By Richard Winters
My Rating: 7 out of 10
4-Word Review: Ventriloquist has split personality.
Corky (Anthony Hopkins) is an aspiring stand-up magician who’s finding it hard to play in front of live audiences. After a particularly disastrous effort he comes upon the idea of adding in a ventriloquist dummy named Fats into his act. The addition helps him become a top act and soon gets him the attention of well known agent Ben Green (Burgess Meredith). Ben wants to get Corky a TV contract, but first Corky must undergo a health physical, which Corky refuses to do. Ben insists that Corky has no other option, so Corky leaves the city and drives via a cab to the Catskills where he grew up and rents a lakeside cabin from his former high school sweetheart Peggy (Ann-Margaret). The romance between the two quickly renews, but then Ben finds out where Corky is staying and catches Corky alone in his cabin having an animated argument with his dummy convincing Ben that Corky has mental issues. Ben tells Corky that he’s going to get him psychiatric care, but Corky fears that if it gets out that he’s mentally ill he’ll never get another job offer and thus resorts to drastic action in order to keep Ben quiet.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman who also wrote the screenplay. The novel was unique in that it was told through the voice and point-of-view of the dummy. While there had already been several stories and movies dealing with the ventriloquist/dummy persona including the film Dead of Night starring Michael Redgrave and a famous episode of ‘Twilight Zone’ where actor Cliff Robertson played a ventriloquist that gets tormented by his dummy. This film takes a slightly different approach where upfront the protagonist is clearly shown as having a major personality disorder and thus he’s the real threat while the dummy only symbolizes his inner turmoil between the ego and the id.
The film definitely has some creepy moments especially the dummy, whose spooky appearance is what makes it worth catching. It was modeled after Hopkins with oversized blue eyes, head, and mouth gives it an almost monstrous presence. Supposedly when it was completed and Hopkins first took it home to rehearse he got unnerved by it in the middle of the night and called Goldman to come over and pick-it-up or he was going to destroy it. The placid, gray setting of the isolated cabin, which was actually filmed in California despite it looking like northern New York, is perfect for this type of story and the serenity helps accentuate the suspense.
I really liked too the opening bit where a sweating Corky is seen bombing on stage in front of a apathetic crowd, which realistically hits home how nerve-wracking being up onstage for the first time can be though I wish we could’ve heard what Corky angrily shouted at the audience instead of having the sound of this blotted out by a voice over. It is though hard to believe that a man in his 40’s would get so addicted to his dummy, something he hadn’t used before then, that he couldn’t communicate without it and would have to take it everywhere he went. For a relationship to become this deep seated I’d think he’d have to have been doing a ventriloquist act from childhood on and thus the alter-ego of the dummy became meshed with his own as he grew older.
The acting is excellent by not only Hopkins, but also the supporting cast. Meredith is especially enjoyable playing the caricature of a Hollywood agent, which was modeled after the real-life one of Swifty Lazar, with his best moments coming whenever he takes out one of his expensive cigars, which are each separately incased inside a glass cannister. When he pulls the cigar out he then flings the cannister away, which can then be heard shattering onto the floor. Ann-Margaret known for her beauty and flair plays down her looks here as she wears no make-up and takes on a more earthy persona. Ed Lauter is also interesting playing her husband. Normally he’s a tough guy/bully and I thought this was going to come-out when he takes Corky out on a boat in the middle of a lake where he was going to threaten him to stay away from ‘his girl’, but instead he surprisingly displays a more vulnerable side and makes an emotional appeal to Corky to leave Peggy alone versus a strong-armed one.
Spoiler Alert!
The pacing is slow and the suspense builds very gradually though ultimately there are a few good spooky moments including a brief moment when Fats begins moving itself without the help of an operator and when Corky’s face suddenly begins to resemble the wooden dummy’s. Yet I felt it could’ve gone farther. The segment which has Corky crawling on the floor doing whatever the dummy tells him is certainly unnerving, but could’ve been accentuated more by showing it from Corky’s perspective where the dummy’s head would’ve grown to giant size as it looks down on the meek Corky as it gives him the orders.
The ending, at least when I first saw it, had me confused. The film climaxes with Corky returning to his cabin having stabbed himself and bleeding to death where he and Fats then slowly die together, but outside of the cabin Ann-Margaret appears telling Corky she has now changed her mind and wants to go away with him. Initially though it had been made to seem like Corky had killed her, so seeing her reappear as she does comes-off as almost dream-like. She also begins to speak in the dummy’s voice making it seem like his spirit had transferred to her.
Upon the second viewing many years later I came to the conclusion that this scene was meant to only be ironic. That if Corky had simply held-out longer Peggy would’ve agreed to go with him and thus him killing himself was a horrible waste, but in retrospect since he was suffering from such severe mental issues it was unlikely a long lasting relationship would’ve happened, so having her come back the way she does doesn’t really make much sense since she had been deeply offended by what he had said earlier, via the dummy. It would’ve been more horrifying had he chased her around the house and then killed her and the viewer seeing that get played-out.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Released: November 8, 1978
Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Richard Attenborough
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 