The Great Houdini

An extremely well made TV-movie directed by Melville Shavelson and starring Paul Michael Glaser as Harry Houdini. The films tracks the great magician's rise to fame in the early 1900s, his smashing success in London (where he befriends author Arthur Conan Doyle), and his ultimate demise in 1926.

This made-for-TV movie didn't do much for the careers of Paul Michael Glaser and Sally Struthers, who were starring in successful TV series at the time but didn't go on to bigger careers. It is simply a darker remake of the 1953 "Houdini," which starred Tony Curtis as legendary magician Harry Houdini and Janet Leigh as his wife.

Yes Because it heavily dwelt upon Houdini's failures as even my Mom told me about this as well as the way little kids felt about this.Also being so as the basic premise of the Movie.

Another outrageously ignored, underrated and neglected biopic excellently staged on film with great performances everywhere, especially by Paul Michael Glaser, Sally Struthers and Ruth Gordon as the three main characters in the complicated relationships between son, mother and wife, the two latter having problems with each other, the wife coming between the mother and son and the mother always intruding in his marriage even after her death. The best scene is the first London scene, when Houdini accidentally meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter Cushing, not very like the real Doyle) and the director of Scotland Yard (the old incorrigible Wilfred Hyde-White) with consequences.

The film is more about seances, mediums, and communicating with the dead, than it is about great escapes. Under the influence of his overbearing Mother, Ruth Gordon, "The GreatHoudini", Paul Michael Glaser, has her shadow over him in both life and death.

I'm lucky enough to say that I own a copy of this movie, taped very late one night a long time ago. Upon repeated viewings, the movie still stands the test of time!

A slow-paced yet engaging biopic of the famous Houdini, which claims to be based on both "fact and fiction". The first half of this seemingly forgotten television movie concentrates on Houdini's struggle to rise to fame from the gutters of obscurity, mainly through perseverance and "being in the right place at the right time".

Except for the 18th Century criminal, Jack Sheppard, who managed to escape from Newgate Prison four times in two years, Harry Houdini is the greatest escapologist (as an expert in escaping traps or prisons is called) in modern times. He was an above average magician, and a first rate show-man as well, but the man who got out of prison cells, out of chains in locked trunks, out of trunks dunked into ice covered rivers, has never been forgotten - even though he died 80 years ago (on October 31, 1926 to be exact).

I have seen this TV movie twice, and have been searching for a copy of the video to purchase. I've seen other Houdini movies and biographies, but this is one I really want.