Penn and Teller Get Killed

Quite possibly the worst piece of cinematic offal (rhymes with "awful") ever inflicted on a tortured audience, Penn and Teller Get Killed [1] is an hour and a half of eye-peeling celluloid agony. It was conceived and birthed in a rancid, mutant fashion around the time I was sliding into juvenile delinquency, and it absolutely reeks, my friend. Picture this: the cinematic equivalent of rotten gouda, the movie world's answer to sauerkraut left to fester overnight in boiling summer heat, swarming with flies. It’s like stained, feculent, rotting boxers. It’s so bad that bad needs a new level to sink to, a fresh nuance of meaning to emphasize just HOW abysmally dreadful this film is. In short: you could produce better movies while stoned on Benzedrine and randomly splicing episodes of "Gilligan’s Island," guided by the Fibonacci Sequence. The outcome would still make more sense.

I won't even attempt to describe the plot because, honestly, there isn’t one. I will mention that the name “TRUMP” pops up with alarmingly prescient regularity, even appearing curiously beneath what’s supposed to be a sniper. I can only guess this is all coincidental and has nothing to do with some conspiracy hatched in 1989 by the malevolent force responsible for unleashing this cinematic monstrosity—clearly intended as a vehicle for the two eccentric yet dapper Las Vegas illusionists—upon the unsuspecting public. After all, Penn mentions they "play Trump casinos all across America."

Penn and Teller (Teller, of course, remains mute, hence the ironic moniker) appear on a chat show where Penn confesses he’s fantasizing about being killed. “To make life interesting,” he claims, perhaps not in so many words. His monologues lack any real pauses, and the beginning of the movie resembles a haphazard collection of their stage routines, stripped of all the enjoyment or impact they might have had in that environment. Instead, they come across as confusing, dull, and forced, devoid of any dynamics, timing, or humor.

Somehow, there’s something about psychic surgeons, and Leonardo Cimino—who appeared in David Lynch's ill-fated Dune (which, by the way, is still about a hundred times better than Penn and Teller Get Killed)—plays someone’s uncle who tricks Penn into thinking he’s a psychic surgeon. Teller gets involved in this prank, and this Scooby-Doo-level absurdity is repeatedly foisted on the audience as Penn and Teller (mostly Teller) seem to employ their “magic” to escape jams—much of it reminiscent of an Eighties cop show parody. Yet none of it is convincing or enjoyable.

Halfway through this Hollywood dingleberry, a psycho (David Patrick Kelly, who starred in Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid, as well as "Twin Peaks" and "Tales from the Darkside") targets Penn and Teller. There’s an interesting shot of both Teller and the psycho hanging from something like bat racks, but being filmed so it appears they’re right-side up. Meanwhile, a policewoman (Caitlin Clarke) enters, ruining the illusion of them being right-side up as she is upside down. The whole movie, though, feels upside down and bass-ackwards.

By the end, everyone who enters the psycho’s lair, where Teller is hanging upside down and dead (not that this is a spoiler; the title already states they get killed), ends up shooting themselves. Anyone left in the audience in 1989 would surely sympathize with this sentiment. Anyone in 2024 streaming this disaster can simply press STOP, and—Presto!—this rancid slop vanishes faster than a rabbit up a magician’s sleeve.

I call that the Best Trick Ever!

Addendum: I genuinely enjoyed, immensely, when Penn and Teller hosted "MonsterVision" on TNT in the mid-Nineties. They showcased such godawful movies as The Manster, Plan Nine from Outer Space, and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Their charm and the hosting of these old, terrible films by the “Bad Boys of Magic” felt like a natural fit. Regardless, it remains a memorable part of my childhood.

[1] Note: Directed, strangely enough, by the famous Arthur Penn, who directed Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde. Go figure.

Penn And Teller Get Killed Trailer 1989

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