That Chandu That You Do So Well

THE RETURN OF CHANDU. Episode 5.

A small fire has evidently broken out in the Principle Pictures Corporation titling department but I’m sure everything’s under control…

Now read on…

Yes, but WHY is Frank Chandler known in the orient as Chandu? I get why they call him the magician. But if they can pronounce that, then “Chandler” shouldn’t be too much of a mouthful, surely?

The episode begins, thrillingly, with a stock footage long shot of some exotic clime, perhaps gathered by Tay Garnett on his round-the-world cruise, who knows? Then we get a long exposition/romance scene on garden furniture, in which the sibillance of the soundtrack combines with the Hungarian and Spanish accents of stars Bela Lugosi and Maria Alba to render comprehension null. But we can still appreciate the charm of Lugosi playing a nice guy, getting some romantic interest for once. I mean, he’s sympathetic in the same year’s THE BLACK CAT if you can overlook him flaying a man alive, and he has a wife he loves in that one, but she’s plastinated and suspended from the ceiling, so there’s a limited amount of true warmth in their scenes together.

Anyway. Frank Bela Chandler Lugosi Chandu the Magician goes into a trance while staring at, oddly enough, a photograph of Princess Nadji’s forehead (it’s supposed to be her actual head but for some reason a still image has been substituted). This allows him to get a mental image of the evil cultists and learn some semi-audible stuff about the lost continent of Lemuria.

Lemuria doesn’t get enough love, I feel. They’re just as submerged as Atlantic, but far less acclaimed.

Chandu’s astral vision has a certain grandeur, consisting as it does of a glass painting, a stock shot (double-exposed with the forehead photo — a temple atop a temple, as it were), the gate from KING KONG, a sleeping beauty and a stone cat presiding over a cult meeting. This collage of imagery serves as a siren call, luring Maria Montez to Hollywood.

This fresh, if somewhat muffled, information sends Chandu sailing away to settle the hash of these cultists and their jowly leader once and for all, a plan which allows Bela to don a fetching sailor suit. He seems to have more costume changes in this thing than Liz Taylor in CLEOPATRA. But wouldn’t you know it, as soon as he’s gone, a whammy of some form is put upon his love, compelling her to lead her friends into a DEADLY TRAP.

Getting psychic wind of this, Bela promptly turns his yacht around and rushes to the rescue.

The Princess’s whammy causes her to speak in a zombified monotone, but her friends don’t seem to notice, which does not reflect well on the rest of the leading lady’s line readings.

Chandu leads a gang of sailors into a frenzied fistfight with the Ubasti cult’s oiled and stripped-to-the-waist acolytes, and before you can say homoeroticism, the main cultist, cunningly disguised in a pith helmet, has re-re-re-abducted the Princess via the magic circle that gives this episode its name. Is it a portal to Lemuria, or merely, as the title implies, a ring of invisibility? Tune in next time, or don’t.