The table of death is a predicament escape that may be regarded as a magic trick or an act of escapology.
The basic premise is that the performer will be restrained on the table and must escape before the spikes are released and allowed to fall.
Sometimes a scrim is used instead of a curtain and, with back lighting, it is arranged that the audience see the silhouetted shadow of the performer struggling to escape before the spikes fall.
[3] The Table of Death was one of the tricks for which a method was supposedly revealed in the Fox network's Masked Magician series.
This occurred despite a lawsuit brought by André Kole against the show's makers in an effort to stop them.