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Harry Houdini: Master Mystery
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In 1918, Houdini signed a contract with film producer B.A. Rolfe to star in a 15-part serial, The Master Mystery (released in January 1919). As was common at the time, the film serial was released simultaneously with a novel. Financial difficulties resulted in B.A. Rolfe Productions going out of business, but The Master Mystery was a box-office success and lead to Houdini being signed by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation/Paramount Pictures, for whom he made two pictures, The Grim Game (1919) and Terror Island (1920). While filming an aerial stunt for The Grim Game, two bi-planes collided in mid-air with a stuntman doubling Houdini dangling by a rope from one of the planes. Publicity was geared heavily toward promoting this dramatic "caught on film" moment, claiming it was Houdini himself dangling from the plane. While filming these movies in Los Angeles, Houdini rented a home in Laurel Canyon.
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After the war, Houdini became an actor, appearing in a 13-part silent film serial called The Master of Mystery. The series was sufficiently successful that Houdini was hired to make two feature films. When those films performed poorly at the box office, Houdini blamed the movie company and opted to make his own movies. He formed a production company with his brother Theo, and controlled every aspect of his next two films, The Man from Beyond and Haldane of the Secret Service. Like his earlier movies, they featured daring stunts and escapes, but ... like the earlier movies, they were not successful. Though some of the action sequences were thrilling, critics panned Houdini’s wooden acting and ineffective love scenes.
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In his later years, Houdini made a natural transition into film and worked as the Master Detective named Locke. In the films, Houdini would ... make great escapes. In his private life, Houdini became obsessed with other forms of magic, namely in attempting to contact those beyond the grave. But, finding nothing that seemed to be real, he soon abandoned the idea and even publicly declared certain mystics frauds. Houdini died on Halloween Day in 1926 after a bout of peritonitis that was made worse due to the fact that a college student punched him in his stomach – something Houdini wanted him to do, as he always bragged he had one of the strongest abdomens. Tragically, however, the punch came before Houdini had prepared himself for the blow.
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In June 1918 Houdini made his move into film, playing a character called the Master Detective. In this series of stories the detective, named Quentin Locke, saved women from danger through great stunts, and of course, great escapes. Both the stories and the performances were weak, but the films showed Houdini the way his public wanted to see him. Each magic routine or stunt was shown as "real," with no camera tricks helping out the Master Detective.
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Of all Houdini's movies, only The Man From Beyond has been commercially released on DVD. Incomplete versions of The Master Mystery and Terror Island were released by private collectors on VHS. Complete 35 mm prints of Haldane of the Secret Service and The Grim Game exist only in private collections. Haldane of the Secret Service was screened in Los Angeles in 2007.[17]
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In 1919, Houdini signed a contract with film producer B.A. Rolfe, to star in his 15-part serial, "The Master Mystery." However, financial difficulties resulted in Rolfe's going out of business. Houdini was then signed by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, for whom he made two pictures before establishing his own film-production company.
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Master Mystery