This is the story everyone knows and the film doesn’t miss a beat in presenting it. In time he is world famous, with his name as well known in Europe as it is in America. A physical fitness buff, Houdini also likes to bet others that they can hit him as hard as they’d like in the stomach with no effect. The bigger the trick, the more popular Houdini becomes.

Noticing that grandiose and more extravagant stunts are becoming popular, he soon devises tricks which appear to have him at a disadvantage, only to turn the tables on his audience. Impressed by a traveling magician, young Erich studies the life and work of a magician named Robert Houdin (whose name he will later adopt and adapt) and is soon making money with his skills. Born Erich Weiss in Budapest, he and his family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin (a very nice town which boasts Harry Houdini Elementary School). Jumping off he finds himself submerged under the ice, where, as many films of this type do, he begins to reminisce with himself about his life. The film begins with Houdini (Brody in a very good performance) chained (naturally) and standing on a bridge high above a frozen river where a hole has been cut. Except for that punch in the stomach.Ī well made, and well researched, biography, HOUDINI is a much better film than its 1953 predecessor, which starred Tony Curtis or the 1998 television film with Johnathan Schaech, both of which share the name of its subject.

Whether he was hanging upside down 300 feet above the pavement while bound in a straitjacket or completely submerged (and wrapped in chains) in a milk bottle (the large kind, not the one you get at the supermarket, though that would be an amazing trick), Houdini managed to cheat death at every turn. Well, more like “Illusionist.” Houdini had a knack of getting himself into tight places, usually chained or handcuffed, and remarkably setting himself free. Harry Houdini has long been memorialized as one of the greatest magicians of all time.

Houdini brody