Directed for Fox by Marcel Varnel and William Cameron Menzies in 1932, Chandu The Magician, based on the popular radio serial of the day, is a quick seventy-one minutes of fun, pulp style adventure and suspense.

The story introduces us to the villainous Roxor (Bela Lugosi), a mad scientist of sorts who kidnapped a scientist named Robert Regent (Henry B. Walthall) to that he can complete his death ray and use it to use it to take over the world. The plan is that the death ray will turn Earth's population into mindless drones, thus allowing Roxor, with his superior intellect, able to control everyone on the planet! If Regent doesn't go along with this, Roxor will kill his entire family!

Thankfully, Roxor's brother-in-law is none other than the titular Chandu (Edmund Lowe), a magician of great skill and cunning and the ability to cloud men's minds and create powerful illusions. He'll use his Yogi powers to save Regent and maybe pretty Princess Nadji (Irene Ware) as well!

Chandu The Magician is pretty entertaining stuff. For its time, the film is chock full of special effects and while they understandably show their age (the movie isn't that far off from its centennial!) they definitely retain their vintage charm. Most of the effects pieces stem from Chandu's mystical abilities. He's got quite a few unique abilities: not only can he make men believe that their rifles have suddenly turned into snakes or that ropes are flying through the air under their own power. He can also do strange things to both mind and body, resulting in plenty of genuinely cool optics being used throughout the feature to create such an illusion.

The story itself isn't particularly original. Roxor's plan to kidnap a scientist to help him create the superweapon he needs to take over the world has been used plenty of times before and since in older serials like The Shadow to kids cartoons like G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero but if it isn't broke, why fix it? Lugosi completely steals every scene he appears in. As Roxor he is a blast to watch, and while he chews through pretty much all of the scenery, he looks like he's having fun doing it and we're certainly having fun watching him go at it. He overdoes it at pretty much every possible opportunity but when you're dealing in pulp stereotypes and cliché as Chandu The Magician just so happens to do, you don't want anything less. Nobody stares into a camera and hypnotizes you with his weird, squinty eyes like Lugosi does!

This makes it a bit unfortunate then that Edmund Lowe is not the world's most enthusiastic antagonist. He's not terrible, per se, just not as enthusiastic as you might hope. He looks the part and has a nobility to him that suits the character but his line delivery is a little on the flat side. It's amusing to see him decked out in the garb of an eastern mystic complete with flowing robes and an ornate turban. Supporting work from Irene Ware as Princess Nadji is solid. She doesn't look nearly as exotic as her name would have you believe, the movie is very much a product of its time in that regard (clearly political correctness wasn't a concern when this picture was made), but she's a gorgeous woman nonetheless. She plays her part well and looks great doing it what with her fancy ‘princess' costumes and what not.

Ultimately it might not be deep or particularly life changing, but it sure is entertaining and, in its own quirky way, occasionally impressive in style, technique and ambition.

Video:

Chandu The Magician is presented in a nice looking AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.33.1 fullframe. This is a nice improvement over the previous standard definition presentation of the film that was offered up by Fox years back. Contrast looks very solid here and black levels stay strong. The whites never bloom or look too hot while detail and texture show a lot more than we've seen previously on home video and the framing looks very good. There is very little print damage here to note, the picture is very clean. There are no signs of edge enhancement, noise reduction or compression artifacts to complain about and the upgrade in picture quality this release offers is considerable.