Harry Houdini once speculated he would be remembered primarily for aviation exploits. Yet he remains famous as the world's most influential magician, illusionist and escape artist.

Few recall he was also a silent film actor from 1919 to 1923. A new DVD box set, Houdini: The Movie Star, sets the curious record straight. While Houdini was a woeful actor and bashful about kissing leading ladies, he did most of his own stunts -- some spectacular, even dangerous. So this Kino International release is a curiosity item.

The box set also serves as a companion to DVDs of modern movies such as The Illusionist and The Prestige from 2006, as well as the 1953 fictional biopic Houdini, with Tony Curtis in the title role, and the forthcoming Death Defying Acts, with Guy Pearce as Houdini in another quasi-fiction.

As a three-disc collection, Houdini: The Movie Star contains the surviving 238 minutes of his fascinating 15-episode serial, The Master Mystery, from 1919 (one hour-plus is missing, most of episodes four to six and all of 11). The set also offers three of his four bizarre features: The bwana adventure Terror Island (1920); the surreal love story The Man From Beyond (1922); and the plodding policier Haldane of the Secret Service (1923).

Most are melodramatic mysteries mixing romance, coincidence, crime, mechanical inventions and Sherlock Holmes-like sleuthing (Arthur Conan Doyle was a friend until they quarrelled over fraudulent psychics). One is otherworldly: Beyond is a muddled musing on reincarnation.

The surviving footage from the films -- as well as from bonus shorts showing real-life public escapes from 1907 to 1923 -- is restored and archived. Kino apologizes for the quality, yet most is acceptable. Terror Island plays in B&W but others are partially colour-tinted -- as they were originally -- to enhance moody atmospherics. For example, blue scenes create the illusion of near-darkness when villains lurk.

Pieces are missing from each film, as is the case with most surviving silents. The Soul of Bronze is not included in the collection. Contrary to published reports, Houdini never directed nor starred in this French film, although he did distribute it in the U.S.

Houdini's fourth feature is The Grim Game (1919), represented here as a five-minute tinted fragment, even though a full version supposedly exists. It is a shame that is not in this collection, but at least the scene offered shows the remarkable air collision when two biplanes locked propellers. Miraculously, no one died. Despite Houdini's boasting, he was not the man on the dangling rope when the collision occurred. It was stuntman Robert Kennedy. Houdini's triumphant emergence from the wreckage was staged.

Houdini had an intriguing life, and not just as a shameless self-promoter. Born as Ehrich Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini found himself in Wisconsin in 1878 when his Jewish family immigrated to America, their surname being misspelled as Weiss.

As a child, Houdini dabbled in athletics, trapeze, card tricks, magic illusions and finally escapes. He named himself in honour of a French illusionist whom he later denounced. By 1899, inspired by a Nova Scotia pyschiatrist who introduced Houdini to the dark ages of insane asylums, Houdini performed his first straightjacket escape.

He became the most popular artist in vaudeville, earning hype as "super-man" for his daring. The most interesting of his movie star turns -- the serial -- puts him in a dire dilemma at the climax of each episode. He frees himself at the beginning of the next before encountering the villains again. These thugs are in the service of the Automaton, the first robot depicted in American movies and the funniest until Bender in Futurama.

Houdini's most disappointing movies failed to show him in peril often enough, although there is a spectacular rescue scene above Niagara Falls at the end of Beyond. By 1923, however, Houdini knew he was not a real movie star and returned to the stage. He was touring when he died in 1926, of complications from a ruptured appendix exacerbated by a McGill student who punched him in the stomach during the Canadian tour segment. He was 52.

The movies generally fail to show Houdini at his zenith -- but they do capture one of strangest superstars America has ever witnessed.

bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca