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Price: On sale now at Alakazam Magic for £5.

Produced by: John Van Der Put & Alakazam Magic

Running Length: Approx 1hr 39mins

What they say:

The Effect

Nine routines taken directly from the award-winning repertoire of contemporary magician John van der Put, including:

Smoked - A chosen and marked cigarette rises eerily from a borrowed packet in the spectator's hand before leaping clean out of the pack. Smoking kills, and with this effect, you can too!

Flypaper - ThreeFly with a playing card! A selected card is torn into pieces, one kept by the spectator as a receipt. The remaining three pieces travel visibly piece by piece from one hand to the other at finger tips. The three pieces then magically fuse together, leaving the spectator's receipt matching perfectly.

E.T.E. - The effect that has fed and clothed the wonderput for the past four years. Incredibly powerful, completely commercial, 104% practical. John uses this at every table, at every gig, everywhere. Get your business card into their hand, increase your tips and blow them away. This one routine is worth many, many times the cost of the DVD.

The Visual Deck Producer - An unfolded and empty card box is shown both sides and assembled, with a little shake a deck of cards audibly appears. Take them out and you're ready to continue the wow.

Outside the box - A thought of card appears under the box in this three-phase routine. A new approach to the misdirection involved means that this is a totally practical routine that you can perform standing, seated, at tables or in walk around.

Losing Face - An incredible all-back ace routine with a borrowed deck. Not one for the beginners, but the experienced card handler will love it.

Plus baby ghosts, bill switches, bonus show footage and much, much more...

What I say:

This is a great DVD, very professionally made and edited by Russ Stevens at RSVP Magic, and published by Alakazam Magic and John Van Der Put. At just £5 its great for just casual viewing, let alone the fantastic routines and ideas contatined within that will get your creative juices thinking. Stand out effects for me personally were; Thinking of you, VDP, Flypaper and Baby Ghost. Each of these routines is easy to learn, easy to master and allows you ro focus on presentation. I have tried most of these routines out, and tried to give them an honest opinion on the difficulty, and the strength of the effect when performed.

Routines:

Smoked

Difficulty: 2/5 (Basic Misdirection required, you end a little dirty)
Impact: 4/5 (Great routine, Psycho-kinesis style effect)

Opinion: This is actually a very impromptu routine, the gimmick that is used is something that nearly all people will have anyway, and so is something that you can try immediately. A great piece of impromptu magic, as the cigarette box is borrowed, and the cigarette can even be signed. Very little setup, and easy cleanup, well structured with good inbuilt misdirection to cover the cleanup at the end of the routine.

Flypaper

Difficulty: 4/5 (Probably the most difficult routine on the DVD)
Impact: 4/5 (Three-fly with playing cards)

Opinion: I really, really like this routine, unfortunately being a strictly mental magician (..please.. no jokes). This is not something I can do very often. Whilst many people would argue that Losing Face is the most difficult routine on the disc, I would have to disagree and go with this one, as there is a lot more misdirection and audience management skills required.

E.T.E.

Difficulty: 5/5 (I am useless at what is required in this routine!)
Impact: 5/5 (Standard magic fare, you know the plot)

Opinion: I don’t particularly like this routine, it’s a lot of effort for something which people can easily guess the method for. Basically, various things end up in a sealed envelope that is inside a wallet. Very strong for a standard magician, but not something I found useful for myself.

The Visual Deck Producer

Difficulty: 1/5 (Easy.. Very good, easy to use, repeatable gimmick)
Impact: 3/5 (A great way for a card magician to inroduce himself to a table)

Opinion: This is a very clever way of producing card from an empty deck, I’ve heard David Regal has something similar, so I will reference that for anyone looking for something similar. This routine is best made with new boxes rather than modifying old ones, and so is not something that you can make on the spot when you watch the DVD.

Outside the box

Difficulty: 2/5 (Some basic sleights, lots of misdirection)
Impact: 3/5 (John’s classic take on the card under box effect)

Opinion:

This is the only routine on the DVD that I havent had a chance to try, and so cannot give an honest performance style review, but can say that the sleights are solid, and well thought out, and this is one of the better card under box routines that I have seen, including a full deck vanish which I thought was a nice touch.

Losing Face

Difficulty: 4.5/5 (Second most difficult routine on the DVD)
Impact: 5/5 (Very strong if handled well, and you have a good spectator)

Opinion: This is a nice routine, a little too sleighty for my liking, but I am sure that a few card magicians here would like the ideas present. This is a nice routine based on a Jerry Sadowitz routine. The sleights are explained in basic form, so unless you are familiar with complex sleights, this DVD will not explain them fully enough to get you up to speed and would be better served learning them else where. Nice gimmickless approach though to a Mental-Photography style routine.

Baby Ghost

Difficulty: 0/5 (Laughably easy)
Impact: 3.5/5 (Good kick, but te routine is a little bit slow for some audiences)

Opinion:

Bill Switchers will be prosecuted

Difficulty: 1/5 (Two Bill switches)
Impact: 3/5

Opinion: I’m not sure why this routine was included, as there isn’t really anything here at all, but it is a fairly novel approach to incorporating a bill switch into a routine.

Thinking of you

Difficulty: 2/5 (May have to deal with awkward spectators)
Impact: 4/5 (Nice reveal kick at the end)

Opinion: A nice thought of card routine a la Berglas, nice subteltie built in for a final reveal, which is very easy to perform. Fairly prone to errors on the second phase and will need a lot of practice, but the ideas are sound, and the explanations are well planned out.

Overall:

A very good DVD, it was fairly brave of John to release such a large collection of routines and effects, a lot of card material, but the material that isn’t is just as strong, if not better. Baby ghost and smoked are two of the best routines I have seen in terms of a method/impact ratio, and are great for bars and cabaret impromptu performances. Seeing as this is in a clearance sale I would heavily reccomend that you go out and buy this now, if not just forthe entertainment value of seeing some of the routines performed by John, and some other magicians in the extras section.

9/10