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Description
22 Blows To The Head DVD - by Jay Sankey (Monsieur Sankey’s take on Mentalism!)

Cost & Availability
£16 / $30, available from www.penguinmagic.com

Difficulty – I’d say from 2-4
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used, 4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

Review

22 Mentalism effects from the (slightly) warped mind of Jay Sankey.

1. Graffiti – Magician writes prediction on playing card. Spectator selects a card. Prediction is shown to say ‘You Will Pick A Red Card’. So far, so so… then the rest of the prediction is shown – and it says the NAME of the spectator who will pick the card!

NOT BAD – simple principle. Fairly strong effect.

2. Homocide – you have 5 envelopes. 4 are filled with blank pieces of paper. The last has a piece of paper inserted with a stickman drawn on it. The spectator hole-punches each envelope in turn until only one remains. They have total free choice. The remaining envelope is shown to be the one containing the ‘man’.

THIS IS OK – uses a technique that pops up on 3 or 4 of these effects, and I have to say I don’t really like it. Would probably work well for professional performers, but in an impromptu environment it seems too suspicious to me… obviously a competent performer would have no issue with this though! Ha ha!

3. Laying on of Hands – spectator shuffles the deck. Magician riffles the deck and allows the spectator to peek a card! 2nd spectator then takes a card and keeps his hand over it. Magician puts cards behind back and is able to determine the value of the face card (over and over again)! He then determines the 2nd spectators card and then the original ‘peeked’ card!

EASY EFFECT – uses nice, basic principles and is a good, 3 phase routine!

4. Mute – magician empties out a bag of small, Christmas decoration bells. Spectator takes one. It is put in a purse and held by the spectator. The rest of the bells are then shown to be ‘mute’. The only one that can be rattled is the one the spectator selected

AGAIN, QUITE EASY – but I found it a bit naff. Plus, the move seemed obvious to me. But, again, that could just be me!

5. Simply Divine – Magician riffles the deck and the spectator peeks a card. The deck is then spread face down and the spectator touches a number of cards, which are stripped from the deck. The spectator names a number of cards to deal off this packet and the spectator’s card is found at the named place!

EASY EFFECT – this uses a great utility move… there is also an age-old technique at play that is a bit suspect to anyone with any magical knowledge… but the old ones are often goodies!

6. Resistance Is Futile – magician shows a bunch of cards (all Jack Of Spades) and one Queen Of Hearts. Tells the spectator that he will ‘make’ him pick the odd one out… spectator selects a random Jack Of Spades… it’s then revealed that this card is the only one with a blue back… the rest are redbacked!!!

GROOVY EFFECT – nice principal and easy to do! Liked this one a lot. Does require a gimmicked setup though – this is a packet trick!

7. Casualties of War – the magician shows 3 cards that have been torn in half. He shows 3 face up halves and 3 face down halves. Spectator mixes them up, and then sees that they have correctly aligned the appropriate top and bottom pieces of each card!

ANOTHER GIMMICKED EFFECT – not a mind blower… but certainly an eyebrow raiser! Another great ‘utility’ move is demonstrated with this trick!

8. Divided Attention – magician gives spectator a folded piece of notepaper. Magician then removes a strip of paper and a pair of scissors from his pocket. The scissors are moved up and down the paper until the spectator calls ‘stop’. The magician cuts the strip at this point. The strip of paper is then reversed, and is seen to contain a long list of words. The point at which the paper was cut is seen to go straight through a word. This word is found on the note paper the spectator has been holding all along.

NICE EFFECT – easy-peasy and surprisingly effective!

9. Fade Away – deck is covered with a handkerchief. Spectator cuts away a chunk of the cards undercover of the handkerchief. The card the spectator cut too is peeked and then returned under the hankie. The magcian then asks the spectator to visualise their card and imagine all the other cards fading. When the cards are removed from the hankie, all of them are shown to be blank both sides. All, except that is, the selcted card!

OK – THIS IS KILLER – not hugely difficult, but does require some deft handling. Very powerful indeed (and worthy of the required deck switch)!

10. Black Market – spectator takes a book of matches from the magician. He holds it behind his back and removes ONE of the matches! When the book is returned to the magician he demonstrates that the match the spectator took was the ONLY one which had been coloured in with a marker.

ERRR, THIS IS ALRIGHT – similar technique to Homicide. Alright for down the pub. Requires a bit of spiffy handling!

11. Mercurial prediction – a prediction card is folded into quarters and secured with a paperclip. Spectator selects a card, which is then seen to be the paperclipped card!

AMAZING - now I’ve heard a lot about Jay Sankey’s Paperclipped effect. And this is it! The fact that this is included on this DVD is a serious bonus. AWESOME!

12. Symbolic – a number of coins (of the same value) are collected from spectators. A marker is used to draw a different shape on each coin (square, circle, star etc). The magician writes a prediction down and hands it to a spectator. Then the spectator shakes the coins up and drops them down. Any coin with the shape side ‘down’ is removed. This is repeated until only one coin remains. The shape on this coin is then shown on the magician’s prediction!

OLD TECHNIQUE – pretty easy and relatively impromptu!

13. Shufflecutdeal – Spectator shuffle cards. They are returned to box. Magician writes down a prediction (3 numbers). Spectator removes cards from box. Cuts cards into two piles. Takes one pile and deals it into 3 piles. Top card from each of the 3 piles is turned over. The 3 exposed values are found to be the magicians prediction! Woo!

THIS IS A GOOD ONE – easy but very strong finish!

14. Formal Affair – Spoon bending Sankey style! A spoon is wrapped in a handkerchief and held by a spectator. Another spectator is shown a business card with a spoon on it. They initial the card. The card is then ‘bent’. When the real spoon is taken back out of the hankerchiedf it is bent too! Woo! Then the kicker – the initialled business card is shown, and the spoon is now bent as well! WAHEY!

THIS IS ACE – simple and a good double whammy end!

15. Confession – ‘Out Of This World’ stylee-trick. Small packet of cards are shuffled and cut. Dealt out by spectator (face down) into two piles. The cards are completely randomly dealt out. The magician then explains that he marked big black X’s on half of the cards in the packet. When the cards are turned over, it is seen that the spectator has dealt the cards into two perfectly separated packets! All X’s on one side. No X’s on the other.

I REALLY DON’T LIKE THIS AT ALL – ‘Out Of This World’ is a truly amazing trick. This variation uses the technique I hate (see ‘Homicide’), and consequently is (in my opinion) a lot weaker than the trick it is based on. This trick certainly works, but there are numerous better ways of achieving the same effect.

16. Reinactment – spectator thinks of a card. Magician takes a card out of his deck and places it inside the card box. He then reinacts what has happened (taking another card from the deck and then putting it back into the deck instead of the box). When the box is opened the merely thought of card is removed.

NOT TOO HOT – the handling seems VERY obvious to me. Again, I’m probably being over critical, but it just looked uber-telegraphed to me. Not the best effect on the DVD!

17. Vital Statistics – magician tells a spectator that he is mentally sending him a card. He holds the card he is sending and drops it on the table when the Spectator guesses. The magician does it again, but simplifies it – asking for just the suit. And for the third time he asks for just the colour. When the three cards are turned over it is shown that the spectator guessed correctly in each case!

NICE & EASY – simple technique. Good for beginners. Not a mind blower though.

18. Memory Lapse – magician takes out a stack of business cards. He tells a spectator that he is going to try and reach into his mind and make him LOSE a thought. He then draws a number of shapes on the back of a business card and asks the spectator to sign the card. He then shows the rest of the spectators the signed card. When asked to recite the shapes, the original spectator only lists 3 of the 4 drawn shapes!

THIS IS AWESOME – really funny and will drive people crazy!

19. Greed – 5 envelopes are displayed. Spectator is allowed to keep the contents of one. He discards four. Each discarded envelope is opened to reveal an increasingly valuable note (ie £5, £10, £20, £50). The envelope the spectator chose is opened. It’s got 1p in it!

NOT FOR ME – same technique as ‘Homicide’ and ‘Confession’. Annoys me! Ha ha!

20. Hide, Keep & Give Away – Magician writes a prediction. Spectator takes three cards. They are shuffled/mixed. Without looking at the faces, one card is ‘kept’ (put in spectator’s pocket). One is ‘hidden’ (placed faceup in the facedown deck). The last card is ‘given way’. The prediction is then shown to have correctly forecast which card would be chosen for each of the three ‘elements’.

VERY STRONG EFFECT – based on Andy Nyman’s work. Excellent, strong mentalism. Seems impossible!

21. Serial Killer – magician borrows a $1 bill from a spectator (bit tricky in the UK this one! Don’t worry, you can use UK currency). Magician folds the bill up and places a paperclip on it. He then says he’ll predict the date on the bill. He actually goes on to pronounce not only the date, but also the first five digits of the serial number.

NICE EFFECT – pretty groovy. Not too hard, but does require some handling!


22. Locked Room Mystery – a remote mentalism effect. A package is sent to your ‘victim’. Inside is an envelope. On it is printed the words ‘DO NOT OPEN UNTIL I CALL’. Later you call! You tell him to open the envelope. Inside is a pack of cards. The spectator is told to repeatedly cut the cards. He must then stop and take the top card (UNSEEN) and put it in his pocket. He must also deal the next three cards down. The magician asks what the spectator thinks the middle card might be? The spectator guesses. He turns over the card to find that he is wrong. The magician asks the spectator to turn over one of the remaining two cards. The magician then guesses the value of the is card. He repeats the feat with the last card (while it is STILL FACE DOWN!)… The magician then names the card the spectator originally put in his pocket!

NICE FUN EFFECT – there are better ‘over the phone’ effects… but this is still a good fun trick that’ll freak people out!


Overall
7/10 – you get a lot for your money. As with all multiple-effect tapes/DVD’s, some stuff is better than others. You get a lot of great techniques on this DVD, and that should set you up for coming up with other ideas of your own devising!

ozman great review.

so would you say that this vid is mostly cards then??.

and that most of the tricks use a said move you find slightly annoying??.

but apart from that its an excelent introduction to mentalism with a wide variety of tricks covered??.


sound like most people will get some good stuff from it and will have scope to improve there baseline skills doing the tricks, nice one.

ai - there's lots of card stuff... but across the 22 tricks you do get some coin effects, some nice impromptu effects and some wonderful 'basic' techniques... and that's the really good stuff i reckon... by the end of the DVD i had come up with a few ideas using the taught skills!

there is a particular 'move' that i dislike.. but it only appears in 3 or 4 of the tricks.. and I'm sure that others will love it as much as i hate it! ha ha!

this is deffo an awesome buy for a beginner mentalist!

woo!

great that was the only bit missing from your review it is now an excelent review well done you.

I love Sankeys work and have been interested to see how good this one would be, as he has been known to say he doesn't like mentalism on the whole.

Some of these tricks are available on his other videos (he does like to do that doesn't he) but some of the others sound nice, I was just wishing for a 10/10.
I feel like I did when the Matrix2 came out, I know it is going to let me down in areas but what went before it was sooooo good I'm going to end up giving them my money anyway.

Tell you what, how about changing your score to 0/10 or 10/10 just to make my life easier
Nice review, keep them comming and thanks

Yup good review, sounds like one I might fancy

I have enjoyed this DVD alot. Some have been unhappy with the appearance of Sankey effects from other DVD's / videos and packet effects (paperclipped / fade-away for example) but for me this hasn't been a problem.

If you have ever been put off by Sankeys "mad / wild" style you will find virtually none of it here. (personally i like his style and it find all his videos very entertaining)

So far I have only performed 1 of his new effects - shufflecutdeal - and it worked really well. The spectator was still holding onto my prediction slip 20mins after doing the effect.

If you don't have gimmicked bicycle cards you will have to buy at least the assortment set available from Laurence and co.

Good value for money!

Cliff

how hard does the stuff get on this dvd

adding on to my last post, do you think this is good value for money

This is great value for money!, I whould have paid that for shufflecutdeal, this effect is so so easy but is amazing!!! just showed a few works mates and they where blowen away just woorking through some of the other effects now! really great stuff

This sounds like a good DVD that iw ould be interested in picking up. Great reiew. However I have a quick question, does the DVD expect you to already have/know anything that they do not teach on the DVD?

Brilliant review, thanks.

I have a question if I may re
12. Symbolic – a number of coins (of the same value) are collected from spectators. A marker is used to draw a different shape on each coin (square, circle, star etc). The magician writes a prediction down and hands it to a spectator. Then the spectator shakes the coins up and drops them down. Any coin with the shape side ‘down’ is removed. This is repeated until only one coin remains. The shape on this coin is then shown on the magician’s prediction!

OLD TECHNIQUE – pretty easy and relatively impromptu!

Erm how do I put this, as Jay does this trick he uses a DS coin. As the coin then has a symbol written on it it can only be used once. Thus making an expensive trick.

Does anyone perform this, I love the simplicity of it & wonder if anyone performs this using a regular coin & if so do people twig on that sometimes it will be heads, sometimes tails, if you know what I mean?

I'm a huge sankey fan (not only because he is born to invent close-up magic, but also because is a damn funny guy that is also a great performer)

This is defiantly not his best work, and I only picked up a few tricks, yet most of the tricks in the DVD are really good.

Yeah the method for "greed" "Homicide" and "Confession" is rather cheesy; I think the only one that I might use in "greed" and that also only occasionally.

Like most sankey's works this is mostly card magic. Thou I fund most of the non-card tricks better

I would give it an 8 on average rate
And a 7-7.5 on sankey rate

levi wrote:how hard does the stuff get on this dvd

Well... I guess the hardest move used is the mercury fold, for which you will need a good kind of cards, and some good slight of hand, I believe that after finding the best kind, and a half deck destroyed practicing you will do it like a pro (or at least good enough for the trick).

I don’t like that move because it a bit noisy and in a place that is quiet it can make people suspicious.

Could you re-explain the cutshuffledeal bit to me, i didnt really understand the first time, sounds really interesting