Magic Tricks

The Effect:
A corner of a selected (free choice) playing card visually penetrates the glass on your watch so that it's inside the watch. It is the actual corner and the corner can be signed, etc.

So why is it The World's Most Annoying Magic DVD? First, there's a typo in the title of the DVD. Note, "TROUGH" is a noun, pronounced "Trawf." It is a thing used to feed farm animals. "THROUGH," however, is a verb. It is an action. So I'm not sure what a "Card Trawf Window" is, but this is the world's smallest one.

I, of course, realize that criticizing the spelling on this DVD will open me up to pot-shots about any misspellings in this review or others from me. However, keep in mind that I'm not asking you to pay $25.00 to read this review. It's free. Were I going to press and presenting a professional product, I'd do more than rely on spell checker.

Ok, nit-picking aside, the real reason the DVD was annoying is because the entire thing was filmed at crotch level with poor quality grainy film that looked like a home video. In addition, there was no talking. I thought maybe they were going for an international appeal or something, but I was quickly proven wrong when text showed up on the screen to explain everything in English. The text by the way was created, I believe, by Atari in the early 80's.

It was very pixelated and hard to read. On top of that, the music that was playing was a 30 second clip that kept repeating throughout the entire DVD. Imagine being locked in a room with your hands bound having no way to muffle your ears while being forced to listen to fingernails slowing running across an infinitely long blackboard. That would be more pleasant than this 30 second repeat-o-clip of "music."

Ok, what about the actual effect and method? I've got to admit the demo looked pretty darn good, and assuming that the spectator reactions were not those of actors, then the effect appears to play well also. I do, however, have some doubts based on the handling and the actual method.

First of all, in the explanation, the mystery hands struggled several times to get the watch to "cooperate" at certain critical points of the routine. These are parts of the routine that must, in performance, be perfect, or else the effect is D-E-D... Dead! (Only the obscure will appreciate that comment).

Next, the watch requires some preparation before the effect. Preparation which requires you to run off to the john or some other equally low-profile place to do the dirty work. Thus, this effect is likely not best for the strolling magician. Assuming you can get the effect to work smoothly, then you could definitely use this in a set performance.

One other thing, I'm not so sure about... there is an audio component to this effect that comes at the critical moment of the effect, which in my mind would seem to tip the method.

I've seen plenty of demos of effects where I was convinced that the demo was a load of crap only to find out that it was legitimate once I watched the DVD and learned the method. This DVD, however, falls short of such an accomplishment. After watching the method, I was further convinced that this effect is most likely a pipe dream, at least with this method.

I'm happy to be proved wrong, however, there were enough problems with this that I won't be taking the risk in my performances for my paying customers.