Hitchcoc I saw this many years ago and now recently. Having read a great deal about Harry Houdini, the complexities of the man were pretty much overlooked in this film. Not much was made of the stocky, feisty, combative guy. We are mostly looking at his talent for escapes. This is is a movie with great suspense and excitement. How could it not be with so many potential catastrophes. Houdini was at war with the metaphysical. This is not covered. His experiences with Conan-Doyle are overlooked. I guess if the movie had not been called Houdini, and some guy with virtually any name were portrayed as the greatest escape artist in the world, it would have been just as exciting. I've always had a little trouble with Curtis's voice and acting style. Still, this is a lot of fun. It just scratches the surface of the character.

kenjha This colorful biography of the famed magician focuses on his later life and career. It is less than factual but that's not a bad thing, as the primary purpose here is to entertain, not necessarily to inform. And it is quite entertaining for the most part, although it tends to become silly as it touches on premonitions and the supernatural. Houdini was best known for his escape routines and many of them are on display here. Curtis performs well in one of his best early roles, bringing a lot of energy and nicely conveying Houdini's passion for his craft. Leigh, who was married to Curtis at the time, is lovely as his devoted wife in their first screen pairing.

Robert J. Maxwell It's 1953 and Tony Curtis is just as cute as Janet Leigh in this likeness of the life and time of Harry Houdini, née Eric Weisz. He and Leigh meet at an exhibition in New York where Curtis plays the Wild Man of Borneo and minutes later, after a quick change, appears as a tuxedo-clad stage magician pulling lines of scarves out of a hat and dodging tomatoes.The courtship is over with quickly and Houdini brings his blond bride home, the bride with no nose to speak of, to meet Mother for the first time. Happily, she does not throw up her hands in horror and shriek, "OMG -- a SHIKSA!" Neither does she tip-toe in on Janet Leigh in the shower and butcher her with a kitchen knife.Not that everything is rosy between the couple as the years go by. He's married to his magic act and she wants to buy a home and settle down. This is a very familiar set of catycorner marital values, as any John Wayne movie will demonstrate, but it's not meant to be taken too seriously -- not enough to interfere with the kids' enjoyment of the movie. What I mean, for instance, is, well, here is an exchange about as serious as any that occurs. Leigh: "You can't pull bread out of a hat!" Curtis: "If you wanted bread you should have married a baker!" More years pass. Houdini becomes a household word, and will remain so, even today. But the tricks become more dangerous. And there are hints of the supernatural, both in the music and in the admonitions of older, more experienced illusionists. Please, Mr. Houdini, do not try to learn the art of dematerialization. It's good advice. There are some things man was never meant to know. Some folks call it hybris. But Houdini is too ambitious for his own good.I think -- I don't want to bother looking it up -- but I think that Houdini didn't die as shown in the movie, drowned in a stunt that had killed another illusionist who was too full of himself. I think he may have asked someone to punch him in the abdomen to demonstrate his rock-hard abs, but the punch caught him unprepared and he suffered some sort of hollow organ injury.In any case, he dies in the movie promising Leigh that he will come back to her, wherever he is. Historically, Mrs. Houdini took this seriously. Harry himself had been deeply into the spiritualist craze of the time. She tried for a dozen or more years to contact Harry through spiritual means. She didn't succeed and finally gave up. Such an ending would be a decrescendo and isn't in the movie, which ends with the possibility at least of Harry's supernatural return.Janet Leigh is certainly attractive in a 1950s movie-star sort of way. You could lay out a hand of solitaire atop her magnificent bosom. She seems to have been a quick study and was a reliable lead in musicals and comedies, with only one truly challenging role. Tony Curtis, on the other hand, was mannered in his acting for years. It wasn't until later that he'd learned his chops and did some splendid work in both comedies like "Who Was That Lady" and "Some Like It Hot", and in dramas like "The Outsider" and "The Boston Strangler." The film itself is a cartoon but it's colorful, capricious, lively and should provide interesting entertainment for the kids -- and some amusement for the more sophisticated.

rich-826 A very enjoyable movie, though full of enough holes to occasionally provoke a snicker or two. Tony Curtis and his wife Janet Leigh performed all of the escapes in the movie, coached by professional magicians and escape artists. When I saw this movie as a kid, I got interested in escape routines-- I had my brothers tie me to a chair, which I escaped from two out of three times (I would have escaped from it the third time, but my mom saw me struggling to escape from her antique dining room chair and untied me). I bought 'escape' handcuffs, and then learned how to pick the lock in a pair of cheap handcuffs. When I was older, a magician friend of mine showed me two different types of strait jackets-- the magicians and a real one. He could escape from either-- I contented myself with the magician's version, which was no easy trick. I wonder which version Tony Curtis used in the movie?