Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Awfulness

[Like most people on Earth,] I hate ventriloquist acts. It's the strangest form of entertainment. In fact, it's barely entertainment. I think that's why movies like MAGIC are so much fun. Throwing one's voice into rigid shiny plastic/wooden lips is so unnatural - and frightening.

We watched a film called DEAD OF NIGHT last night and one segment featured a ventriloquist dummy with a mind of its own. The dummy is rude and vulgar and at one point insults his human attachment, garnering him a slap in the face. The audience gasps at the sight of the dummy getting whaled on by the sweaty and disturbed ventriloquist. A wonderful scene that got me wondering about those ventriloquists that are still out there performing. I'd love to see an act designed around movies like MAGIC and DEAD OF NIGHT. Where the dummy starts being rude, crude, and vile, as it brings up personal and devastating facts about the agitated ventriloquist. Make it a tormented twisted (and funny) experience for the audience. It'd be pure gold, black comedy gold.


"You'll be sorrrrrrry."


International Ventriloquist Association

4 comments:

Chris 'Frog Queen' Davis said...

Hummmmm, I was watching old Tales from the Crypt last night....and the last one I watched before I (finally) went to bed as the Morty mannequin one. Odd :)

I agree, Magic is a creepy movie. Scared me as a kid.

Cheers!

The Captain said...

Rot you and Bean need to watch Dead Silence if you haven't seen it yet, I was pleasantly surprised how good it was.

"A widower returns to his hometown to search for answers to his wife's murder, which may be linked to the ghost of a murdered ventriloquist".

God I haven't watched Magic in years.

suzanne said...

There's also an old radio version of Dead of Night from the 1940's. Very creepy.

Sam Kadi said...

Magic was a creepy movie. I got a dummy one year when I was a kid, I guess I wanted one at some time. I never got good at it of course and what a blessing that was, I cant imagine being a 30-something year old guy practicing ventriloquism.

One last point, I saw a clip of Charlie McCarthy and his handeler on a muppets dvd of my kids. I watched it and if he was the best at the time I would not want to watch the mediocre, you could see his mouth moving quite a bit. Maybe the guy was getting old but isnt that the point, his mouth should not be moving? Im done ranting. They are pretty creepy though.