Lots of hay is made pitting Catholic Bess against Jewish Mama Weiss. THE GREAT HOUDINI quickly gets bogged down in the love triangle between Houdini, Bess, and Houdini’s Mama Weiss (Ruth Gordon). Lucille Ball’s annoying neighbor (Vivian Vance) is an old nurse with the glib wit of a herpes sore, who also narrates – this woman with the voice of a cheese grater on testicle flesh… is narrating! Bill Bixby is clairvoyant Father Ford, who tries not to turn into THE INCREDIBLE HULK. As Houdini’s wife Bess, Sally Struthers tries hard not to sound like a shriking fishwife dreamkiller. TV director Melville Shavelson (YOURS MINE AND OURS, 1968) and writer Peter Benchley ( JAWS, 1976) try to capture the wild spirit, the profligate, arrogant genius of the King of Handcuffs. How will he do against a water torture cell? He can’t even escape his David Starsky white-fro. Speaking of Glaser the surface – Paul Michael Glaser is… THE GREAT HOUDINI. The best we can hope for is Tony Curtis flashing a winning smile or for Johnny Depp to flash a winning bangle, and to then get the hell outa there, before anyone realizes you haven’t even grazed the surface. The great magician, escapist and mysteriarch, Harry Houdini (1874-1926), lived such a storied life that it is impossible to capture any semblance of it in the fleeting medium of the feature film.
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