Movies using Magic Tricks instead of Special Effects

Cafe Society
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NOTE – I am NOT looking for movies that depict magic tricks, or in which magic is performed as part of the movie AS magic tricks. So don’t go posting the 1953 movie Houdini or the 1964 movie The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao or any such. I’m looking for cases where, instead of using stop-motion or matte effects or cutaways or (these days) CGI they used a “practical” magical trick to depict something that is not supposed to be a magic trick.

(People are still going to screw this up, anyway. But here goes.)

Practically since motion pictures were invented, people have been using the capabilities of motion pictures to do “magic” effects. The Lumiere brothers and Georges Melies practically made this their entire schtick – using sudden film cuts with substitutions to create apparent “magic” effects. But how often does the reverse happen, where the filmmakers use a bit of “practical” stage magic to perform some seeming miracle instead of using motion picture “magic”?

Stage productions have been doing this for a long time. The original staging of the Hamilton Deane/John Balderston Dracula relied upon real live stage magic to portray, for instance, Dracula turning into a bat (accomplished by the actor disappearing through a trap door on stage while his high-necked cape stood by virtue of internal bracing , and they dropped a model flapping bat as the cape “collapsed”. It’s the origin of Dracula’s high-necked cape). Dracula also dissolved onstage when they drove a stake into his heart in a trick coffin, in which the actor’s head appeared, but the body was a dummy made to collapse. (They avoided shoeing this in the 1931 film based on the play, apparently not wanting freak out the rubes in Peoria. Dracula was discreetly staked off-camera). Even the flapping bats were done with some sleight-of-hand. The production had them swooping through windows and around obstacles i ways that appeared to be impossible to do with wires (it was done with some very clever wire placement and the use of multiple bat models). The tradition of such stage effects continues to this day in various productions, where they want to “wow” the audience with seemingly impossible effects.

But, naturally, seemingly “impossible” effects are easier to produce in motion pictures using standard techniques available to movemakers that aren’t available to stage plays. So things are “matted in” , or there is a break in the filming allowing things to be replaced (as when Obi-wan Kenobi’s light saber is turned on and lengthens just before the final duel with Darth Vader in the original Star Wars). Or, nowadays, they can use digital e3diting and CGI to make impossible things happen.

But sometimes the effects are done with relatively simple stage magic instead. It’s often faster and cheaper, or more elaborate methods weren’t available (or even invented yet). One example that springs to mind is the way petals fall from the flower in the3 hospital in Dr. Zhivago – something that would probably be done with CGI today, but which was apparently done with some very careful rigging of the artificial flower, so they could get the petals to fall on command. Or the way a miniature “Thing” appears when Kurt Russel as Macready plunges the hot wire into the petri dish of sample blood in John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing – obviously using an artificial hand-with-petri dish with a model spring-loaded in the “arm”. (I don’t count the other mechanical effects i that film, clever as they are)

What started all this was my re-watching the 1964 movie The Time Travelers. Actually, it was the MST3K’ed version. Although I’d seen the film many times before (alerted to it by Forrest J. Ackerman’s mag, Famous Monsters, because Forry had a bit part in the film), I hadn’t noticed until the bots’ commentary pointed out the use of conjuring tricks instead of more traditional effects. A head is apparently removed and replaced, all in one continuous shot. A person is “teleported” using a standard “vanishing” effect. And Forry himself appears to convert circular metal parts into square ones with a bit of specially-prepared items and some minor sleight of hand.

I can’t think of any other examples offhand, but surely Dopers can suggest some other cases where a stage “magic” illusion was used in place of a more standard movie effect to create an effect that is NOT intended to be a magic trick.

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So, to restate your premise to be clear we’re on the same page, you’re looking for movie special effects that would have also worked for a live audience present at the filming? And that also don’t consist of the actual thing they’re depicting (so, for instance, not explosions)?

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Pretty much.

I bring it up because I rarely see anyone using such methods for films – it’s generally much easier to use standard photographic tricks. The Wikipedia article on The Time Travelers suggests that the reason they use practical magic effects instead was because they were strapped for cash.

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And not movies where magician characters perform actual magic tricks?
Like The Prestige…

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Lord of the Rings used a combination of CGI and practical effects. One of the practical effects that I think fits your category is using deliberately distorted rooms and forced perspective to make the Hobbits look small.

It works in front of a live audience, but only if the audience members are within a relatively narrow viewing angle.

This is the basic idea of what it looks like on film:

This is what it looks like from outside of the proper viewing angle:

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Definitely not. In fact, I’d planned to cite exactly that example. But I figured the OP was long enough.

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Excellent example!

Here’s one of the ways they did it in the films:

This is from The Fellowship of the Ring, with Frodo riding alongside Gandalf in a wagon:

And, from a different angle, the wagon rig:

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Does Game of Thrones count? There was just a hint of this here and there. Like when Tyrion knelt for Daenerys to pin his Hand of Queen badge on him, it was clear they were not actually across from each other. It was also true a couple of other places in that scene. I can’t imagine why it was thought necessary, but it’s definitely there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHROQaH3R20

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Practical special effects might count. A few sci-fi examples;

Alien;

Silent Running:

2001:

Destination Moon

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Do these count?

The entrance and disappearance of the Wicked Witch of the West at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz and her death at the end were achieved with practical effects, primarily an elevator under a trap door, combined with smoke and flame.

But they didn’t go well.

According to IMDb,

Margaret Hamilton was burned when her clothes caught fire during the filming of a special effect sequence. She returned to the production under the condition she would not have to work around fire again.

According to SlashFilm,

At the beginning of the scene, The Wicked Witch appears in a red cloud of smoke. To pull this off, the crew constructed a hole beneath the set covered by a thin piece of aluminum. Danko was meant to remain inside the hole until her cue, when she would be catapulted into the red smoke. During rehearsal, a crew member fell through the aluminum, into the hole, and landed on Danko’s shoulder. The stuntwoman said she could barely drive or raise her arm after the incident.

Director Victor Fleming wanted Hamilton’s last line and exit to be shot together. This meant the actress had to do her own stunt. Immediately after the famous line, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too,” The Wicked Witch cackles, spins on her heels, and disappears in the cloud of smoke and roaring fire. She used the same space under the set, but an elevator replaced the catapult, which Hamilton would land on and use to descend. The first take went as planned. But after breaking for lunch, Fleming wanted another for safety.

They tried the scene four times, but things kept going wrong, and Fleming was losing his patience. Hamilton recalled him telling her, “I want this shot done right and done right now.” In the next take, the flames and smoke came before she was safely below set. She suffered second-degree burns on her face and third-degree burns on her hand. To make matters worse, the green makeup covering her body was copper-based and toxic if absorbed, so Hamilton’s raw, burned flesh had to be thoroughly cleaned with acetone. Years later, Hamilton remembered:

“I’ll never, as long as I live, have anything that [takes] my breath away like that pain.”

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I thought Elon Musk wanted to go to Mars?

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It’s not a movie, but the TV show “Happy Days” had an episode involving magic tricks, not special effects.

The premise is that Howard Cunningham’s Leopard Lodge is raising money for some cause. It decides to put on a magic show. Somehow, it lands the Amazing Randi as a headliner, and he promises to do Houdini’s milk can escape.

The problems start when Randi asks for a glass of water before he goes on. There’s what looks like one nearby, so Potsie serves him that, but the glass turns out to be full of vodka, which incapacitates Randi, who doesn’t drink anyway. So the gang do the best they can: Potsie performs a card trick, Richie saws Ralph in half, or something like those, I can’t remember. But the crowd wants the milk can escape.

So Fonzie steps up. He volunteers to do the milk can escape, and does it successfully.

Here’s the thing: for every trick, the camera never shuts off, nor does the scene cut to another angle. These characters are really doing the tricks as advertised, including Fonzie. The producers included a mention at the top of the show saying something like, “No camera or editing trickery was involved; everything you will see was done by the performers.”

Now, whether the cards were marked, or the sawing in half or milk can escape was rigged, I can’t say. But the show sure did a good job selling them to the audience, and I’m sure that they were all done under instruction by Randi. And given that the magic tricks were performed in one shot each, I cannot see where camera or editing trickery played any role.

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I’m not sure if this was as effective as they were hoping. A baby looking smaller than a six year old? Um, they probably were supposed to swap those kids around.

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Does the mirror scene in Terminator 2 count? (only shown in the extended release) Use of twins and a fake reflected scene is sometimes used in magic tricks.

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I loved the way they did that, including little touches like adjusting the mirror at one point (when it actually WAS a mirror, so it “sold” the illusion). It’s too bad that the scene was cut from the film, and you can only see it on DVD in the Director’;s Cut.

Similar effects were used in House of Frankenstein , when John Carradine as Dracula casts no reflection in a mirror, and in my favorite, the lengthy opening shot of Rouben Mamoulian’s version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr., Hyde, all shot from Jeckyll’s point of view, and including a shot of him looking directly into a mirror.

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In Plan 9 From Outer Space, the UFOs were held up by (not very well-concealed) fishing line.

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That’s a Bad Special Effect, not really a magic trick. Although I’ll grant that some “levitation” tricks use such supports, they’re generally so cleverly done that they’re in a wholly different realm from this.

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I don’t think that one really counts, because it relied on the camera (and set) rotating. A live audience member wouldn’t have seen the effect.

Though if it does count, Fred Astaire did it earlier.

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Not quite the same thing, but in the same spirit: In Pursuit of Happyness, it’s a plot point that Will Smith’s character shows off how intelligent he is by being able to solve a Rubik’s cube. Now, there are plenty of ways they could have done this: Show him doing a few random moves and then cut to him doing the last few easy moves, or record him scrambling a cube and then time-reverse the video, or have a hand-double and show it in close-up, or use editing tricks to change the colors on the cube, or whatever. But Smith insisted on authenticity, and therefore learned how to solve the cube just for that movie. When we see him on screen solving it, he’s actually solving it.

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Similarly in The Sting we see hands manipulating a deck of cards, doing repeated shuffles and cuts, with the same card coming up every time. Then the camera pans up to show that it’s Paulk Newman doing the tricks.,

The IMDB “trivia” section claims that it’s really John Scarne doing the manipulations and that an “invisible cut” was used during the pan up to Newman’s face. I cry “false”. Back in the pre-CGI days there was no way to make a cut during a pan so invisible that you couldn’t catch it if you watched closely, and I have – there’s no cut there. Before the shots with the manipulations there are several cuts back and forth, but the whole routine of cuts and shuffles with the same card coming up , all the way through the pan up to Newman’s face, is all one unbroken shot.

I’m forced to conclude that Newman was tutored and practiced long and hard to get those moves down smooth. It’s pretty clearly done using a stripped deck, so once you learn the basic moves it’s in principle relatively simple. In principle. Getting moves like that to look smooth and effortless tales a helluva lot of practice.