DVD Review: Miracles from the Sock Drawer

On this comprehensive DVD, Paul Gallagher shares an amazing wealth of ideas, applications, subtleties, insight and routines for standard effects that many magicians have purchased and thrown into their sock or junk drawers (this includes cheap plastic tricks that are often found in beginner’s magic sets). With some 50 effects, routines, presentation tips, and performance applications and some five hours of footage, this is a great DVD.

Gallagher, a protege of the late Derek Dingle, has an encyclopedic knowledge of magic. Most of what he does on this DVD is take standard, well known effects that lots of magicians have purchased over the years, and shows how to perform them well beyond the traditional presentations. He creates miracles from simple tricks that most of us have long written off. And throughout, he offers excellent and thorough explanations and always attributes the moves and thinking behind the effects.

Some of the material involves moves and routines that greatly improve standard effects. For example, with the well known Color Vision Box, Gallagher teaches moves that are reminiscent of those used with an Okito Coin Box to enhance the effect and strengthen weak spots in the traditional presentation, and at the end of the routine, he teaches how to make the color cube disappear.

With other material, Gallagher offers entertaining patter for effects. With the finger chopper, for example, Gallagher performs the usual routine but offers humorous patter. And for the Buddha Papers, he presents an entertaining segment that talks about taxes. He also offers discussions on using some props and techniques, as with a short piece that teaches how to convincingly show a pair of billiard balls in a multiplying ball sequence. Finally, he offers some outright routines, not sock drawer items, mostly with playing cards.

Gallagher offers a variation on Disintegration Chamber that involves a rubber band and allows a spectator to convincing initiate the penetration through a handkerchief. A fun Rocky the Raccoon presentation has water changing to cherry soda in a newspaper. Gallagher performs the rice bowls with cereal, which feels far more natural than the traditional rice. Needle through the balloon takes on a cool vampire theme.

There are some excellent adaptations. Gallagher uses a Kornwinder card as the basis of a dating service where the car chooses for the spectator the least attractive date. Roadkill is a gory variation of Mike Close’s well known Pothole, complete with blood. There’s an excellent adaptation of a Don Alan effect to which Gallagher has applied the theme of identity theft. Here, he teaches an excellent Doc Daily move.

The vanishing cigarette trick (with tube) becomes a kid charmer with a crayon in place of the cigarette. There’s an excellent routine with a pearl poodle that actually moves and finds a card, using a well known gimmick. One entertaining routine features a wind-up pig toy that finds a card, and throughout, there’s a funny running gag involving a lota bottle. An acrobatic matchbox receives an enhancement that makes more sense and can be used as another running gag.

There’s work with the Cornelius Thought Transmitter that improves on the standard handling. Gallagher also shows how to effectively use Svengali, Mirage, Stripper, Rainbow and Mene-Tekel decks, and offers lots of routines with gimmicked coins. Among the many coin penetrations and transpositions, there are some gems, particularly a coin vanish that uses an unlikely gimmick, and a mental prediction that relies on machined coins. He also offers several sessions on card boxes.

Gallagher presents some modifications. A gimmicked version of the plastic cups & balls found in most magic sets becomes a miracle that can fool magicians. He offers a mod for the Crystal Casket production that makes it more baffling. A HotRod has been turned into a fishing device and a zig-zag cigarette is now a worm cutter. There’s also a routine with lights that involves (what else?) a D-Lite; a great convincer for a mirror box, an entire silk to egg routine and a device that may be easily and inexpensively made to protect against premature egg breakage.