AustLit

A short film made using puppets, Nightmare (otherwise known as The Magician) was the only significant work completed by surrealist Dusan Marek during the period he spent living in New Guinea (between 1954 and 1959), which Stephen Mould notes was 'a significant fallow period in comparison to the constant need to work and create that marks the rest of his adult life' (p.10).

Alex Gerbaz describes the film as follows:

the narrative begins when a stranger with a menacing appearance turns up at a pub, where the locals start dying in suspicious circumstances. There are amusing touches throughout the film: a headline in the local newspaper reads, 'Nothing New Today'; the stranger drinks sulphuric acid like it's whisky and fiddles with the eyes that have popped out of a man's head. The puppets, which move slowly and deliberately, are wonderfully crafted, with big noses and foreheads and mistrustful eyes. (p.2)

Further Reference:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film', Journal of the National Film and Sound Archives 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

Mould, Stephen. 'Dusan Marek: A Landlocked Czech Surrealist in the Antipodes', Papers of Surrealism 6 (Autumn 2007): 1-19.