Keenan Wynn is struggling in a strait jacket.  No, his fellow actors did not have him committed for voting for Nixon last year.  He is playing the self-titled Great Ferlini, a member of the only modern profession other than Russian Empress or actor to exalt themselves that way — Escape Artist. ^[1] His assistant Wanda brings out a screen to block the audience’s view which, frankly, is not usually required in this stunt.  C’mon man, Harry Houdini did it hanging upside down from a crane.  Martin Riggs did it in a Police Station.  A few seconds later Ferlini emerges holding the strait jacket and blows Wanda a kiss.

In the dressing room, Wanda says his agent Harry is taking them to dinner.  She asks Ferlini not to bring up the “water trick”, in which he drinks a glass of water and a waiter actually returns to refill it before the check comes.  She says it is dangerous at his age, which enrages him.  He says, “I seen 10 new wrinkles on your face in the past week, sugar!”  He roughly grabs her head and shouts, “Who you calling an old man, hunh?”  He berates her for not keeping in shape like him.

At dinner, Ferlini tries to convince Harry that the water trick will work.  Even though it’s old, the new generation has not seen it.  Harry finally relents and asks how Ferlini would do it.  He maps out a strategy including controlled breathing, ropes, chains, a skeleton key, hand-cuffs, razor blades, and a sack — all stuff he fortuitously picked up from the kink.com auction.

The next day when Ferlini is swimming in the lake, Harry goes to see Wanda.  She says every day is getting worse.  She even saw a psychiatrist in Louisville for a while, but then Ferlini got a gig in Vegas working for Moe Greene at the Tropicana.  Wanda is in tears because Ferlini thinks about nothing but his work, even while asleep.  She says he sometimes throws off the covers and takes a bow.  C’mon man, who among us . . . anyhoo, she spots Ferlini’s hand-cuffs and gets an idea about switching the keys. ^[3]

Harry announces the event.  He has Police Chief Wallace put hand-cuffs on Ferlini.  A couple of locals get the honor of tying him up.  He is then placed in the sack like a bottle of Crown Royal.  The men are directed to put Ferlini into a trunk.  The trunk has many holes in it which Harry says are to help it sink; or are maybe collateral damage from the Moe Greene hit.  Chief Wallace locks the trunk and it is tossed in the middle of the lake.  After 38 seconds, it is clear Ferlini is not going to resurface; even though David Blaine can hold his breath 17 minutes.

We join Ferlini’s funeral as the pall-bearers set down his coffin.  The preacher says, “Who is to say that Joseph Ferlini, in his last moment of earthly glory, was not happy in this choice that was made for him by the almighty arbiter of life.”  I don’t know . . . drowning seems like a brutal, horrific way to go.  I say that based only on Kurt Russell’s death in the Poseidon Adventure remake.  And I know from brutal, horrific pain because I sat through the Poseidon Adventure remake.

A man interrupts the preacher and asks if this is the Ferlini funeral despite the water leaking out of the coffin.  He tells the crowd he is from the Coroner’s Office and his daughter is selling Girl Scout Cookies.  Also, he has orders to collect the body because the Coroner wants a second examination.  Hmmm, underwater for 30 minutes, bound by ropes, chains, hand-cuffs, stuffed in a sack, and locked in a trunk.  Yeah, let’s take a second look there, Quincy.  If they are in Florida, it will be listed as a COVID death.

The pall-bearers, luckily not union men, are called into service a second time to carry the coffin to the caretaker’s cottage.  The Deputy Coroner opens the casket and it is empty.  Wanda shrieks in horror at the cash she wasted on the casket.

Later, in the Coroner’s Office, Harry explains.  Ferlini had made him promise that if he died, Harry would abduct the body.  Harry slipped the Undertaker $50, and hired an actor to play the Deputy Coroner.  That way, Ferlini figured, he would be remembered forever . . . longer than Houdini.  Yes, his years of toiling away in Dinner Theater would obscure Houdini’s innovations in magic and escape, international stunt performances, movies, books, and pioneering the debunking of seances and mediums.

Unfortunately, they didn’t quite nail the ending.  The final shot is of Wanda in a strait-jacket.  Done right, this could have had the same jaw-dropping impact as the last shot of The Changing Heart; especially knowing how Wanda might be treated in an asylum 60 years ago.  They lobotomized a Kennedy ^[2], what do you think they’ll do to her?

Ironically, both episodes endings fall apart if you think too much about their last shots.  Why is Wanda in the strait-jacket?  She must know Ferlini is dead — that was the plan all along.  I guess we are supposed to believe the Coroner didn’t go public with the disposition of Ferlini’s body, so she is waiting for him to return like Ted Danson in Creepshow.  Maybe Harry came up with another $50.

Hey, maybe Harry can recoup the cash by going on tour with Wanda.  You know, if she can wriggle out of that strait-jacket like Ferlini did.  Even better, if she can take off her bra without removing the strait-jacket, like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance.  What a feeling!

There were missed opportunities with the final shot and, as Jack notes at  bare*bones, a flatness to Ferlini’s escape and the coffin reveal.  However, Keenan Wynn was a powerhouse as always, and the lake location was almost worthy of One Step Beyond.  Reworking the final shot in my head, I can get this up to a 7.0.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  See also famed stunt-thing Gonzo the Great.
• [2]  Referring to Rosemary, not Ted.
• [3]  Come on, man.  Houdini didn’t use no keys.
• Born in 1874, Houdini could have maaaaaybe been alive when this aired, if some punk had not sucker-punched him.  Proof that the séances were fake:  He didn’t come back and whip that kid’s ass.