![]() ![]() Corky is always a means of escaping not just her marriage but her small town, making it easier to turn a blind eye to his erratic behavior. Stuck in an unhappy marriage, it’s easy for her to be manipulated by Corky. There’s a sadness in Corky’s desire for normalcy despite knowing Fats won’t ever let him have it, but the true tragedy is the way Peggy is caught in the middle. Fats is a manifestation of Corky’s id, and Corky is aware of his mental instability from the get-go. Fats even looks just like Corky, and is voiced by Hopkins too. Hopkins plays Corky always on the edge, always manic and nervous save for the fleeting moments of calm happiness with Peggy. Unlike the ambiguity in Goldman’s source novel, the film version of Magic doesn’t make any attempts to conceal the truth about Fats. Corky’s fears are amplified when he renews a relationship with married woman Peggy ( Ann-Margret), and Fats isn’t thrilled about it. But the network requires a medical exam to close the deal, and Corky runs back home to the Catskills out of fear. The act is so compelling that his agent Ben Greene ( Burgess Meredith) has lined up a great TV deal for him. Cut to a year later, where Corky has completely turned his show around thanks to the addition of ventriloquism in his act, with his dummy Fats. Socially awkward, Corky chokes on stage and his subsequent outburst toward a less than enthusiastic audience has his ailing mentor warning him to develop a better stage presence and gimmick. Corky opens the film as an aspiring magician, but lacks the charisma of his mentor Merlin. That ventriloquist, Corky, is played by Anthony Hopkins. The only problem is that his dummy is the jealous type. Written by William Goldman ( The Stepford Wives, The Princess Bride), and adapted from the novel he also wrote, Magic revolves around a ventriloquist seeking to renew a relationship with his former high school sweetheart. Released 45 years ago on November 8, 1978, Magic is an underappreciated classic and one of horror’s most unnerving love stories. ![]() The TV spot was so effective that it’s arguably scarier than the actual film it wasn’t the straightforward horror story the teaser indicated but much more a psychological thriller. The simple but terrifying ad didn’t give away much about the actual plot, but it did instill a lot of traumatic nightmares for any young viewers that happened to catch it. Imagine sitting around the TV with your family and seeing this commercial pop up on screen back in the 1970s. The phrase “they don’t make them like they used to” is thrown around a lot in the context of nostalgia, but in the case of the first teaser for Magic, it’s quite accurate. Meet the “werewolves, not swearwolves” in the following clip. I can’t wait to see what other monsters they throw loving jabs at. This is exciting because Waititi and Clement truly understand and love the genre, and are surely going to deliver even more laughs. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Clement and himself haven’t even touched the We’re Wolves screenplay yet, joking in this junket interview that they’ve “written three page,” while also revealing Shadows “took about six years to do.” With that said, he does state that they plan to dive into that next and hopefully finish the screenplay. Waititi, if you didn’t know, has been busy directing Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, which has taken him out of commission for the better part of two years. Hopefully, you weren’t counting on it happening anytime soon. The pic also tackles werewolves, which is the focus of the long-in-development sequel, We’re Wolves. The mockumentary follows a documentary team filming the lives of a group of vampires for a few months. Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s hysterical What We Do in the Shadowsplays a lot of inside baseball, which is why it’s a home run, especially for horror fans. Spoof films haven’t been funny since Scary Movie, mostly because they focus too much on pop culture. ![]()
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