Taking Traditional Illusions in New Directions
In the 1940s an illusion designer named Guy Jarrett created stage illusions for the Broadway version of Dracula which starred a Hungarian actor, virtually unknown at the time: Bela Lugosi.
Jarrett also created a number of other effects, including one where a girl was contained inside an extremely tight space and then a sword was drawn through the entire construction from top to bottom, cutting the container—and the girl, it seems—in half.
In typical Michelangelo style, "Spare Parts" starts out as a fairly traditional cutting-a-woman illusion but when Jarrett's nearly-forgotten effect is introduced, the illusion goes in a radically different and amazing new direction.
