Crazy Confidence: The Mad Magician (1954)
My dear readers, though some may consider me a little old fashioned and perhaps even naive, I find that taking a person at their word is fine enough for me and it’s best to avoid muddying things up with legal documentation. Of course, there are certain scenarios where sorting out the details in black and white is simply unavoidable and I recently had to submit to such methods to secure renovations on our cellar. Though it is not my preferred means of conducting business, the gentlemen were most cordial and in the end all it took was a bit of ink, a host of vows, a pint of blood, a dab of my essence and a collateral agreement regarding first born children.
Don communicating his dissatisfaction with his employer
Don Gallico (Vincent Price) knows a thing or two about contractual obligations himself. Don is a crafter of staged illusions, working in the service of a company that provides prepackaged acts for big-name magicians. He has tired of lurking behind the scenes while well-moneyed showboats soak up all the credit for his creations and he decides to give show business a go himself with a thrilling little buzzsaw illusion he’s cooked up in his spare time. But just as the curtain is about to rise on a new chapter in his life, Don is met with legal action from his employer. Apparently, Don wasn’t too keen on reading the fine print in his contract and is rather disappointed to learn that his boss, Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph), can claim ownership over more or less anything Don produces.
Don has a spotty history with his superior, as Mr. Ormond seduced and corrupted Don’s ex-wife during his earliest days with the company and then carried on without so much as shameful blush. This latest career-related indignity proves to be a bit too much for the sensitive young Donald to bear and an almost somnambulant rage rises within him, driving him to incorporate Mr. Ormond into his new buzzsaw act while quite deliberately omitting the illusion bit. To conceal his crime, Don whips up a strikingly convincing mask of his now late employer’s face and parades around town disguised as his own murder victim. However, one execution is rarely enough to tie things up as neatly as one might like and Don soon finds his deeply repressed anger suddenly popping out here and there, introducing his newfound homicidal streak to a variety of unlucky so-and-sos.
A face for every occasion
The Mad Magician was released only one year after House of Wax, the film that would set Vincent Price on the path to becoming a titan of the horror genre. Much like House of Wax, Mr. Price plays a sensitive creative type, an artistic purist who is so severely wronged by the financial interests of their associates that violence becomes the only proper response. Most performers, be they thespians or magicians, avoid repeating a trick before the same audience for fear that the viewers will catch a glimpse of the mundane craftsmanship that makes the illusory seem simple and the impossible seem undeniable. But Vincent Price, as anyone acquainted with his work already knows, is no ordinarily entertainer. With this performance, he announces his supreme confidence in his own command of the medium, playing yet another artistically-minded madman in yet another three-dimensional production. To brazenly play two like-minded maniacs in such a short span of time must have alerted savvy viewers that Mr. Price’s horror legacy would be a formidable one indeed.
The Mad Magician runs 72 minutes and does not possess a certified rating in the United States.
