KINKY HOUDINI?

Trying not to rush to judgement here about the upcoming History channel production of Houdini, but everything we've seen so far makes us cringe.

If you go to 1:11 in the trailer you'll actually see Harry, played by Adrien Brody, doing a bondage sex scene. Seriously, History? Where did you get that from? Sex Scenes for a Dollar? There is not a shred of evidence to back it up. 

We can only guess that this bondage scene and the lurid Mama-jealousy scenes are secret fantasies not of Houdini or Bess, but of Nicholas Meyer, the film's writer. His father, Bernard, was a Freudian shrink who himself wrote a highly questionable book called Houdini: A Mind in Chains. (We trashed that book when it came out, in a review we did on CBS.) It appears that the father's fantasies have now visited themselves upon the son, that the Meyers have confused Houdini's sex life with their own, and his mother with theirs.

History is supposed to present fact-based material. When they add in gratuitous sex scenes it makes you question the entire production. We're all for historical fiction - we even write it ourselves. You can do anything you want on television, as long as the audience knows what you're doing. This means there must be a bright line between fact and fantasy. 

We've railed against other blunders and outright fabrications that have leaked out so far in History's unhistorical approach. But this bondage canard really crosses the line, in our view. It not only cheapens the whole film and damages History's credibility. It intentionally misrepresents, to future generations, one of the most remarkable men of modern times.








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