“Alice I forbid it.” “My dear don’t be ridiculous.”
Don Gallico (Vincent Price) is not only a master of disguise, he is a master at creating magic illusions. He has done this for some time for Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph). He now wants to perform magic himself. He establishes his own show using illusions he has created. The highlight of the show is called the buzz-saw trick. In the trick he saws off the head of a young woman. During the performance of the trick the show is stopped. Ross Ormond has an injunction placed on the use of the trick. Ormond maintains that since Gallico was an employee of his, the trick belongs to him. Even though he created the trick on his own time with his own money, Gallico had signed a contract that anything he creates belongs to Ormond. It is an iron clad contract.
Ormond sells the trick to Gallico’s rival The Great Rinaldi (John Emery). Rinaldi also takes Gallico’s spot at the theater. Gallico is devastated. This is not the first time Ormond has taken something away from him. Ormond stole his wife years ago. Ormond throws that fact in Gallico’s face which sends the magician over the edge. Gallico forces Ormond into the working side of the buzz-saw and decapitates him.
When his former assistant Karen Lee (Mary Murphy) accidentally takes the bag containing Ormond’s head Gallico is in a panic. With the help of Karen and her boyfriend Lt. Alan Bruce (Patrick O’Neal), of the police department, he manages to get it back before it is discovered. Gallico tosses Ormond’s body on a bonfire. Gallico then rents rooms from Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss (Jay Novello and Lenita Lane) posing as Ormond.
All’s well until Mrs. Ormond (Eva Gabor) comes looking for her husband. She finds out where she believes her husband is living only to have it be her ex-husband Gallico. By now Gallico is running on pure insanity. Mrs. Ormond is summarily dispatched and Ormond is blamed. It’s not long before Rinaldi starts putting two and two together and comes up Gallico. Every obstacle means another body.
In the meantime, Karen’s boyfriend, Alan, is fascinated with a new forensic tool known as fingerprints. In searching for Ormond he gets what he thinks are Ormond’s prints. He then manages to secretively get prints that he believes are Rinaldi’s. They prove to be the same. He believes Rinaldi and Ormond are the same person. In a way they are. After killing Rinaldi Gallico has taken over his act.
“The Mad Magician” was released in 1954 and was directed by John Brahm. There are aspects of the movie that remind me of “The Lodger” 1944 with Laird Cregar. The scene where Mr. Slade puts a body on a bonfire and when he rents the rooms from the Bontings are similar in what happens in “The Mad Magician”.
The use of fingerprints as a method of identification wasn’t really used until the 19th century. In 1858, an Englishman named Sir William Herschel was working as the Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India. In order to reduce fraud, he had the residents record their fingerprints when signing business documents.
Fingerprints are formed in the mother’s womb. The latest theory is that stresses on the fingers and toes from pressure leave small folds in the developing skin. These pressures can be caused by the fetus ‘touching’ its surroundings or even embryonic fluid washing over toes and fingers creating these folds. There are three layers to the skin, the epidermis, the basal and the inner dermis. The middle basal layer grows faster than the surrounding layers. The basal layer buckles and folds in several directions, forcing complex shapes. By the 17th week of pregnancy fingerprints are fully established. Even identical twins do not have the same fingerprints.