Today's post is about the megalomaniac and would-be world dominator, Roxor, who has kidnaped a man and his death ray invention in hopes of using it to degenerate humanity into mindless brutes, leaving himself as Earth's supreme intelligence! Faced with revealing the machine's secrets or allowing his family to die a horrible death at the hands of Roxor, the inventor's only hope lies with the intervention of his brother-in-law, the turbaned yogi and magician, Chandu, who has the power to make men see what is not there!
The movie stars Edmund (AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS) Lowe as Chandu, aka Frank Chandler, Irene (THE RAVEN) Ware as Princess Nadji and Bela (THE BLACK SLEEP) Lugosi as the evil Roxor.
Here's Chandu entertaining the troops in India with the old magic rope trick, where a youngster climbs to the top of the hemp and rings the bell!
In another place, inventor Robert Regent is testing his new death ray, and guess what?.. Yeah, the freakin' thing works better than expected!
Here's a beautiful shot at dusk of the boat that has brought Chandu and Princess Nadji to their port of danger.
In the meantime, Roxor's goons have kidnapped Regent and his death ray and taken them to the madman's hidden mountain castle. Roxor gets the word from a gopher that there are people coming their way...
Here's one of Chandu's comedy relief pals climbing up the giant wall surrounding Roxor's castle. Besides being terrorized by vultures, our guy looks down to see all the people that didn't make it up the wall. Like, where in the Hell did they get all those damn skeletons?!
Here's the other comedy relief guy. His story is that he drinks a lot and then sees a mini version of himself that he can argue with!!!
Wow, check out this set... It's beyond amazing!
Anyway, Roxor has Chandu put in an Egyptian coffin and dumped into a deep pond!!.. Don't worry, he barely makes it back to the surface alive.
Roxor puts people in this room that the floor drops down and send them to their death down a huge hole!!..
NOT COOL!!
And now, Roxor is ready to start the demolition of the world!..
Let the destruction begin!!
Oops!! Guess who shows up unexpectedly?!.. Now, Roxor is one unhappy camper!
Well, Chandu hypnotizes Roxor into believing he cannot move. Roxor is unable to stop the energy flow of the machine and the place is ready to blow!!
And, it does, bringing this wild tale to an end... Tune in tomorrow for more precious Dungeon Cargo, just for you and those guys over there!!
The movie is available on DVD, and the radio series is available on CD. You can find it at Amazon.com or on ebay. There may be episodes of the radio show on Youtube.
ReplyDeleteTwo years later, there was a sequel, The Return of Chandu. Lugosi played the titular hero in that one.
The character may have been an influence on Marvel Comics' Doctor Strange.