During a performance of stage magician Mandrake (Anthony Herrera), an
audience member dies all too suddenly. The weird thing about it, the man,
one professor Lindsay (David Hooks), an acquaintance of Mandrake, is
supposed to have died 2 years ago. And on the way to the hospital, his
body disappears. Mandrake follows the only clue he's got, the dead man's
last word "Arkadian" - which leads him to rich businessman
Arkadian (Robert Reed), who much like professor Lindsay and Mandrake
himself has some secret service links. Arkadian doesn't seem to be above
suspicion himself, but then several of his businesses - warehouses,
rollercoasters etc - start to get blown up, and the culprits are always
loyal employees, acting as if they were sleepers, activated by some kind
of hypnosis, who usually also die in the explosions. Eventually, the
professor's daughter Jennifer (Gretchen Corbett) is killed, and when
Mandrake follows one of the baddies' sleepers, he is captured, his magic
amulet is taken from him, and he is put in a strait jacked, so no more
magic for Mandrake. Mandrake then meets the lead villain, Romero (Peter
Haskell), another former secret service man, who wants to blackmail the
white out of Arkadian's eye, then out of the country as a whole. And he
has kidnapped the professor (who still isn't dead despite dying twice) to
develop some infernal machine for him, and his daughter's supposed to keep
him in line. Of course, ultimately Mandrake manages to wriggle out of
his strait jacket, get hold of his amulet, and defeat the baddie and his
henchmen, using quite a bit of magic ... A failed TV-pilot, and
for a change, it's easy to see why: The story is long-winded and
over-convoluted, but at the same time simplistic and lacking any real
peaks, Mandrake as a character is boring and empty and lacks all the
flamboyance usually associated with a stage magician, the use of his magic
powers is ridiculous, as it seems every time the story has come to a halt,
he just pulls a new ability out of his hat (sorry for the pun), which also
derives the film most of its tension and suspense. And if you add to all
of this an indifferent and impersonal direction, you are left with nothing
you really need to see.
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