Tonight's film was "Chandu The Magician" (1932), a fun horror/fantasy starring Edmund Lowe as an American magician who has become a Yogi after studying Hindu mysticism in India. As a Yogi (and I am very tempted to make a cartoon reference here, but I won't), he has learned the power of hypnotism to control men's minds. He learned other tricks as well, such as how to bring his spirit out of his body so that it appears to an enemy as his ghost. This comes in handy when Chandu is confronted by Bela Lugosi's thugs as he chases the madman down. Bela plays "Roxor", a crazed megalomaniac who seeks control of a Death Ray invented by American scientist "Robert Regent". He kidnaps Regent and holds him hostage in his Rock Palace abode, a mansion/laboratory set into the side of a high granite wall.
"Chandu" in real life is Frank Chandler, a friend of the Death Ray inventor and his family. As Chandu, with his new mesmeric ability, he can help to free Robert Regent, who has refused to give the evil Roxor any information about The Ray, even when his family is lured to Roxor's Palace and captured to be used as bait.
Enter Chandu, wearing a jeweled turban, who just happens to be visiting the area to look up his old flame Princess Nadji (played by Irene Ware).
An "Indiana Jones" style adventure ensues, as Chandu and the Princess set out to rescue the scientist Regent and his family, and in the process to stop Roxor from getting his hands on the Death Ray.
The movie owes it's success to Lugosi's high energy performance and the art direction of William Cameron Menzies, an early Hollywood genius who later created the sets for "Gone With The Wind". The laboratory he designed for this film, and the artillery-sized Death Ray, replete with large glass vacuum bulb and ringed transducers, looks like the ultimate Mad Scientist workshop, and gives Bela Lugosi a chance to tear into humanity as Roxor is about to realize his dream of world domination.
The sets and miniatures are amazing for 1932. What makes "Chandu" so entertaining is it's combination of styles. It's a horror movie, but also an adventure into exotic Eastern culture, but then it's also a fantasy with all kinds of mystical elements pre-Harry Potter.
It's purely for fun. I acquired it this week as part of a three movie set called "Fox Horror Classics Volume 2", which I ordered from Amazon. I already had "Volume 1" of this series from years ago, so because it is October I figured it was high time I ordered "Volume 2".
Now I need to order "The Return Of Chandu", which became a weekly serial in theaters. Serials were episodic, like a TV show at the movies, and in this one they turned around and made Bela Lugosi the good guy. They cast him as Chandu in "Return", because in the original movie, the star Edmund Lowe was not seen as having much charisma, which is a fairly accurate assessment. But yeah! - I've gotta get the "Return Of Chandu" because of Bela Lugosi, who I think was one of Hollywood's greatest movie stars. He did exactly what was expected of him, and in doing so he created indelible characters of cinematic horror.
To compare, try finding an actor now who could remotely pull off Lugosi's natural style. Even if you got a technically brilliant RADA-trained Englishman, it still wouldn't work, because Bela was doing Bela, and he had an irreplicable voice and face and body. That is what makes a star, among other things.
Well anyway, I am probably jabbering. I am kind of on a Work Treadmill right now, where all I do is my job and then take a break in the evening to watch a movie. I know it must be boring to read about movies day after day, but that's my life at the moment.
Tomorrow night I will be at home, off work for a few days. I have contemplated going to Disneyland, because it is Halloweentime there, but I would have to go by myself, and Disneyland is the one place that you absolutely positively cannot go by yourself.
Can you?
I mean, it would be horrible, but on the other hand I haven't been to D-Land since October 2011, and I am gonna die if I don't go soon, and my sister Vickie (my former Disneyland partner) is never gonna go again, she just isn't interested. So I have no one to go with, but if I don't go soon, it won't be good.
And yet to go alone might be terrible.
At some point I will have to go, because Disneyland won't take no for an answer, not from me anyway.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment