
cinematography = Bert Glennon
editing = Grant Whytock
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = May 1954
runtime = 72 min.
country = United States
language = English
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0047200

"The Mad Magician" was a 1954 horror film starring Vincent Price and Eva Gabor. In 1987, it became the first movie shown in 3D on television.

Plot

Vincent Price plays Gallico the great, an inventor of stage-magic effects who aspires to become a star in his own right. Just before his first performance, his act is shut down by capricious manager Ormond (Donald Randolph), who wants Gallico's brilliant buzzsaw effect for the act of the Great Rinaldi (John Emery), an established star. With this defeat, and the humiliation of having already lost his wife Claire (Eva Gabor) to his rival, Gallico goes insane and uses the buzzsaw to decapitate his manager. His crime is almost revealed when Ormond's severed head is mistakenly taken for a trip with Gallico's assistant Karen (Mary Murphy) and her boyfriend Alan Bruce (Patrick O'Neal), a police officer.

Gallico then impersonates Ormond to rent an apartment from Alice Prentiss (Lenita Lane), an author of mystery novels. Gallico disposes of Ormond's body, but is again forced to murder when his ex-wife Claire discovers the impersonation. Prentiss comes forth as a witness to the crime, but identifies Ormond as Claire's murderer. The Great Rinaldi again schemes to steal a trick of Gallico's, an illusion involving a crematorium, and ultimately winds up burned to death in the process. Gallico begins impersonating Rinaldi to take over that magician's show.

Meanwhile, the detective Alan Bruce matches the fingerprints of Ormond with those of Rinaldi-- since both sets of prints are actually Gallico's, and the novelist Prentiss realizes her boarder, and the murderer, was Gallico and not Ormond. The two, along with the assistant Karen, band together for an ultimate confrontation with Gallico.

Cast

External links

*imdb title|0047200