Central Kentucky and its lack of glamor has afforded me vivid memories of traveling carnivals because for one glorious week each summer, there were big lights (at least in my eyes) shining on our hamlet. If the carnival was running seven nights, I was there for at least five. And it was always the same . . . someone pukes after the Tilt-O-Whirl. A kid wails like a barn owl at the top of the ferris wheel and has to be taken off. Someone breaks a tailbone after plummeting down the towering slide on a burlap sack. The world’s cheapest tchotchkes are bought and paid for with blood, sweat, and blisters from tossing undersized rings onto oversized milk bottles.
And while the the key elements are the same, the routine, predictable as it may be, never alleviates the strangeness of mood or atmosphere. And that’s magical, right? To know exactly what’s coming (high prices for a bag of bolts put together clap-trap in an empty parking lot) and still feel as though you’ve been transported beyond the realm of the real is perhaps the greatest sleight of hand ever pulled off. And that’s the trick at work in Carnival Magic (1981). I gladly confess here that the ticket for this little-known circus of entertainment came from TCM Underground . . . a treasure trove of sassy strangeness and my favorite thing about TV. Period.
I walked away from this film scratching my head. It was strange and strangely touching. And had the accents of the carnival-goers been any thicker, I would have sworn that young me and many folks I know had been sitting in those side-show tents and riding those rickety rides. Aside from the overwhelming nostalgia, the mysterious, kind-hearted hero with a dark past (Markov the Great--traveling magician with extra sensory perception) versus the archetypal jealous, overly-macho villain (disgruntled animal trainer who beats up on his co-stars and his girlfriend) is so black and white, good versus evil, that you want to see things set right, lives saved and relationships forged, before the credits roll. You see this rag-tag band of society’s fringed figures find their own brand of happiness and success, and you’re rooting (in my case, vehemently) for them to hold tight to these triumphs. Mix that in with carney weirdness: A PR man dressed like a Miami Vice reject, an owner struggling to raise a daughter single-handedly and make a buck, a young girl struggling with her femininity, an ex-Miss America contestant turned magician’s assistant, and our clearly defined hero and villain. The result is, well, pretty much like that central Kentucky carnival.
Did I mention that Markov the Great’s closest friend in the world is a talking chimp (Alex, short for Alexander the Great) that he’s trained as a way of coping with the grief from losing his wife? Well, there’s that. And the scenes that absolutely transfixed me were the scenes in which Markov and Alex are performing their show. So strange and inexplicable are the feats performed by Markov--I’m watching myself in the confused, amused faces of these carnival goers, like a funhouse mirror of sorts. I’ve seen behind the curtain, into Markov’s personal life, and I know some of his personal secrets. But the magician’s presence and performance is in no way tarnished or explained--he’s as mysterious and unsettling for me as he is for any other person who pays a dollar and wanders into that tent.
This movie is a time capsule that moves and talks, a strange little drama that grows weirder the deeper you go . . . like any carnival I’ve ever been to. It’s barkers’ signs made with plywood and puff paint. And the radioactive shade of a snow cone that tastes like no fruit or flavor as yet identified by man. Or popping three sagging balloons with tired plastic darts for an airbrushed poster of unicorns in flight. It’s wild and wonderful, mundane and marvelous in a package at once shiny and dull.
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