Magic (1978) review

(8/10)

This is probably the best performance you'll find of Anthony Hopkins before his "Silence of the Lambs" days. It's a very suspenseful tale.

PLOT:Corky (Anthony Hopkins) is a magician and card-trick master. After performing for the first time at a club, he bombs and is told by his mentor to get some charm. Ten years later, Corky's agent named Ben Greene a.k.a. The Postman (Burgess Meredith), brings an NBC talent scout down there to see his new act. Corky now performes his tricks with a little ventriloquist dummy named Fats (also voiced by Hopkins), and it hits with the NBC scout. However, Corky won't take his chance at fame because they demand for a medical exam, which he won't go through; he refuses to admit that there's anything wrong with him. He flees the city and takes refuge at his old school crush's place, Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margaret). Things start to get crazy when Fats starts to actually talk back to Corky, telling him things such as to kill. It's a decent plot executed fairly well.



ACTING:The performances in here are pretty great, I'd say. Anthony Hopkins plays a very great part as the schizo ventriloquist and magician, Corky. For a pre-Silence performance, I'd say he did very well. The other shiners would be Ann-Margaret as Peggy Ann Snow, Burgess Meredith as Ben Greene, E. J. Andre as Merlin, and Beverly Sanders as the laughing lady. I just don't think Ed Lauter did a good job as Duke, Peg's husband. His role seemed someone bland.

SCORE:The score was pretty freaky and distinct. I'd say it was pretty well done.

EFFECTS:The effects didn't really look too realistic, but they got the job done, and they got it done well enough.



OTHER CONTENT:This, of course, isn't the best horror movie out there, but it does have a few good aspects aside from it's great performances. This movie is filled with suspense from top to bottom. You could even cut it with a knife, I'd say. It was also very dark with its humor, and even very wry and clever. You could very well watch it for its humor as well as its suspense and scares. However, I could see that much more could have been done with this idea that was overlooked. This left it somewhat bland and unorganized, not to mention the editing was kind of sloppy. It's not the best horror movie, but it's worth a watch.

OVERALL,a great horror movie with a decent plot, great perfromances, freaky score, accomplishing yet unreal effects, lots of suspense, and clever dark humor, but so much more could have been done with the plot and editing.