Magic

'We're gonna be star-arrrs.' "Fats"

It had been two weeks after seeing Phantasm that my family's weekly "Movie Date Night" continued on with the next film treat on our list: Magic, the Richard Attenborough directed psychological horror, in which the now legendary Anthony Hopkins stars as Charles "Corky" Withers, an aspiring magician and Ventriloquist, whom, "in partnership" with a profanity-spewing ventriloquist dummy named "Fats", perform their comedy shticks before live audiences and together become a huge success. But the newfound fame - even coming with an offer to star in his own television show - just isn't good enough for the "severely troubled" Corky: For he is a man who has never let go of his past. And that past includes a wo...

Anthony Hopkins as a schizophrenic magician and Ann-Margret the woman he loves

A shy man finds success as a ventriloquist with his dummy Fats, but vacations in his hometown in the Catskills where he seeks to reunite with a high school friend. As his agent tries to find him, the woman's hubby might show up. Burgess Meredith and Ed Lauter play the latter two.

Magic (1978) is a slow burn Hitchcock-ian psychological drama/thriller that mixes bits of "Psycho" with the creepy mannequins of several 70's movies/shows, like Kolchak: The Night Stalker's "The Trevi Collection." The well-done "Pin" from a decade later was influenced by it. Its basically a lowkey cabin-in-the-woods flick with the unique dummy angle.

While not great like P...