Magic

Richard Attenborough's thriller from William Goldman's novel, with Goldman also writing the script. Corky is a bad magician who cannot hold a stage. Then he takes a dummy named Fats onto his knee and, throwing his voice, becomes somebody else: insolent, quick, unafraid. Fats makes him famous, but when a television offer comes it requires a medical examination, and Corky runs. He goes back to the town he grew up in, to the woman he first loved. The film's interest is not the dummy but the habit of putting what a man tells himself into another mouth. Attenborough builds the tension slowly, and Fats is never presented as supernatural. Anthony Hopkins plays Corky, Ann-Margret the woman and Burgess Meredith his manager. Jerry Goldsmith wrote the score. The American television spot consisted of Fats looking into the camera and reciting a rhyme, and it was pulled from the air after viewers complained. Who it is for: viewers who like slowly built psychological thrillers and early Hopkins. Who it is not for: anyone who wants fast horror. It leans on long conversations, and most of the tension happens inside a single cabin.