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I'm currently trying to come up with my own effects based on films...

i watched and old Robert Mitchum film last night "The Night of the Hunter", about a murderous preacher with love and hate on his knuckles, murdering women as he travels...

..he's after two young kids who knows where their dead dad's stash of ill gotten gains are...(which end up hidden inside a dolly)...

i think it's a great plot, plenty of visual elements to it, im currently deciding on how to display it all...which is obviously the hard part...i like the concept of love and hate, perhaps being symbolised on either side of a coin, then maybe changing to Death on both sides...and ultimately ending up inside the dolly...

But im also trying to decide on a more bloody handling. I've recently bought the Slasher from Dark Artefacts, and I'm dying (pardon the pun) to give it a good go...

Sorry for the ramblings, i suppose what im really curious about is - which of your favourite films would you like to attempt to turn into an effect and why?

Ahhh a boring friday lunchtime ramble...lovely...

Personally I think Johnny Got His Gun would be cool to turn into a card trick or routine.

If you're unfamilair with the story, it's about a man who goes to war and gets caught up in a shell blast. His face (eyes, nose, mouth) all get blown off, he has to have both his arms and legs amputated but he's still alive. His brain wasn't damaged.

It's about how he deals with the effects of it on his life and how the people who made him like he was (soldiers and doctors) refuse to help him and leave him all alone to die, in many years.



A card routine that would probably be cool is if you get a jack from a full deck of cards, and then turn it over, and then show the eyes missing. Then turn it over again, to show nose, mouth etc gone. Then showing the arms gone too, until it's just the head and the chest on the card. And then, spreading the other cards, they're all blanks... the jack is all alone, just like Johnny


[edit] It could even be called "Jackie (or Jack) Got His Gun" [/edit]

...you could make your own little images and print them onto blank faced decks or something as your telling the story of the various parts being blown off...or some kind of action man figure and decimate it and re-assemble it or maybe turn it into some kind of voodoo story...

...im pretty sure if i did star wars effect - a lightsabre stab might be a bit over the top...and anyway, i look more like chewbacca than any other character...

angel heart would be pretty good for visuals too thinking about it...and maybe don't look now...hmmmm

The Bourne Identity would be good.

Heres an idea:

They choose a card and sign it, then it gets lost in the pack. You mention something like a card can also forget things like who they are like Matt Damon in the Bourne Identity, and you spread through the pack and there is one blank card. You that the card has their signature on it. Next, you say to them that sometimes other cards steal the identites of a chosen card, and that is why they forget. You get the spectator to pick out a card, and then you show that there card has fused together with the card that they picked!

Note: I have a method for this effect.

...i suppose a nice quick effect could start off with a Jekyll and Hyde story using a snap colour change or similar...

...ive just nipped out for a notebook to start up a little list of films i should investigate further...

That sounds like a good idea

I'd like to think of a good trick that has something to do with Flash Gordon, not particularily inspirational as films go, but it would be very useful for a man in my position... Alternatively (and this would probably be more useful/fun) the 1960/70s film adaptation of George Macdonald Fraser's book 'Royal Flash' or the Flashman chronicles as a whole..

hmm, I feel some dim inspiration stirring in my brain as we speak...

Flash.. Ahhh... He'll save everyone of us...

Gordon's Alive?!

Fly my birdmen and find out if Abraxus has an idea!!!!

Who wants to live forever!

...use flash-paper?....

im sure theres some element you could use from that scene where that guy from blue peter puts his hand in the tree trunk thingy and gets bitten by that poisonous green creature...like a russian roulette type thing...but with aliens...

R. Shane's Automata has some very impressive mathematical based thinking you could adapt (i would highly recommend that book £16 or so)...you could show an audience member six cards with tree stumps drawn on them and get them to pick a stump number...the last one is the poisonous one...

...or you could play it bad and they get poisoned, only you can pick the safe route...

..again, its only off the top of my head, so apologies for the general rambling and rubbishness...

Most of my own work is either film or story based...

The Omen - based on the film of the same name
Lycanwire - based on American Werewolf in London
Clued? - based on the Cluedo board game
BlackDeckMagic - 2 effects in there based on movies (Dracula and Snatch)

and so on and so on...

I find linking the mechanics of an effect to a theme or story adds a persona to the effect.

Dracula's what-now? oh i misread that...thought that was about the undead hermaphrodite....

anyways - films and literature are always good value...look at the stuff based on H.P. Lovecraft's work...

I noticed someone's ahem revamped the voodoo doll effect and re-named it The Wicker Man...

There's not much new under the sun. Some of Reginald Scott's work is still being perfomed regularly 422 years after it was written!

Ahhh.. Have been reconsidering this post over the 500 or so miles I've covered in my car over the weekend and I realised I missed a trick!

Any routine with a pirate theme would probably be a commercial winner this year (unless Pirates of the Carribean 2 is rubbish), so does any one have any ideas?

I've been thinking about a new gimmick for a haunted picture routine (but it's only in my befuddled brain at the moment so no clues given) possibly it could be used for this.

Any other ideas me hearties?

Funnily enough, I am currently writing a book for the Ghost Bicycle decks (along with Liam Montier) which contains a host of 'ghostly' effects... one of which is based on pirates and treasure and such!

Not inspired by P.O.T.C. either... the inspiration actually comes from something which haunted me as a child—which was the movie Peter Pan... I was PETRIFIED of Captain Hook!

We're currently weaving ghostly tales for the book, current title being Ghost[Deck]Stories—and if I think of any more pirate ones, I'll let you know!