MAGIC [1978]

 UMPTEENTH TAKE ON THE VENTRILOQUIST'S DUMMY HORROR FILM. 

As far as I can tell, the earliest film version of this tried-and-true horror trope was Lon Chaney's THE UNHOLY THREE  [1925] and I don't think there's a decade since then when there hasn't been SOME version filmed.  The best and surely most influential can be found in the classic 1945 DEAD OF NIGHT with Michael Redgrave in the nutty ventriloquist role.  Hell, there's even a famous TWILIGHT ZONE episode which is taken mostly from the 1945 film.  MAGIC, therefore, is not the best version of this story; however, it's pretty well up there.  And this is surely the "classiest" version;

directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margaret, Burgess Meredith and Ed Lauter, the acting chops are off the charts!  I think here, in fact, Hopkins gives one of his best performances in a career of great performances.  Future Sir Tony here plays a failed magician named Corky Withers who fails at everything until he changes his act to ventriloquism with the addition of his dummy named Fats.  Super agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) parlays this into huge success on television until the network contract requires Corky to have a physical exam (which he is dead-set against).  Corky runs off into hiding and looks up his old high school crush Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margaret) who is stuck in an unhappy marriage with Duke (Ed Lauter) and soon has an affair with her.  But something's not right with Corky's relationship with his dummy Fats whom Corky seems to be treating as a real person.

As a horror film, MAGIC is on the outskirts.  There are really no real scares to be found in the movie; in fact, the scariest thing is probably that infamous trailer consisting of a close-up on Fats reciting his little poem:  "Abracadabra, I sit on his knee.  Presto chango, and now he is me.  Hocus pocus, we take her to bed.  Magic is fun . . . .we're dead." 

that apparently scarred a passel of 1978 kiddies who still remember it to this day.  The film, however, is just superbly acted and has a genuine creepiness to it.  It is a character study beautifully portrayed by all the cast and pictures the slow slide into madness of Corky Withers.  It does, however, count as a horror film because, despite all participants' arguments to the contrary, Fats' "sentience" does not all take place in Corky's mind.  Interview subjects involved with the film over the years have made a point of saying how Fats never speaks unless Corky is close by and Fats never moves unless Corky is in contact with the dummy.  This argument is disproved by one scene in which Fats kills someone with a knife when Corky is nowhere in the vicinity.  Anyway you slice that, Fats is capable of acting on his own.  As I've said, MAGIC is well-worth watching for the excellent acting jobs by everyone involved and for the creepy-ass dummy Fats.  Hopkins himself should be singled out for an extraordinary performance which seems to go overlooked over the the years.  Great stuff!