In the 1890s, young Harry Houdini Tony Curtis works at a Coney Island carnival as Bruto, the Wild Man, when Bess Janet Leigh, a naïve onlooker, tries to shield him from the blows of Schultz Sig Ruman, his “handler.” Harry also appears as the illusionist who calls himself the Great Houdini, and, spotting Bess in the audience, invites her on stage. When Harry flirts with the unsuspecting Bess, she quietly slips away. Bess returns two more times, and finally admits the attraction she feels. They marry and begin a life with Harry's mother Angela Clarke nearby, with Bess stepping in as his onstage partner and traveling across the country.
As fame grows, Bess tires of the low pay and brutal schedule and persuades Harry to take a steady job at a locksmith factory. He works as a lock tester and privately fantasizes about escaping from a colossal safe. On Halloween, the couple attends a Magician Society dinner where a challenger, Fante, offers a prize for escaping a straitjacket. Harry, concentrating with fierce focus, frees himself, earning admiration—though Fante warns him to beware the shadows of a German magician named Von Schweger, who allegedly retired at the peak of his career after a similar feat. Bess pushes the idea of a bigger life, convincing Harry to cash in a single, round‑trip ticket to Europe he had won, to save enough for a down payment on a house.
Back at the factory, Harry locks himself inside a large safe, determined to make his escape. The foreman orders the safe blown open, fires him, and the couple’s hopes begin to fray. A remorseful Bess finds Harry performing with a carnival once more and hands him two one‑way tickets to Europe, reigniting their shared dream. In London, a performance at a theater sees him accept a challenge to escape from Scotland Yard’s famously secure jail cells, a feat he accomplishes by discovering the outside‑wall locks rather than the doors. The duo then embarks on a successful European tour, with Harry earning the nickname of “the man who escaped Scotland Yard.”
In Berlin, Harry searches for the elusive Von Schweger, while a separate legal trouble lands him in court on fraud charges. He denies claiming supernatural powers, insisting his tricks are purely physical. To prove his point, he locks himself inside a safe in the courtroom and again escapes, vindicated. He then travels to meet Von Schweger, who reportedly responds—only to be revealed as dead two days earlier by his assistant Otto Torin Thatcher. Otto explains that Von Schweger once summoned Harry to uncover the secret of “dematerialization,” a feat he could repeat but never fully master. Otto soon becomes Harry’s new assistant and accompanies him back to New York City.
Back in the United States, Harry finds himself nearly forgotten, until he stages perilous publicity stunts to reclaim attention—like hanging upside down on a skyscraper’s flagpole in a moonlit silhouette, restrained in a straitjacket, then executing the escape to thunderous applause. He even contemplates submerging in a tank of water as part of a dramatic routine in Detroit, but a broken chain sends the apparatus tumbling into an icy river. He swims through the subzero current, searches beneath the ice for an air pocket, and resurfaces to the relieved crowd and a shaken Bess, who learns afterward that her mother died at the very moment he heard her voice guiding him to the opening.
Two years pass in New York with Houdini largely absent from the stage. He invites a reporter to witness a seance, seeking to debunk phony mediums, and, with Otto, exposes a fake who claimed to contact his mother. Spurred by public zeal, Harry plans a return to the stage and designs a dangerous water-torture device for a new act. Bess pleads with him not to perform it, but the show goes on as the audience clamors for the promised trick. Despite the tenderness in his abdomen, Harry endures the pain and continues, only to be submerged upside down in the water tank. The tank shatters, he is pulled free by Otto, but the ordeal leaves him dying; he looks toward Bess with a final vow that, if possible, he will return.
