REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


TRICK FOR TRICK. Fox, 1933. Ralph Morgan, Victor Jory, Sally Blane, Tom Dugan, Clifford Jones, Luis Alberni, Edward Van Sloan, Willard Robertson, Dorothy Appleby. Photography: L. William O’Connell; art director: Duncan Cramer; technical effects: Wm. Cameron Menzies. Director: Hamilton McFadden. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

TRICK FOR TRICK Ralph Morgan

   Six months after the unsolved murder of a young woman who had been an assistant to magician Azrah (Morgan), Azrah arranges for a seance that will be attended by his former partner La Tour (Jory), as well by detectives and interested parties who may also be suspects.

   The seance is abruptly ended when la Tour is murdered and general confusion and much activity inside and outside Azrah’s stone fortress, a veritable castle of magic, ensues until everything is sorted out and the culprit is revealed.

   “Sorting out” is probably something of an exaggeration since the plot of this hokey Gothic melodrama is even more confusing than the plot of The Big Sleep

   I had seen this film many years ago, probably at Cinevent, and had remembered it as an entertaining mystery, with its most striking feature the magician’s castle, a cornucopia of special effects engineered by film wizard William Cameron Menzies.

TRICK FOR TRICK Ralph Morgan

   Those effects are still a treat, but the wildly improbable plot that brings in a sinister midget and his Chinese sidekick, a mad scientist wonderfully played by Luis Alberni in a style just the other side of manic, and the woeful relegation of Jory to what almost amounts to a cameo role, make this somewhat more animated than Sh! the Octopus but even more confusing.

   Having said all that, I must still admit that I enjoyed the film, although I’ll not be teasing people, as I have for some years, with the admonition that this is a film “you just can’t miss.”