oscaralbert Review of Mandrake, the Magician

Mandrake, the Magician (1939)

When you get trapped by a stuck door in a sauna-like antique shop attic . . .

[6/10 · 12 October 2018]

. . . and no one can hear you yelling and stomping for help because of the noisy, cattle-barn-sized fans clanking downstairs, leaving you with nothing to do but pore over stacks of old newspapers from the 1900s featuring MANDRAKE, THE MAGICIAN comic strips on the back page, if you survive the ordeal and later have an opportunity to see a film version of the newspaper feature more or less contemporaneous with the newsprint magic man's heyday, you take it. However, if Episode One (SHADOW ON THE WALL) is any indication, this late 1930s movie "serial" totally lacks the science fiction underpinnings of its tabloid model. SHADOW ON THE WALL might as well be a two-bit Western, for its wall-to-wall nonstop fisticuffs. I do not think that the MANDRAKE comic strip itself would have endured even a single month if it was as repetitiously boring as this. Coupled with the embarrassingly cheap and cheesy "special effects" of "The Wasp" and "Professor Houston's" radium disintegrator machine, there is little if anything to recommend this incarnation of MANDRAKE, THE MAGICIAN.