Voodoo Man (1944)

Enjoyable voodoo nonsense. Dr Marlowe (Bela Lugosi)'s wife died twenty years ago - though she is still intact and not aged somehow. The Doctor is capturing young girls with the help of his strange and motley collection of henchmen including John Carradine and George Zucco. He is trying to transfer the spirit of the living into his dead/not dead wife using voodoo magic.

When Stella (Louise Currie) is the latest victim of Dr Marlowe's evil scheme, young reporter Ralph (Tod Andrews) begins to investigate the strange Doctor, who has a group of young zombie girls in his basement. Unfortunately Ralph's fiance Betty (Wanda McKay) is the next target for Marlowe...

A silly and creepy film, the absurdity of the premise however makes the film pretty amusing. Everything is oddly low-key and slow, Lugosi and Zucco spend most of the film in matching black cloaks - with random occult symbols on them - chanting nonsense.

The Amazing Mr. X (1948)

An entertaining film full of twists, the film takes you in one direction then completely spins everything around... more than once. Christine (Lynn Bari) is a rich widow about to get engaged to Martin (Richard Carlson) when she encounters the mysterious Alexis (Turhan Bey) on a beach walk. Alexis is a spiritualist, complete with pet crow, who helps Christine contact her husband Paul (Donald Curtis) who died in an accident a few years before...

But Alexis is a phoney, using a maid to find information about Christine so he can relieve her of the burden of having a lot of cash. Rationalist Martin scoffs at the silly woman superstition of course but then he is shocked when Paul seems to return for real. In fact Paul was never dead after all and now wants Alexis' help to get Christine's money...

Somewhat melodramatic but full of interest. The mechanics of how Alexis tricks people is genuinely fascinating. Turhan Bey puts on a great performance as the suave and slightly sinister Alexis.

The Crooked Circle (1932)

Confusing but too frenetic to make the lack of sense matter too much. A secret crime / occult society wish the leader of a rival amateur crime fighting society Colonel Walters (Berton Churchill) dead. Brand (Ben Lyon) meanwhile is leaving the society to be replaced by the somewhat mysterious Yoganda (C. Henry Gordon)...

Walters receives the death card from the criminals, the Crooked Circle. They promise he will die this night, naturally he decides to spend the night in a mysterious dark house in the country with trap doors and secret rooms behind every mantelpiece. Brand heads to the house too after he finds his fiance Thelma (Irene Purcell) is on her way there. But why and how is she mixed up in this?

No one knows, even the audience really, as most of the film is a seemingly random sequence of escapades in the house punctuated by the yelps of Nora the housekeeper (Zasu Pitts) and a bumbling cop (James Gleason)...

It is nonsense, it is confusing but it is also highly entertaining with a good dose of comedy. Maybe a little too much comedy at times but if the film is treated as a rather over the top dark house style comedy-crime romp then you will get the most out of it. There are many surprises and mysteries and the film is perfect to play "1930s mystery film bingo" to.

The Return of Chandu (Serial) (1934)

Princess Nadji of Egypt (Maria Alba) is in danger. A strange cult from the lost (or so people thought) island of Lemuria want the blood sacrifice of an Egyptian princess to help bring their goddess back to life and Nadji fits the bill perfectly. Nadji has some help though in the shape of Chandu (Bela Lugosi) master of the mystic arts of the Orient...

So begins this serial, which is highly entertaining yarn of Oriental mysticism (very popular in the 1930s) though maybe a bit slow compared to some serials. Nadji becomes possessed by the cult led by Vindhyan (Lucien Prival) and spirited away to Lemuria. 

The action switches to the Pacific where Chandu, his sister Dorothy (Clara Kimball Young), nephew Bob (Dean Benton) and niece Betty (Phyllis Ludwig) search for Nadji with the help of the the white Yogi (Josef Swickard) but are pitted against the Lemurian's slave army of natives. Can Nadji be saved and the dark cult defeated? Stay tuned next episode to find out...

A fun serial full of campy nonsense, as usual many of the sets and costumes are recycled from other productions. Including the doors from King Kong. A notable thing about the serial is that Bela Lugosi plays the hero for a change. The serial is vaguely a sequel to the 1932 film Chandu the Magician though Lugosi played the villain in that one!

Sinister Hands (1932)

Ah the mysteries of the Orient and the occult, a common Golden Age trope. In this film a millionaire is murdered at a seance held by the Swami (Mischa Auer). The police are called in but Detective Devlin (Jack Mulhall) finds that everyone seems to have a motive.

Mrs Lang (Lillian West) is obsessed with her Swami, whom she hopes will tell her who troubles her (for the right amount of cash of course). Her husband Richard Lang (Phillips Smalley) rails at his house full of gigolos and other low-lives including her daughter's (Gertrude Messinger) hoodlum boyfriend (Louis Natheaux). Meanwhile Richard Lang's friend John Frazer (Lloyd Ingraham) is getting increasingly jealous of how his young wife (Phyllis Barrington) hangs around Lang...

Although a bit slow at times and frequently ridiculous overall it is a decent murder mystery film that plods along. The addition of the occult adds that little something to raise it above the mundane.