Written by William Goldman, based on his novel
Directed by Richard Attenborough
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith
USA, 1978
Welcome to Horrorfest 2024, my 16th year of watching and reviewing 31 horror movies in the month of October in honor of Halloween. This year I took inspiration from horror movie Trivial Pursuit – every time I got a question for a movie I’d never seen, I wrote it down, and so my list was born, along with a few others just to round it out.
This year we start off with a pretty great, albeit seemingly forgotten, flick called MAGIC, a take on the possessed ventriloquist dummy micro-genre. Just watching the credits had me excited as name after prominent name popped up – here’s a flick written by William Goldman, directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith. Add a score by Jerry Goldsmith to round things out and we’ve got a potential classic on our hands.
While the movie has its moments – many of them – ultimately it doesn’t hang together quite the way you want it to, and that’s probably why it isn’t remembered today as much as its pedigree suggests it should be. What ends up being a pretty simple plot is overly convoluted as Hopkins stars as a technically gifted magician who overcomes his terrible stage fright and lack of charisma by working through the gimmick of ventriloquism. On the eve of certain stardom, he torpedoes his own career out of some sense of fear or inferiority and retreats to a cabin in the woods where he attempts to romance his childhood crush (Ann-Margret).
This is a lot of extra framework just to get to the point where murders start happening and you start to suspect this guy (and his puppet) are insane. Once we get there, it’s pretty satisfying right up until a last shot that’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Still, this flick’s more than worth a watch if only for Hopkins’ unhinged performance, which is a sight to behold.
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