"The Magician" {1926} is directed by Rex Ingram and stars Alice Terry as Margaret, Ivan Pétrovich as Dr Arthur Burdon and Paul Wegener as Oliver Haddo, the villainous practitioner of Black Magic.

If one is willing to make the necessary suspension of disbelief there isn't the slightest doubt but that the film provides loads of entertainment as a horror/thriller combination.

The two leads don't have very much to do in terms of acting. Burdon is the usual faithful hero and Alice Terry's character spends most of her time staring helplessly about in a trance and looking full of Angst. Paul Wegner (who directed "The Golum" (1920)} steals every scene he's in with a wonderfully spectacular over-the-top melodramatic portrayal of the Magician who needs the heart blood of a maiden to create life {hmm . . . I wonder who's supposed to provide that ingredient}.

Another star in the film is the great cliff-top, tower-castle of Hadoo himself, surrounded with bolts of lightning and filled with such items as strange potions which bubble and foam with a satisfactorily smoking violence, strange manuscripts and sinister props. When Hadoo picks up his box of sharp knives, one can't help noticing the nearby cupboard topped with a skull nicely festooned with cobwebs. There's the expected winding staircase to impede the heroic rescue and an open fully fired-up incinerator helps us along to the climax which ends with a suitable cataclysm.