Reviews & Ratings for
The Wizard More at IMDbPro »

27 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
One of the great forgotten silent masterpieces!!!!, 16 April 2007

Author: Trent Bolden from Chinatown, California

The Wizard (1927) is undeniably the best of the three page-to-screen adaptations of the famous Gaston Leroux novel, Balaoo. The film is one of those classic "melodramatic mystery cinemas" whose plots are based on the immorality of a creature below the human race in evolutionary development. In this case, the creature is created by a devilish surgeon Prof. Paul Coriolos (Gustav von Seyffertitz) to succeed the mortality of four people who convicted his son to the "gallows"; obviously one of the four people is the heroine Anne Webster (Leila Hyams) and the hero, a young newspaper reporter Stanley Gordon (Edmund Lowe), saves her from the detrimental embraces. Of course, The Wizard is one of those films that has an extreme amount of excitement, however, has a touching feeling that will turn your terror into laughter. Lowe plays the hero with a brightly colour, Hyams (one of films most underrated actresses), as always, is charming as the heroine and drop-dead gorgeous, and the creature is effectively played by George Kotsonaros. The Wizard is a silent mystery film with horrific overtones, that is certainly a classic that shamefully doesn't receive the credit it so seemingly deserves. A masterpiece!

5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Uh ... this film is supposed to be lost, 26 September 2008
Author: bill-890 from Australia

Most sources think The Wizard is a lost film. The Silent Era website lists its survival status as "unknown". So I am not sure how to take the authoritative comment published here, even if 25 others have found it useful. If Trent Bolden owns a print, or has seen one, it would be a good idea for him to tell us the wheres and the whens (or as much as he can). As it is, there does not seem to be much concrete foundation for his enthusiasm - which means that it is easy for cynics to dismiss everything he says about what, after all, may well be a significant silent horror film. I can understand if Bolden cannot tell us much about the print he saw. Whatever elements of the film may have survived will probably not be from the Fox vaults or a print held in any of the world's film archives. So the most likely source is a private collector, and some collectors are very, very unwilling to reveal what they have for fear that some law or another will force them to give it up.

4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Lost, Lost, Lost, 14 April 2009
Author: jsalsberg from United States

THE WIZARD is, indeed, a lost film. The negative was destroyed in a vault fire in 1937, and no copies of the film have surfaced since. So anyone who claims to have seen the movie should prove it or shut up. THE WIZARD was not widely shown, even in its day. The few reviews it received said the film was only mediocre at best. Definitely not the classic some would have us believe. However, like London AFTER MIDNIGHT, the film's publicity photos promise much, what with their hideous ape monster and scowling hook-nosed villain; that, alone, often leads modern day fans to assume the film is a classic. Would that it were.

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