DVR Diary: THE MAD MAGICIAN (1954)

It took a while for Vincent Price to become a full-fledged horror man. He appeared in two Universal horror films from the classic cycle -- Tower of London and The Invisible Man Returns -- but didn't get identified with the genre until the 1950s. Andre de Toth's House of Wax was a milestone in 1953, making Price a real movie star for the first time. Publicity for his follow-up horror picture noted that he had suddenly begun receiving fan letters from children. Price reportedly speculated that House of Wax had made him nearly as popular as Roy Rogers or Lassie. Yet a hiatus, or reprieve, followed the release of John Brahm's black-and-white 3-D picture for Columbia. Price didn't make another horror picture until 1958's The Fly, after which came the deluge. So what happened? What was it about The Mad Magician, if anything, that stalled Price's transformation?

The late Mary Murphy's most famous cinematic utterance was the question, "What are you rebelling against?" Marlon Brando's answer in The Wild One was "Whadaya got?" Had Murphy's character in The Mad Magician asked the same question of her co-star, Price might have answered, "Exploitation by the man!" Price plays Don Gallico, a turn-of-the-century technical wizard who designs illusions and magic tricks for Ross Ormond, a theatrical producer whose star attraction is the magician Rinaldi the Great. Realizing that he's the real illusionist, Gallico gets the performing bug and decides to try his luck as a stage magician. Rather than let Rinaldi and Ormond benefit from his latest masterwork, an illusion of someone getting decapitated by a buzzsaw, Gallico shoots for stardom, mocking Rinaldi in the process with a note-perfect impersonation aided by an ingenious latex mask. What's interesting about this opening from the perspective of Price's career and reputation is how he doesn't play Gallico as an egomaniac but proves convincing as a nervous novice entertainer. Without his signature moustache, Price is still unmistakably himself but less like a trademark of himself, if you get my drift. In any event, Gallico's dream is dashed when Ormond sics lawyers on the theater with an injunction forbidding the use of illusions designed by his employee, all of which are Ormond's intellectual property by contract. Understandably, Gallico is one mad magician. At first he's just angry but when Ormond rubs it in a little too much our hero escalates from angry to homicidal crazy. A convenient bonfire celebrating a college football victory gives him an opportunity to dispose of the offending body, while Gallico's mask-making genius allows him to go incognito wearing Ormond's face, though he uses another name.

Right there you may notice the plot getting more convoluted than it ought to be. It gets more so when the former Mrs. Gallico, who is also the estranged Mrs. Ormond (Eva Gabor) turns up hunting for her current husband. Her appeal to the press catches the attention of the mystery-writing wife of the boarding-house owner who now recognizes her tenant as "Ormond." Mrs. O knows better; having been intimate with both Ormond and Gallico, she sees through the disguise -- so she has to die. Now our mad magician's decision to wear Ormond's face makes sense, since Ormond is now accused of his wife's murder. Rinaldi is skeptical, however, assuming for reasons of his own that a fugitive Ormond would have sought him out. He's more suspicious about Gallico designing new illusions that he feels are rightfully his. He spies on Gallico demonstrating his latest device, a crematorium illusion, but ends up getting a personal demonstration. So we end up with what had been hinted at early: the "Great Rinaldi" will debut the crematorium trick, if the mystery writer, the once-loyal assistant (Murphy) or her boyfriend the police detective don't track down Gallico first....

The Mad Magician is only 72 minutes long but manages to meander for much of that time while Price wastes time wearing masks or make-up for his impersonations. It's as if House of Wax producer Bryan Foy wanted to make Price a modern Lon Chaney of many faces. As mentioned, Price is quite good when he doesn't have to impersonate other people, and has one really good mad scene while killing Ormond, daring his tormentor to laugh at him now. But the film's eccentric or merely pointless digressions -- among the latter is a bit of business in which Price and Murphy accidentally switch bags, the former's containing Ormond's head -- dissipate the intensity of the star turn. Director John Brahm was Twentieth Century-Fox's horror specialist in the 1940s; if past his prime here, he still manages to give the picture an appropriate period atmosphere. The picture may sabotage itself in some ways, but is that enough to explain Price's five-year exile from horror? I suspect not. It's more likely that Price became identified with a kind of period horror film that was rendered obsolete by the sudden advent of sci-fi inflected horrors like Them!, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, and so on. While Price may be most revered by horror fans for the period horrors Roger Corman later adapted from Edgar Allan Poe, he had already reestablished himself as a horror man by then thanks to the modern-dress horrors he made for William Castle, as well as The Fly. Something else may have happened. Note how House of Wax had reportedly captivated small children. That film, and maybe Mad Magician as well, may have planted a seed in impressionable minds that germinated while Price went back to more conventional character acting. Once those captivated kiddies became old enough to go to drive-ins, Price was set for life.