Watching movies can be studying. It’s all a matter of what the exams are. I studied enough when I was young to know that Vincent Price was a horror star. Probably I had no conscious idea what “horror” was yet, contenting myself with terms such as “scary movies” or “monster shows.” The Mad Magician was one of his earlier efforts and not really a great film. The Prestige, of course, makes any magician film pale in comparison. Still, many special effects were new in 1954 and gimmicks could be used to lure audiences in. Many of these movies, such as Mad Magician, are ironically difficult to locate these days, having had their distribution rights bought up by various companies who know that some of us still have homework to do.
Although classified as a horror movie, there are really only a few tense moments in the whole. It seems pretty clear who’s going to be magiced to death before it happens. One does wonder how you avoid massive blood splatter when cutting someone’s head off with a buzz-saw. (It might’ve made quite a 3-D effect, had they decided to put it on camera.) Audience tolerance (and the Hays Code) wasn’t up to that level in the fifties. It seems there was a lot of learning going on in the day. How to make a movie frightening without violating strict rules regarding what might be shown? Of course, the combination of writers, directors, producers, and actors have to combine just right to make a winning film and stories that rely too much on 3-D tend to show.
The villain in this case, as is often true in early Price movies, has justification. The murders begin because his sponsor insists that any trick he invents, on or off company time, belongs to him. Many modern employers try to institute similar terms—their salary buys you, in essence—while claiming to offer a good work/life balance. That’s a new and foreign concept to our farming ancestors, I suspect. People (and corporations) like to own other people to do the hard work for them. Our awareness of this too-human tendency led to the necessity of unionization and other ways for employees to push back against the machine. In other words, there is a bit of pathos in this early Price horror film. There isn’t much horror but there is some social commentary. And, of course, Price would move on to other films that could better showcase his talents. Not all studying feels rewarding, but it’s necessary.
