Religious Racketeers

Wealthy Helene LeBerthon misses her recently deceased mother. Betty Compson takes her to see Robert Fiske, a religious faker who dresses in a brocaded smoking jacket and wears a Phrygian Cap with a beer tap on it. Despite the interest of her would-be lover Elliot Cole, she falls for the act and heads off to Egypt (indicated by a picture of the Sphynx and the Great Pyramid on a scrim), where the ladies don't recognize Fiske because he now wears a burnoose. Cole shows up, so he sends them to India, where he is now unrecognizable because he wears a white toupee, a beard and robes. There's also a brief appearance by Houdini's widow (credited as "Madame Houdini") who tells her maid that she's not going to be contacted by her husband.

This clearly is an exploitation picture and no doubt the producers "four-walled" it; that means that they rented the movie theater and kept all the receipts. It's also cheap and awful, directed by Frank O'Connor, who acted in more than six hundred movies from 1915 until his death in 1959; if you guessed he rarely played the lead, you would be correct. His directorial career covered 22 movies from 1921 through 1930 and this outlier.

Fans of Jimmy Aubrey will see him in the Indian segment, where he plays a British soldier who directs everyone to "The hotel beyond the temple. Tell them Tommy sent you." He looks like he wants a tip for the information. It's the best performance in the movie.

As a person who studies (and practices) the occult arts, and who loves old films, i make a special point of obtaining early talkies that feature seances, fortune tellers, mystics, seers, and the like. In almost all cases, the occultists are depicted as frauds, although occasionally a little loophole of "the unexplained" is left over at the wrap-up of the plot to provide a hint of supernatural possibility.

I don't expect much sympathy for the occult in such movies, and so i enjoy them for what they are, and always keep a sharp eye out for interesting costuming, historical sets, exposures of stage illusions used by fraudulent mediums, vintage or antique props (often Orientalia), and intriguing special effects meant to simulate paranormal -- or fraudulently paranormal -- events.

"The Mystic Circle Murder" is the name under which i obtained this film (from Alpha Video), although i understand that its original title was "Religious Racketeers" -- and those two titles immediately reveal the problem of the plot: it serves two masters. Is it a murder mystery -- or an expose of religious rackets? It tries to be both, but straddling the fence leaves scant screen-time for either plot to unfold to its full possible extent.

Betty Compson is really good as a woman slowly destroyed by love for a man who has cast her aside, but then along comes the widow of Harry Houdini (whose scenes look spliced in, as she has virtually no interaction with the rest of the cast), and we are suddenly watching a moralizing educational film about fake psychics and their tricks.

I consider this a very interesting movie that will appeal greatly to those with a special interest in films about the international occult community and/or stage magic during the 1930s -- but for many other folks, i think it will simply register as another B-film from a cheap studio.