There's an Egyptian tomb, swords, shackles, a coffin and a metal torture crib. Through a fog of dry ice, the scene looks like a macabre museum display.

It's all on stage during Gunnarson's magic and escape show.

The performance begins when an assistant, draped in a monk's robe and wearing a human skull, opens the tomb to reveal Gunnarson wrapped in a cocoon of whaling net and 15 metres of chain.

After a few moments of wriggling and writhing on the floor, Gunnarson jumps to his feet, free once again, only later to be cloistered in a body-length straitjacket.

"Since the beginning of time we've been locking people up' " Gunnarson says, and at least three times a week some of those same devices are put on him.

Televised tribute

Gunnarson's magical and mystical show, which opened Thursday at The Korral in the Keystone Motor Inn, runs until Saturday night.

This is one of the last shows the Winnipeg native will be doing in Manitoba before he moves his escaping talents and his restraining devices south of the border.

Gunnarson is scheduled to promote a televised tribute to Harry Houdini the day before it airs Oct. 31. He'll be slipping out of a straitjacket while suspended upside down outside a Los Angeles building, six storeys above the ground.

"Anybody who's anybody in magic will be there," Gunnarson says.

During the Halloween special, Gunnarson will try to escape from a pair of the late escape artist's handcuffs, which are currently being stored in a Niagara Falls, Ont. museum. Houdini died on Oct. 31, 1926.

Gunnarson has never seen the handcuffs and the show's producers won't tell him what they're like.

"If I knew what kind of handcuffs they are, I could prepare and practice," he says.

Handcuffs are a specialty of Gunnarson, 23.

He pulls a small binder from his briefcase. It contains about two dozen letters signed by law enforcement officers from Western Canada and the northern United States.

When Gunnarson passes through a town or city, he drops in at the local police station and asks the on-duty staff to do their best. And the letters generally read the same.

They list the date, what kind of handcuffs were put on Gunnarson and how long it took him to work himself free.

He even visited the Brandon Mental Health Centre, where he escaped from an out-of-use straitjacket in less than three minutes.

Gunnarson has been escaping from tight situations since when he was seven years old, when friends tied him up with skipping rope while playing cowboys and Indians.

"It was a part of growing up," he says.

Gunnarson and his father got into an after-dinner habit. His father would tie him up and Gunnarson would free himself.

Before more than 5,000 spectators along the banks of the Red River in Winnipeg, Gunnarson's father nailed a coffin shut while his son lay chained inside during a tribute to Houdini in 1983.

The coffin was lowered into the water and when Gunnarson didn't emerge after three minutes and 33 seconds, rescuers raised the coffin and removed the escape artist's unconscious body.

"I learned a hell of a lot in the escape," Gunnarson says of the technical difficulties that can suddenly arise.

The coffin didn't fill with water as fast as he'd expected and when the water finally rushed in, he was caught off guard with his lungs only half full of air.

He would try it again, though. But not for the $10,000 he was recently offered. He wants $500,000.

"I know it's out there."