The film is more about seances, mediums, and communicating with the dead, than it is about great escapes. Under the influence of his overbearing Mother, Ruth Gordon, "The GreatHoudini", Paul Michael Glaser, has her shadow over him in both life and death. Once she passes on, Houdini is obsessed with trying to communicate with his Mother through seances and mediums. It is only after he is convinced that all efforts to speak with the dead are either through unhinged charlatans or out and out frauds, that he becomes a non believer, and sinks into the deepest of depressions. His long suffering wife, Sally Struthers, stands by him even as the religious right relentlessly attacks Houdini as a sort of anti-Christ. - MERK
Review of The Great Houdini
