The Drill of Death is a large-scale stage illusion in which a performer appears to be impaled on a giant drill. It was created by magician André Kole and illusion designer Ken Whitaker for magician Melinda Saxe. It was one of Saxe's signature tricks and featured as a highlight in her various First Lady of Magic shows.
The illusion featured in several network television magic specials. It was first shown on television in November 1995, when Melinda performed it on The World's Greatest Magic II broadcast by NBC. It later served as one of the big set pieces in Melinda's own Melinda, First Lady of Magic special produced by Disney and broadcast on CBS in March 1997. The television special Fifty Greatest Magic Tricks, broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 in May 2002, named Drill of Death as number 41 in its list of the 50 greatest magic tricks of all time.
During Melinda's performing career she was the only magician presenting the illusion. Melinda ceased performing in 2002 in order to raise a family and since then the drill has been performed by two illusionists in Europe. The German illusionist Jan Rouven and the Dutch Christian Farla. It featured in the 2005 edition of the annual German television special Stars in der Manege, in which actress, model and TV presenter Arabella Kiesbauer played the role of victim.
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Famous quotes containing the words drill and/or death:
“Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.”
—Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
“I’m beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of death among Americans. What you don’t know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright’s character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)