Fingers of Fury Vol.2 (Death By Cards) by Alan Rorrison

Does the world need more card tricks? I often ask this when I pop in the latest card DVD for review. But in Fingers of Fury Vol. 2, I was pleasantly surprised with some new approaches and fresh ideas from Alan Rorrison. You may find a close-up card trick that you like and will want to learn.

The DVD immediately starts with something different. In Whiteside & Penman a card is freely selected and then you run through the deck and take out the card’s mate. You tear the cards in half vertically and lay the non-matching portions on the face of the deck. After briefly covering the card with your hand, spectators will find that the two pieces have fused together forming a blended card with two different pips. This one is good.

It’s too bad that the DVD doesn’t provide the required gimmick card. You’re on your own to find and purchase the gimmick, although it shouldn’t be overly difficult to find one. Also, if you want to regularly perform this effect, you’ll be destroying two of the same playing cards each time.

For this reason, this one is not real practical for walkaround, unless you’re purchasing specific one-way decks to continually feed the trick. But this one would be great for a TV show.

Rorrison’s haunted deck doesn’t rely on the usual gimmick. In PolterDeck, as dictated by the standard haunted deck plot, a deck mysteriously cuts itself at the location of a spectator’s card.

The glaring difference here is that there are no threads or hook-ups. This one may fool magicians who are assuming that the trick is performed by the usual method. I’m not sure how it will play to lay spectators but I’m guessing that it should be strong. In the routine, Rorrison follows the effect with a rising card effect and another where the card shoots itself from the deck.

(Rorrison says on the DVD he doesn’t know the origin of the move in the trick’s second phase. I have seen this same move taught by Gary Norsigian on his “Tricks That Will Get You Paid” DVD (click here to read our review). On his DVD, Norsigian called this trick “S.W. Elevator.”)

A linking card trick that uses a single card with no preparation, Linker is quite convincing. You tear two concentric rings out of a single playing card and then link and then unlink them. This one looks great when Rorrison performs it, but you’ll have to work at keeping the props in proper alignment to successfully perform it. Assuming that you can learn this one, it’s a great impromptu close-up effect.

No Way is something of a twisting effect where a packet of four jokers turn face down one by one. The twist here is that at the end, the jokers turn into the four aces. The effect relies on the usual slight of hand involved in “twisters” but requires no gaffs.

242 is an involved affair where a selected card changes position in the deck, turns face up and changes into other cards. I like the way that Rorrison varies the happenings. Interestingly, Joshua Jay has a trick of the same name that is completely unrelated and has to do with poker in his “Talk About Tricks” DVD (click here to read our review).

Finally, JoKing is Rorrison’s take on the classic sandwich trick. Besides making a selected and signed card appear between two kings, the card appears between two other cards that have been sitting in plain view on the table.

The effects are sleight-heavy and you’ll need a strong foundation in card moves to even begin to understand the effects on this DVD. I like the way that Rorrison has taken classics and enhanced them. If you’ve seen too many of the same card tricks on the latest DVDs, you may find something different here.

-Wayne N. Kawamoto

MSRP: (US) $25

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