We start by seeing him play a two-bit traveling circus and doing a few tricks for young Bess (Leigh) who he instantly falls for. Sure, it may not be terribly accurate, but I think it does a fantastic job at capturing the legend of Houdini. The bright Technicolor world perfectly reflects the light tone of the flick. The film shares a lot of those sci-fi aesthetics, especially in the color scheme. Add on top of that Houdini’s already fascinating life and Tony Curtis at his charismatic best and you get a quite memorable and entertaining movie.Ī big surprise here was that this film was produced by the legendary George Pal, known mostly in geek circles for his sci-fi of this era like WAR OF THE WORLDS (which was actually produced concurrently with HOUDINI), DESTINATION MOON, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE and THE TIME MACHINE.

They have an easy chemistry in this film that helps keep it moving quickly along. If I’m not mistaken this was their first feature pairing, the only earlier co-starring effort I found after a quick IMDB search was a Jerry Lewis short film called HOW TO SMUGGLE A HERNIA ACROSS THE BORDER (1949). She co-stars with her then husband Tony Curtis as the titular Harry Houdini and you can tell they were still deep in love in this film. Today we follow Janet Leigh over from yesterday’s noir thriller ACT OF VIOLENCE to today’s 1953 biopic HOUDINI. Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.

Houdini film 1953