Penn & Teller Get Killed
| Penn & Teller Get Killed | |
|---|---|
 VHS cover |
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| Directed by | Arthur Penn |
| Produced by | Timothy Marx Arthur Penn |
| Written by | Penn Jillette Teller |
| Starring | Penn & Teller Celia McGuire |
| Music by | Paul Chihara |
| Cinematography | Jan Weincke |
| Editing by | Jeffrey Wolf |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | September 22, 1989 |
| Running time | 89 min |
| Language | English |
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Penn & Teller Get Killed is a 1989 dark comedy film directed by Arthur Penn starring magicians Penn & Teller. The duo play themselves, and the plot involves them in a satirical account of what the audience would perhaps imagine the pair doing in their daily lives. Most of the action involves Penn and Teller playing practical jokes on each other along with Penn's girlfriend, Carlotta (played by Caitlin Clarke). The final joke, as the title of the film implies, has serious consequences for all three.
[edit] Plot
Penn & Teller appear on a late night talk show, performing an impressive upside-down camera illusion. After the show's host mocks the duo's interest in magic and their renowned skepticism, Penn jokingly comments that he wishes someone were trying to kill him. Soon after, the magicians are off to a scheduled show in Atlantic City with Penn's girlfriend, Carlotta. At the airport, Teller plays a prank on Penn by slipping metal objects in to his pockets each time he walks through the metal detector, and Penn gets back at him by thumbcuffing Teller to a fake gun, which gets him arrested by security.
As things progress, it becomes apparent that Penn's comments about wishing someone were trying to kill him are not going down well with the public. Undeterred (and continuing with their prank war,) Penn and Teller expose fraudulent psychic surgery to Carlotta's wealthy Uncle Ernesto before he can spend his fortune on the surgery in order to remove his tumour. Later, however, both Penn and Teller are kidnapped by agents of an angry Filipino psychic surgeon, wishing revenge on the two for damaging his reputation. Just as it seems the pair are about to be brutally tortured, the situation is revealed to Penn as a birthday prank played by Teller, Carlotta and Uncle Ernesto (who is in fact perfectly healthy.)
Later on, as the three leave the theatre after one of their nightly performances, someone opens fire on Penn, shooting him in the arm. Teller is accused of hiring an assassin as a joke, even though he (silently) protests his innocence. After Penn and Carlotta angrily leave him behind, Teller attempts to chase after the assassin's car, which, strangely, is identical to Penn's. The assassin attempts to lose Teller by hiring a ric-shaw, but Teller secretly follows behind, and sees that the assassin has dressed himself to look just like Penn. The assassin, however, soon realises that Teller is following him, and disappears. Teller returns to the theatre, where Penn has still not forgiven him for his 'joke'. As more shots are fired in to their dressing room, however, Penn finally realises that the situation has nothing to do with Teller, and that someone really is trying to kill him.
A femme fatale police officer by the name of MacNamara is hired to hide the two away on her house boat, and Teller buys a gun in order to protect Penn. That night, Teller is apprehended on the beach by two muggers, who demand money from him, and threaten him with a knife. Despite being armed with the gun, Teller calmly hands the money over, and only pretends to shoot at the muggers as they walk away, revealing a darker, more melodramatic side to his character.
Soon after, Officer MacNamara announces that a nameless villain, a supposed vehement Penn & Teller fan (played by David Patrick Kelly) has been arrested. Penn and Teller get to tour his bizarre apartment turned Penn & Teller shrine. Believing that they are now safe, Teller innocuously disposes of his gun in a trashcan at the apartment. Shortly after MacNamara departs, however, Penn is stabbed in the stomach by an assailant on the street, and it appears that the Penn look-a-like assassin is still on the loose. Penn rushes off to hospital where, once Teller is out of sight, he appears perfectly fine. Teller, meanwhile, proceeds to pursue the would-be assassin in a peculiar chase scene back to the apartment.
As Teller enters the apartment, the madman, dressed as Penn, forces him to enact the upside-down Penn & Teller routine from the start of the film with him in front of a camera. He then uses duct tape to secure the hapless Teller to the gravity boot rig, leaving him to hang upside-down until he passes out and dies. Officer MacNamara then returns, revealing that she is in fact in league with the assassin. While the assassin leaves to find and finish off Penn, and MacNamara waits for Teller to die, the confused Teller is able to grab the gun from the wastebasket and threatens a startled MacNamara with it as the real Penn walks in. Teller shoots and kills him with one shot.
After Teller realises that he has just shot his partner, MacNamara laughs, and reveals herself as Carlotta, making it apparent that the whole event was in fact an elaborate prank that she and Penn played on Teller. Teller, breaking silence for the first time, immediately thinks Penn and Carlotta switched his gun for a replica, but Carlotta seems to think that Penn being dead is just another joke that the duo are playing on her. She and Teller then realise that Teller has actually killed Penn. Distraught, Teller turns the gun on himself, before the grief-stricken Carlotta throws herself out of the window.
Upon returning to his apartment and finding everyone dead, the "hired assassin" panics, fearing that the police will believe he really was a madman out to kill Penn & Teller, and takes the gun and shoots himself. Others who come into the apartment and find the carnage also kill themselves. The film ends with a pull-out from the apartment building, as gunshots fire in the distance, while the Bee Gees song "I Started a Joke" plays in the background. Penn, via voice over, explains that this is the definitive end of it all.
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