GREENFIELD — For decades, Harry Houdini was known as the legendary “Handcuff King,” famous for daring escape stunts staged around the world. He also had a brief movie career, starring in a series of silent adventure films.
Houdini will once again appear on the big screen in the silent film, “The Man From Beyond” on Saturday, Feb. 5, 6 p.m. at Greenfield Garden Cinemas — in honor of Greenfield’s 100th Annual Winter Carnival, which runs that weekend.
In the 1922 film, Houdini plays an Arctic explorer frozen for 100 years and then thawed out.
“This was the perfect film to feature for Greenfield’s 100th Winter Carnival” said Garden Cinemas owner Isaac Mass in a prepared statement. “It was the ‘Frozen’ of 1922.”
The rarely screened film will be shown with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, a New Hampshire-based performer regarded as one of the nation’s leading silent film musicians — the third time he has been to the Garden Cinemas.
Houdini made only a handful of movies in the 1910s and 1920s, and much of his film work is lost. The “Man From Beyond” took six months to produce, unheard of in 1922, and was the first film made by Houdini’s own production company.
In “The Man From Beyond,” Houdini plays a man frozen 100 years in the Arctic who returns to civilization. Once he’s thawed out, Houdini tries to straighten out the lives of the descendants of his old friends and lost loves. The film includes a daring climax filmed at Niagara Falls.
Houdini, born Erik Weisz, was a Hungarian-born, American-Jewish illusionist and stunt performer noted for his daring escape acts. He also built a career debunking spiritualists, psychics and mediums.
“He truly was one of the original Ghostbusters,” Mass said.
Houdini died prematurely in 1926, at age 52, of peritonitis following a burst appendix that may have been caused by blows received to the abdomen by a visitor backstage at a performance in Montreal.
In a posthumous ceremony on Oct. 31, 1975, Houdini was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“These films are audience favorites, and people continue to be surprised at how engrossing and exhilarating they can be when shown as they were intended: in a theater, and with live music,” Rapsis, who accompanies more than 100 screenings each year at venues around the nation, said in a prepared statement.
Rapsis improvises live scores for silent films using a digital synthesizer to recreate “the texture of the full orchestra.”
Admission is $10 adults; $8.50 seniors, students and veterans. Tickets available online at www.gardencinemas.net. For more information, call (413) 773-9260 or visit www.gardencinemas.net.
For more information about the music, visit www.jeffrapsis.com.
Or, to view an ad for “The Man From Beyond” featuring Greenfield native Penn Jillette of the magic duo Penn and Teller, visit bit.ly/3gawvJx.