DKosty123 While this film invites comparison to House of Wax, this film is totally it's own, while House of Wax was a remake of a 1930' s film. The crew of House of Wax sort of stayed together to do this one. Both films were originally in 3D. Both films have the same director.What is interesting here is that the women in the cast at ages 23 (Mary Murphy Karen Lee) and 35 Ava Gabor (Claire Ormond) are younger than the males in the cast, the film focus is so much on magic that you hardly notice the women. The plot involves Price as the mad magician(Don Gallico / Gallico the Great) who people seem to keep stealing his trick from him. So he gets upset with these thieves and starts killing them. Then he develops masks of these deceased people he has killed including (John Emery -The Great Rinaldi) and keeps them alive performing as them on stage. Meanwhile, Price's own persona seems gentle and kind to humanity.Ava Gabor (Claire Ormond) plays Prices Ex-Wife, stolen from him by a rich man (Donald Randolph ...Ross Ormond ) that Price kills while she is overseas spending all of his money. She comes back, gets wise to the hidden death of her husband, and gets murdered by Price to continue the cover up. As the tricks pile up, a police detective who uses finger prints to catch killers, catches on to Prices plot. (Patrick O'Neal). The unmasking has a really hot conclusion.While it is not House of Wax, the cast is literally stacked with people that were in a lot of 1950's Sci-Fi films.

mmcgee282 Way some times back .I got a very poor Anaglyph .DVD. version of mad magician,It did not pop pout ,It turned out to be a flat version recorded from American movie channel in fake3d.It was terrible.I recently got the Blu-ray 3D restored version.It was clear and sharp and the 3D was great.It was produced by the same man who produced house of wax,Bryan Foy,of the famous ,real, 7 little Foys.Vincent Price plays as mad as just like the other character in house of wax,but, he is a magician want to be and is about to try his new magic machine in his first show aided by assistant played by Mary Murphy.His greedy boss finds out and stops him forcing him to continent to work for his bosses company by creating magic machine for magicians.The boss also took his wife away ,played by Zsa Zsa Gabor ,and turned her into a gold digger.This causes Price to go on a murder rampage.Patrick O Neal plays a young detective and Mary Murphy's boy friend ,with the aid of mystery writer and very nosy,Lenita Lane, to find the murderer. Her character and her husband portrayed played by Jay Novello are the comedy relief in this film,which kind of slowed down the film from being serious.It was one of these 3D films directed by German John Brahm that he put more strongly the story rather than over dominating it with the 3D.Although just a few throw out at camera scenes where in it.I had discovered that the water coming out of the magic wand and the hand extension scenes was suppose to of been a sexual innuendo.I never thought about it .I know Columbia put out sexy posters of the film showing Mary Murphy in modern glamour shorts showing her Gams .It was technically a lot better than that bad DVD version.Seeing so many time flat on t.v. proved that it was a good horror film ,that it made it a excellent 3D feature.It also has 3D 3Stooges shorts ,but, I will blog that on their titles on IMDb.Once again twilight video puts out a limitation and don't offer it to retail .How many people who are 3d fan who don't use the computer but have 3D t.v. and 3d Blu ray player are not aware of this? Pretty sad or may be retail does not want to pay extra tax to sell this film? Very entertaining.01/15/16

mark.waltz Revenge is mine saith the magician, and here, he's on a quest for revenge against the people who have prevented him from utilizing his own magic trick invention. Those who stand in his way meet brutal ends which includes having their head sawed off, being burnt to death and other means of torturous demises. Hiding behind the mask of several of the victims is the victim of fraud himself, the former master of wax dummies who has switched to trickery in this variation of a story he had just done. You guessed it, Vincent Price, the tall, gangly seemingly milquetoast who discovers in the middle of a performance as he tries to introduce his newest invention that he's under the thumb of his employer whom he despises for stealing his wife. A clever bit of trickery turns revenge into a gory end for the rascal, and when there's murder (no matter what the motivations), madness is sure to follow for the perpetrator. Enter ex-wife Eva Gabor who finds that blackmail doesn't quite always end in a cash settlement and magician rival John Emery who is really burnt up about the threat he has to his title as the world's greatest illusionist.With the help of a nosy murder mystery writer (a very funny Lenita Lane), New York detective Patrick O'Neal investigates the common fingerprints found at the scene of a murder in Lane's boarding house and all doesn't add up. Murderers gain confidence and become clumsy as they begin to think they're fool-proof, and in the case of Price, it's only a matter of time before he slips up. There isn't really a mystery here, only the fun of watching Price getting away with his gruesome actions and the knowledge that his retribution will be equally as gory as the crimes he's already committed. Mary Murphy plays his assistant who also slowly becomes aware of Price's nefarious plots while Don Randolph is slimy as Price's boss whose sneaky actions send Price over the edge.Certainly not as colorful as its predecessor "House of Wax" (made the year before and certainly the inspiration for this), the film still is quite enjoyable and has some genuine thrills that are bone-tingling. The mixture of comedy and horror always made even the most maudlin of Price's films seem much better, and in the case of "The Mad Magician", there are some moments that will live in your cineramic memory long after you've seen this film. There's a very funny conclusion which will have you in hoards of laughter after the gruesome climax that came just before.

GL84 Furious over his boss' repeated attempts to curtain his career, a famous trick maker finds he can utilize his craft to kill for the sake of his career, only doing so requires him to constantly repeat the act in order to stay away from his friend and the authorities on his trail.Essentially a remake of another film by the same star from the previous year with a new profession behind it that powers the revenge motif, there's not a whole lot with this one that really works. The fact that it's so similar with the exception of the profession change does little for this one, requiring it to introduce a few spectacular gags for the revenge aspect when doling out the deaths but beyond that we don't get anything hardly original in here. The 3D gags are lifted straight from the previous film, going around with masks on to commit his crimes is a plot-point from there as well and the romance angle is taken from there as well with just a few minor tweaks that would naturally come about due to the profession rather than anything else. The constant plot of him being under the bosses thumb is nothing more than a requirement to start the rampage and goes on way too long for what it should be, the bumbling authorities accidentally uncover the whole ploy through sheer accident without willfully doing anything to piece the puzzle together and moreso the comic relief couple are rather tired and irritating more than a positive force upon the movie. That said, it's still quite fun with a few good moments here and there, including a few spectacular tricks to be employed by the stage-show, the finale contains quite a bit of action with the brawl in the shop and as usual it's always fun to see Price get to do his thing every now and then where he just gets to monologue for a while spouting off the reasons for his revenge, the end result containing a rather twisted logic behind it all that sounds reasonable enough for the rampage to ensue and not come off like a hokey joke. While it's nowhere near the top of his career works and certainly not near the bottom rung either, there's just too much about it that doesn't work to say it does nothing more than be overall adequate.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.