The World's Most Dangerous Magic was the title of two American television specials showcasing illusion

Magic (illusion)

Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...

 and escapology

Escapology

For the Jessica Mauboy song, see Inescapable.Escapology is the practice of escaping from restraints or other traps. Escapologists escape from handcuffs, straitjackets, cages, coffins, steel boxes, barrels, bags, burning buildings, fish-tanks and other perils, often in combination.-History:The art...

 acts, which were made for the NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 network. The first was originally broadcast on 27 April 1998 and the second, titled The World's Most Dangerous Magic 2, was initially aired on 2 May 1999.

The shows were the brainchild of producer Gary Ouellet

Gary Ouellet

Gary Ouellet was a French-Canadian television producer and magician who lived and worked in the United States.He may be best-known as the driving force behind a number of network television specials that helped some of the top performers in modern magic to gain a national and international profile...

 and were made by the Gary L Pudney Company. They featured a combination of famous performers and lesser-known magicians, each performing stunts or illusions that were claimed to involve the risk of death or serious injury. While some stunts clearly involved genuine life-threatening danger should anything have gone wrong, the risk of injury in others was open to question. In the first show, The Pendragons performed the illusion Impaled, which was described as a "balancing feat" in which Charlotte Pendragon risked fatal impalement should it go wrong. However this is a well known illusion in the general repertoire of stage magic in which the performer is not actually in danger of genuine impalement (although if performed clumsily or with poor quality apparatus there is some risk of back injury to the assistant). The Pendragons' presentation of this illusion is nevertheless rated by many magicians as possibly the best ever version of the trick.

The World's Most Dangerous Magic

• "Sixty Seconds to Live" - magician Robert Gallup performed an escape while suspended upside down from three burning ropes.
• "Scorpion Production" - Robert Gallup.
• "Viper Pit" - Melinda Saxe
  Melinda Saxe
  Melinda Saxe is a magician from Las Vegas, Nevada, best known for network television performances and Las Vegas stage shows in which she was billed as "The First Lady of Magic". She is often associated with the "Drill of Death" illusion which was a signature trick developed for her by Andre Kole...
  
   was shackled to the bottom of a glass tank which was then filled with snakes. She escaped using levitation.
• "Sword Basket" - Charlotte Pendragon got into a wicker basket and her husband Jonathon thrust several burning spears through it. The voice-over stated that Charlotte had suffered burns during a previous attempt at the stunt.
• "Wolf Trap" - Robert Gallup put his hand into a metal toothed animal trap.
• "Table of Terror" - Mark Kalin performed the Table of Death
  Table of death
  The table of death is a predicament escape that is alternately considered as falling into the categories of a magic trick or an act of escapology.-Description:...
  
   trick.
• "Impaled" - Jonathon Pendragon balanced his wife Charlotte on the point of a sword and she then appeared to be impaled by it.
• "Jagged Edge" - Gary Kurtz played a form of Russian roulette
  Russian roulette
  Russian roulette is a potentially lethal game of chance in which participants place a single round in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger...
  
   using knives.
• "Death at Hoover Dam" - Escape artist Dean Gunnarson freed himself from a straitjacket while suspended upside down 726 feet above the ground from the Hoover Dam.

The World's Most Dangerous Magic II

• Michael Grandinetti - escaped from between two walls of steel spikes which were lit on fire and set to spring inwards at over 50 mph
• Dean Gunnarson
  Dean Gunnarson
  Dean Gunnarson is an award-winning Canadian escapologist. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is noted for a series of large scale spectacular stunts done for television....
  
  -Gunnarson escaped suspended upside down hanging from a trapzee bar over a swamp of 130 hungry alligators in the Florida everglades covered in chicken meat and blood.

• Steve Wyrick
  Steve Wyrick
  Steve Wyrick is an American magician from Garland, Texas who is best known for performing as a headliner in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Las Vegas Hilton beginning in August 2011. He was featured in The World's Greatest Magic series on NBC in the 1990s...
  
  
• Tony Clark
• Anthony Reed - performed a version of the Aquarian Illusion
  Aquarian Illusion
  The Aquarian Illusion is a variation of the Metamorphosis or Substitution Trunk magic illusion. It was created by Alan Wakeling for Mark Wilson, who performed it in The Magic Circus series and a HBO special Mumbo Jumbo! It's Magic, and in closing his Las Vegas shows.The illusion begins with a...
  
  .
• Gary Kurtz
• Margo
  Margo (magician)
  Margo is the screen and stage name of Margo Timon a magic performer and actress who had a starring slot in the NBC network television special The World's Most Dangerous Magic II. She has also worked with the highly respected duo The Pendragons....
  
  - was shackled inside a coffin that was then filled with rats.
• Tony Clark