"Chandu the Magician" by William Cameron Menzies (1932)

After I enjoyed watching Netflix's "Hollywood", I moved on to allegedly popular "Stranger Things" but there was something so derivative about it - apparently this was a homage to both Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, which means I was very familiar with the story frame about kids on the bicycles running away from dangerous secret agents. I have seen shows like these, in fact I grew up watching shows like these so suddenly this was just too annoying and I gave up after two episodes. In a spur of the moment, I knew intuitively what would work and what would make me happy - one of those wonderful old black & white classics. 

And I was perfectly right. I wanted a glorious escapism, the opening credits waved by magicians hands because the hero of this movie was Frank Chandler known as Chandu and he is a perfect gentleman who somehow acquired occult knowledge from yogi in India. He is bowing to them, they are bowing to him, than he walks trough the fire to show them how much he has learned from them and everybody is happy. But - there is always but - there is a danger somewhere in Cairo and yogi are sending Chandu there to take care of great threat to humanity. You see, its not yogi but destiny that sends Chandu there because his family is there, threatened by mad Bela Lugosi and to add some spice, Lugosi also kidnaps beautiful Egyptian Princess Nadji (who looks nothing like Egyptian and wears jodhpurs) who is Chandu's old flame. It is all wonderfully silly and naive, with a lot of old-fashioned special effects that must have been thrilling in 1930s but are naturally just charming today - I have seen enough of these kinds of movies to recognise every cliché ("oh mother!", "oh father!", Middle Easterners are evil, British must be good, etc) and its still great to watch because it is so cartoonish and wholesome. Because the roots of Chandu are actually in than-popular radio show, its all very much like a pulp fiction, each scene motivated by the next, lots of cliffhangers and characters basically being one-dimensional - well, never mind. I thought it was wonderful and loved every single moment of it. Honestly, when it comes to cinema, I love nothing better than old black & white movies. I do seriously think that the scenery here might in the future inspire the adventures of Indiana Jones.