Chung ling Soo and the bullet catch trick gone wrong

Magic and danger Chung ling Soo's bullet catch illusion

Chung ling Soo and the bullet catch trick gone wrong

At the recent Ken Daniels's Fright Night Film Festival weekend in Louisville, I was talking to the charming actress/filmmaker Megan Lynette Hunt and I mentioned at the end of the day we are all magicians.

From filmmakers, writers, painters, musicians, and all arts in one shape or another we are magicians.  As a former elementary school magician, the magic was pulling over the reality of something miraculous (restore a cut rope, find a coin out of the air, etc) despite people's skepticism and knowledge there was a 'trick' involved somehow.  If you were a successful magician, you presented an illusion that both shocked and involved the audience.

That bending of reality and illusion is a hallmark of fantastic magicians like Chung ling Soo, who at the early 1900's England was packing theaters with his traditional Chinese magic.  It was said, that Soo knew no English and so an assistant was master of ceremonies.  He performed amazing illusions, but the most thrilling and dangerous was the 'bullet catching' trick.  Two guns and bullets were shown to the audience to show there was no trickery, and when two assistants would fire at Soo to dramatic effect.  Magically, Soo would produce the bullets on a silver platter and upon inspection, they were the two bullets loaded in the muskets.  The audience would cover the magician and his crew with thunderous applause.  Soo was a very successful draw on the burlesque circuit, and was very popular with audiences of Europe.

All that changed on the fateful night in 1918.   Soo had performed the bullet catch trick, but when the muskets fired he slumped to the ground and said in perfect English that something had gone terribly wrong.  Several hours later, the magician was dead from a gunshot wound in the lung.

When the official inquiry began, so did the illusions of Soo unravel.  It turns out he was not a Chinese magician at all, but American William Robinson.  It was said he had created his persona of Chung ling Soo after being rebuffed by authentic Chinese magician Ching lung Foo, and this eventually caused a bitter feud with the magicians.

Robinson and his magic persona Chung ling Soo

Robinson allegedly copied the tricks of Foo to more packed houses.  Even Robinson's personal life was illusion, he was married but seperated from his wife (he was catholic and could not divorce) with his assistant as his companion.  In England, Robinson had begun another affair while keeping his 'magician' persona at all times.  Investigators wondered if it was a rival or jilted lover that killed the magician.


It turned out, the muskets had been altered to fire a lower chamber with a bullet free charge and the magician had secreted the bullets to produce them on the silver platter, but the gunpowder had built up till the fateful night in 1918 the bullet accidently was fired into Robinson.  Ironically his death by accident had given Robinson and the persona of Chung Lung Soo the ultimate magic illusion, the magic of imortality.

The Amazing Corso and the Pyramid of Mars

I tend to think magic runs into two fields, real magic and illusions.  If you're lucky, real magic can and will happen (Quantum mechanics oddly enough is giving magic a possible science explanation).  One of the experimental films I did with 3Q films was The Amazing Corso and the pyramid from Mars.  A weird surreal short, but it does contain my love of traditional magic.  If you like surreal weirdness check out the amazing corso and the pyramid of mars. Click on the picture below for the trailer.