Title: The Return of Chandu
Chapters: 12
Company: Sol Lesser Productions
Release Date: 1934

Cast: Béla Lugosi
Maria Alba
Clara Kimball Young
Lucien Prival
Dean Benton
Phyllis Ludwig
Josef Swickard
Jack Clark

Plot: Frank Chandler returns home to his family in Beverly Hills, California.
They are hosting a party for the Princess Nadji of Eqypt, who is visiting them
and who is hoping to leave her troubles behind her. Part of her problems, though,
are the Sect of Ubasti, a cult of black magic sorcerors who need her soul to help
resurrect their own last high priestess, whose perfectly-preserved body has recently
been recovered (washed ashore to their "lost continent," the island of Lemuria).

Luckily, Chandler is better known as the Chandu the Magician, who has studied White
Magic in the Far East.

Okay, first of all, the quality of my print of this serial from Alpha Video isn't the greatest,
and the sound is often bad. And, well, it's pretty slow going. I don't know that much about
Chandu.

The character was popular in radio dramas in the 1930s and 40s. American-born Frank
Chandler learned occult secrets from a yogi in India, including astral projection, teleportation,
and the casting of illusions. And, oddly enough, Béla Lugosi played the main villain in first
movie. Here, he is recast in the title role as Chandu (because apparently the original actor
was boring as hell). In this serial, Chandu has a magic ring, is able to consult telepathically
with the yogi to ask his advise, he teleported once in the first Chapter, and was able to turn
himself invisible once. But, oddly enough, he doesn't seem to be able to do it later on, and
he needs the help of a White Magician (that he saves from a prison cell) in order to turn
invisible later on. I think it was explained that when Chandu is on the island of Lemuria,
there's so much Black Magic protecting that place that he has greatly diminished powers.

I kind of dozed off a lot during this one.


Initially, it seemed to me that Chandu was a protective fatherly-figure to Nadji (played
by Maria Alba), but, by Chapter 5, she's his fiance. It really came as no surprise to
me to see that this serial was later cut into two movies: Chapters 1–4 ("The Return of
Chandu") and Chapters 5–12 ("Chandu on the Magic Island"). The first portion involves
Chandu besting the High Priest Vindhyan (Prival) and foiling his plan to sacrifice
Nadji. Then, thinking they are safe, Chandu, Nadji, and Chandu's sister (and her
adult son and daughter) decide to resort on whatever island they ended up on.

Then, at the end of Chapter 4 and the beginning of Chapter 5, you see that there is a
much bigger cult threat on the island of Lemuria. Nadji dreams of this, and Chandu
essentially looks into her memory of this dream to get an idea of what he's up against.
He then goes off alone to try to find the island. Meanwhile, Nadji is kidnapped and
taken to the island. Chandu arrives back home too late to stop this, so he--and his
mostly worthless tag-along family who insists on tagging along--charter a boat to go
to the island. When they get close, well, the evil baddies help their boat to sink.
After washing ashore, Chandu is soon separated from them, they get captured, and Chandu
ends up in some caverns filled with various threats like a man-eating tiger. Oh, and
did I mention that there's a small band of man-eating savages, and that they live on or
about those big doors used in the original King Kong movie? Well, they do....

This really wasn't a good serial. Chandu is pretty much powerless the whole time
he's on the island. Whenever he consults with the yogi, the yogi really doesn't tell
him anything useful: more of a pep talk if anything. Chandu needs Tyba, the White
Magician, to help save the day. Finally, in the last Chapter, Chandu glows for a
brief moment and brings the evil temple crashing down on itself.

Still... Béla is worth watching. And really, where else do you get to see him play the
hero? He's got a great voice for this and rather hypnotic eyes. The role is a good fit
for him. But, if you're waiting for some serial fisticuffs, well, don't expect much. Béla
gets into a few brawls, but they last about twenty seconds. Plus, don't expect to see
him dressed in any cool magical outfits. Mainly he's all dirty and sweaty, you know,
like he was running around a tropical island in what's left of his normal business attire.


The Chapter endings were kind of weird. They would build up a dramatic moment, and,
often, they would resolve them right there and then. There were only two or three
real "cliff hangers." The rest were more of "Okay, what do we do next?" sort of deal.
I can't really recommend this one except for die-hard Béla fans.

If only it were this exciting:

A contender for worst serial ever made,but that is one good looking poster.
Lugosi is so miscast here.No way did he come from this family.Nice to have him as the hero for once,but it's too bad it had to be in this movie

Why don't we have silhouettes of a guy and his robot friends at the bottom of the screen?

I really should track down the Mystery Science Theater episodes that cover
the Chapter Serials.

I liked it better than the English versions I saw online.

Yeah, this wasn't very good. It's weird in that it was a combination of very, very slow stuff
(using a lot of stock footage), and then something would happen: like the White Magician
teleports himself to where Béla's family is about to be eaten by the natives, and...whamo!
two seconds later, they're all safe, and, not only are the natives subdued, but suddenly
they're fighting against their previous masters, the Black Magicians.

Specifically as to Chandu's family:
• his sister (she's there, basically, to call Chandu "Frank")

• his sister's son (he's there to be annoying and to state the bleeding obvious).
I suspect that he was there to add a little useful manly sex appeal, and to do a
few physical acts that Béla really couldn't. But, even when he's supposed to be
punching a few of the bad guys, it looked VERY, VERY BAD.

• his sister's daughter. I have no idea why she was here. Early on, I thought it
was just so she could introduce her friend (?) who wanted to dance with her
brother. That was back when I thought he might have had a larger role. I kind of
liked the girl who wanted to dance--mainly because it was obvious to me that the
son wanted nothing to do with her. Sadly, he stuck around, and she disappeared
after the first episode.

Anyway, all three of them are there as plot devices, someone to speak a little
exposition at.

I'm not watching Béla in another serial, "The Phantom Creeps," and it's significantly
better than Chandu.

I have the Chandu Big Little Book that my dad had as a kid.

I'll post a pic later.

Sweet.

Here's my review of this one from a few years back.

"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."

Yeah, seems like you nailed it there, Dean.
What did you think of the first movie with Béla as the villain?
Worth seeing?

Having just seen the TCM broadcast of the first Chandu movie,I can answer that--
Yes,it is worth seeing.Better in every way than the serial,with some fine photography by James Wong Howe no less.It's certainly easier to sit thru.Unlike the serial,Lugosi had the right part here as Roxor.As fine an actor as he was,Lugosi just wasn't meant to play the hero.

I saw that movie on TCM some time back and liked it. It was great fun. Wish I'd been able to see it again.