Lack of good storyline.

Just what I expected

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

"The Mad Magician" is a thoroughly enjoyable follow-up to the earlier Vincent Price classic, "House of Wax". Rather reminiscent of that favourite, it stars Price as Don Gallico, a magician & master of illusion furious with his conniving employer, Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph). Ormond intends to pass on Gallicos' "buzz saw" bit to Gallicos' egocentric rival, Rinaldi (John Emery). So Gallico uses his talents to commit murder, and commit more murders in order to keep his secret. Alan Bruce (Patrick O'Neal), a young police detective, utilizes cutting edge new techniques such as fingerprinting to work the clues.This movie is not going to be as memorable as "House of Wax", which was largely responsible for launching Price as a new star of the horror genre. It's rather formulaic, and predictable, but it's richly photographed in black & white by Bert Glennon, and director John Brahm, an expert in period genre productions such as "Hangover Square" and "The Lodger", keeps the pace consistent. What viewers may marvel at is the makeup (by George Bau and Gustaf Norin), which is pretty impressive for any era in filmmaking."The Mad Magician" also provides great evidence of what a talent Price was. It's a fun vehicle, and the more unhinged Gallico gets, the more enjoyable Price is to watch. The supporting actors are good - leggy Mary Murphy as the assistant Karen Lee, Eva Gabor as Claire, the greedy, grasping woman who'd married both Gallico and Ormond, Jay Novello as landlord Frank Prentiss, and especially Lenita Lane as Prentiss' wife Alice, who has a second career as an author of murder mysteries. Corey Allen, Conrad Brooks, Roy Engel, and Lyle Talbot have uncredited parts.This amusing plot, contrived by Crane Wilbur, leads to an exciting and incendiary finale.Seven out of 10.

I love the Halloween season because a lot of the really good horror type movies are shown!! This one is a little under the radar but it is a good one. Vincent Price plays the lead role. He is a great illusion designer locked into an extremely binding contract. When he tries to go out on his own as a magician he is pulled up short by the employer. Vincent goes nuts and kills the man, then his ex-wife, a competing and overbearing magician, the Great Rinaldi, (who tries to steal the secrets and bind Price to his service by deducing that Price is the killer). Vincent then goes on stage using skin tight masks to impersonate the magician. He is finally found out by a detective using the new fangled means of finger prints. Boy has the law been changed since this picture!! The detective actually breaks into Price's apartment to look for evidence!! That sure wouldn't fly today!!! At the end Price is trying to feed the detective into one of his contraptions and is distracted by an insistent knock on the door. As he goes to answer the door a hidden associate springs to action and releases the detective. The two men fight and Price gets fed in to his own machine. So after three murders the mad man gets it, not in the end, but in a fiery flame of fire.

Furious over his boss' repeated attempts to curtain his career, a famous trick maker finds he can utilize his craft to kill for the sake of his career, only doing so requires him to constantly repeat the act in order to stay away from his friend and the authorities on his trail.Essentially a remake of another film by the same star from the previous year with a new profession behind it that powers the revenge motif, there's not a whole lot with this one that really works. The fact that it's so similar with the exception of the profession change does little for this one, requiring it to introduce a few spectacular gags for the revenge aspect when doling out the deaths but beyond that we don't get anything hardly original in here. The 3D gags are lifted straight from the previous film, going around with masks on to commit his crimes is a plot-point from there as well and the romance angle is taken from there as well with just a few minor tweaks that would naturally come about due to the profession rather than anything else. The constant plot of him being under the bosses thumb is nothing more than a requirement to start the rampage and goes on way too long for what it should be, the bumbling authorities accidentally uncover the whole ploy through sheer accident without willfully doing anything to piece the puzzle together and moreso the comic relief couple are rather tired and irritating more than a positive force upon the movie. That said, it's still quite fun with a few good moments here and there, including a few spectacular tricks to be employed by the stage-show, the finale contains quite a bit of action with the brawl in the shop and as usual it's always fun to see Price get to do his thing every now and then where he just gets to monologue for a while spouting off the reasons for his revenge, the end result containing a rather twisted logic behind it all that sounds reasonable enough for the rampage to ensue and not come off like a hokey joke. While it's nowhere near the top of his career works and certainly not near the bottom rung either, there's just too much about it that doesn't work to say it does nothing more than be overall adequate.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

And I do think undeservedly. It is too short perhaps, and a lot of the support characters are rather colourless especially compared to Gallico. However, while the revenge story has been done before many times it is still interesting here with not a dull moment. There are some very suspenseful moments and Gallico's means of revenge are sadistic. The crematorium climax is the meaning of edge-of-your-seat, and the buzz saw that isn't scene is also very memorable. The Mad Magician does look good, the sets are both beautiful and wonderfully macabre. The 3D effects are not as great as those of House of Wax, but still better than a lot of the mostly soulless effects we have nowadays. They do enhance what is going on on screen and apart from a couple that are a little weird often to thrilling effect. Of the supporting turns the best were Eva Gabor, a beautiful woman who plays a character with no redeeming qualities with no sense of blandness or holding back, and Donald Randolph, who is wonderfully sleazy as Ormond. Best of all again is Price, whose presence is genuinely fearsome yet the audience also garners sympathy for him, the sort of role that Price really excelled at. Overall, I like it very much and think it deserves more attention than it gets. 8/10 Bethany Cox