Seriously: the trick of “sawing someone in half” has been performed for at least two hundred years, but to date, I have never heard of the trick going wrong, even when updated to include power tools, circular saws, chainsaws, and in Penn and Teller’s version, an industrial punch press.
Why? Because it is specifically arranged so it CAN’T.
Tricks DO go wrong, sometimes. The best case I can think of was the conjuror Chung Ling Soo (who was actually an American) when his bullet-catching trick went sour and one of his assistants accidentally shot him. Theoretically, this one shouldn’t have gone sour, either – the guns were specifically rigged in such a way that they should not have been able to fire – but Soo had been doing the maintenance himself for years, and over time, the breech blocks of the guns wore down in such a way as to allow the guns to actually discharge their chambers.
So, in this case, Soo himself was to blame. The guns were real, but he’d modified them. His modifications worked, too. It took years of wear and tear for them to malfunction.
Most tricks involving the appearance of bodily harm – the tri-sectional woman, guillotine tricks, the milk can escape, and the ever-popular sawing someone in half – are gimmicked in such a way that the trick can’t really go sour, short of a seriously freak accident… and I suspect that the magic vendor who sold the device or the plans would testify like hell to that effect.
And, of course, if the magician himself invented or altered the effect… he’d be the sole person responsible.
Note that this does not necessarily go for tricks involving animals. From what I hear, there are waivers that the venue gets to sign if someone’s going to do an animal trick, like Siegfried and Roy. And even then, the magicians themselves can be held responsible if an animal gets weird. Doug Henning quit working with tigers after one decided to investigate the audience in the middle of his act, one night in Las Vegas; he got mauled fairly well while keeping the critter busy, and the animal was restrained before anyone was seriously hurt except Henning.
From what I hear, Henning woke up in a hospital bed with Bob Hope cracking jokes at his bedside. Hope had been in the audience when the tiger went for them.
