On Friday nights (and special occasions!), IndieWire After Dark takes a beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
In March 2025, we’re highlighting favorites from puppeteer Paul Lewis — with Two Midnight Movies (and a Muppet!) That Influenced “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”
First, read the BAIT: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film. Then, try the BITE: a behind-the-scenes breakdown of the project’s ending, impact, and any other spoilers you’d want.
“The Rule of Jenny Pen” is in theaters and streams on AMC + and Shudder March 28.
The Bait: “That’s a Thousand Hours of My Life You Just Saw”
If TV writing isn’t a job anymore, then TV magicians must be totally screwed, huh? In the 1978 psychological horror classic “Magic,” Anthony Hopkins — aka everyone’s favorite cannibal psychiatrist — trades in his red-headed FBI agent from “Silence of the Lambs” for a different kind of dinner date.
As the disturbed illusionist Corky, the decorated British actor (who was 41 then and as is 87 now) cuts straight into the sideshow-like action with a terrifying first appearance. A skilled sleight-of-hand magician with delusions of grandeur, Corky starts the film by trying to wow an audience that could care less. Soon, he’s dressing them down for their callousness and disinterest, lamenting the hundreds of hours of work they can’t see and wondering if he will ever live his dream of performing his act for broadcast.
“I did everything right — only nobody much cared,” the defeated magician remarks later.
Corky is talented but slippery in more ways than one, and he’ll be taking the long way around to learn a valuable lesson: If something is by all accounts “perfect,” then by definition it cannot be. Directed by the legendary Richard Attenborough (a Best Director and Best Picture winner for “Gandhi”), this shaggy story from William Goldman is an essential entry for any cinephile who likes his other screenplays. The late writer’s career ranged from the barren terror of Stephen King’s “Misery” to the lush fairytale of his owen timeless romantic comedy, “The Princess Bride.”
Combining influences like multi-colored spotlight gels, Goldman weaves a fairly standard puppet-centric nightmare — about a predatory man nearing the end of his rope (strings?) when he starts talking to his ventriloquist dummy — into a squirm-induing ordeal. Caught somewhere between the creepiness of “Taxi Driver” and the unbridled intensity of the real Magic Castle in Los Angeles, “Magic” co-stars Hopkins and the fast-talking Fats for a two-hander about self-destructive obsession in the pursuit of archaic greatness.
Hollywood starlet Ann-Margret is opposite both of them as the most obviously at-risk party in an all-time testament to the chill-inducing power of Violent Desperation Cinema. Chunky and at times fooling no one with its meandering character logic, there’s a reason most of the awards this film went to Hopkins. His performance “saves it” as a mainstream genre recommendation, but for many midnight movie lovers, the beauty will be in the eye of the slack-jawed puppet and hi murderous holder.
Disquieting in that exquisite “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death” sort of way, “Magic” isn’t an obvious choice for counter programming on St. Patrick’s Day 2025 — but hear me out. Last year, we covered Sean Connery’s “Zardoz,” famously filmed in Ireland. That sci-fi outing is no doubt baffling (and still worth checking out when you’ve got the time), but “Magic” is unpolished in all the right ways with flecks of obvious luck glittering in almost every scene. The movie boasts the kind of flaws only truly skilled artists can see in their film and choose to leave in, simultaneously daring serious cinephiles to consider how this sleeper cult favorite pulled off its bag of tricks while making their work look easy.
Plenty of music lovers don’t care about jazz, and plenty of entertainment fans can’t be bothered watching magic tricks. But just as Corky’s agent, Ben Greene (the incredible Burgess Meredith), begins to realize how quickly his client is becoming unglued, “Magic” lets the cards fall where they may — moving swiftly into a strangely haunting climax you’d be a dummy to skip.
“Magic” (1978) is streaming free on Tubi, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, and more.
The Bite: Can You Shut Up for Five Minutes?
Check back in a feature length. Are you watching “Magic”?
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations late-night on weekends. Read more of our deranged recommendations and filmmaker interviews…
