I just asked this on another board and was directed here. Is there a scene in the movie that goes a little sumthin' like this: A magician is on stage, the assistant gets into box (standing up). The magician sticks swords into the box, then you see blood oozing out the bottom of the box.
I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special...
no that's not this film. there is a similar scene but it's a man and woman and their act is him sawing her in half. she gets into the box and he uses a mechanical saw to cut through. a few moments into the act she screams and then we cut to the police examining the box. the trick worked so that the box had a false bottom and the assistant sinks down into the extra compartment so her body is out of the way of the saw. but the killer rigged the box so the false bottom wouldn't open
There's something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome
The scene you are referring to takes place in the movie "The Hands of Orlac" (1959?). In it, voluptuous bikini-clad Dany Carrel playing "LiLang" gets handcuffed inside a large box/coffin and promptly gets skewered by mad magician Christopher Lee ("Nero").
The safe/stage version of the act is shown earlier in the film, where we see how Lilang undoes the handcuffs and escapes through a back-door.
However, later, because she betrays Nero to the cops (he had been terrorizing Mel Ferrer playing piano-player "Stephen Orlac" by making it seem as if Orlac's severely-injured hands had been replaced with hands taken from the body of an executed strangler/murderer), Nero handcuffs her in the box with real handcuffs. He performs the rest of the act as usual, knowing full-well each sword he plunges through the box is actually piercing LiLang's bikini-clad body. Nero then leaves the stage, leaving the audience confused - until a stagehand sees the blood pooling from the box and shout's "Eeet's mur-dair!!!"
I remember seeing this film as a kid and then talking to another kid the next day who had also seen it. We were actually both laughing because one of the swords apparently was supposed to have gone through LiLang's navel - and that just seemed silly.
"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"