After finding the first Chandu movie tucked in among some other horror flicks on a Fox collection a few months ago, I've been wanting to see Bela Lugosi in the sequel where he switches from the villainous Roxor role to become the hero himself, Chandu. There are several collections available and I even found it for free on the net (after I bought one).
It's from 1934 and the version I have is in rough shape, but maybe the best it gets. I got the best version according to some reports, so I can't imagine following this on a rougher cut. There are deletions and scratches and what you expect in old films, but I've been spoiled I guess by some really good restorations.
The story is also available in two feature-length forms and I frankly recommend those. The serial is a stylish thing but wastes a lot of time if you watch it as I did in a few sittings. Now it's not fair to judge these things like regular movies, but even at that, I did find the amount of material repeated from episode to episode a bit more than I'm accustomed to from later serials. The action is evenly split between running around first California and later someplace called Suvo. Then the second half of the story shifts to Lemuria, the island of the Black Magicians.
Bela is not really very good, as much as I like him. He's miscast here unfortunately. I want to believe him as a romantic lead, a hero, but it doesn't work. He moves so slowly that he comes across as either laconic or sneaky, neither a trait of a hero. He grimaces in that traditional way and it's not pleasant, good for villainy but hard to watch on a hero. And his co-star Maria Alba is almost as incoherent as Bela, so you have two leads who speak a somewhat leaden English. There's a lot of pointing in this movie. The threats are pretty tame, but there is a scene with a rock on a chain that slowly descends (and I do mean slowly) that's pretty clever. One scene after a ship sinks, Chandu is found floating by the other survivors (his sister and her two kids who are in the whole thing) and he reveals he knocked himself out by hitting the raft with his head. Not something I'd suspect Buster would've done.
One treat in this movie is the unexpected use of the gates from King Kong as a key visual in several scenes on the island. Those majestic gates opened slowly by many seemingly golden slaves as scores of magicians and attendants walk somberly though is the visual highlight of the movie. They do it several times with a few alterations. Later the gates are closed against a savage uprising, but little is done with them after that. As a diehard Kong fan, this was worth the price by itself, but I wish I'd enjoyed the actual movie a bit more.
It's a fun bit of stuff, but I reckon the features are the way to go. You won't miss much I suspect.
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