CHANDU THE MAGICIAN (1932)

This film was the highlight of my October viewing this year. Most critics don't care for it, but I liked it a lot, perhaps because my expectations were low. The movie is not a serial but is structured like one, with lots of fast-moving and episodic cliffhangers. The only real liability is lead actor Edmund Lowe, who is rather stiff and uninspiring. He plays Frank Chandler, an American who has spent years in India studying the way of the Yogi. He is renamed Chandu by his teacher and sent back into the world to deal with the threatening evil of Roxor (Bela Lugosi), who has kidnapped Henry B. Walthall, the maker of a powerful "death ray"--although why a gentle old "good guy" would have spent years inventing a death ray is never explained. Walthall refuses, even under torture, to give Lugosi the last bits of information needed to make the ray operative. The scientist's family comes under attack by Lugosi's henchmen and it's up to Chandu to save the day. He's accompanied by a comic relief sidekick (Herbert Mundin) who is amusing for about five minutes, but soon becomes a real pain in the ass. Along the way, Chandu also meets up with an exotic past lover (Irene Ware) and is saddled with Walthall's son (Nestor Aber) and daughter (Betty Vlasek) who eventually have to be rescued from evil clutches.

There are lots of nifty effects: Chandu can transport his astral self to give the appearance of being in two places at once; he causes Mundin to see a miniature version of himself whenever he starts to get drunk; a stone statue comes to life (quite a startling surprise); a cell floor opens up slowly, threatening the family with a long fall into a pit; Chandu turns guns into snakes (sort of a Charlton Heston-as-Moses thing) and vanishes from his clothes, leaving them standing empty in midair. Lugosi chews the scenery wonderfully; his overacting (entirely appropriate for the supervillain character) helps to compensate for Lowe's blandness. The most spectacular scene is when Lugosi imagines the destruction of New York and London with the death ray. Weldon Hayburn is Abdullah, Lugosi's darkly handsome henchman. Co-director William Cameron Menzies, famous for the production design of THINGS TO COME in 1936, was probably responsible for the interesting look of the film which must have had an impact on the Indiana Jones movies. Atmospheric, fast-paced, and fun. A serial spinoff was done a couple years later with Lugosi as Chandu, which I'm trying to track down.