Sucker Money (1933)

By John Chard

Hokum Bokum. Victims of the Beyond (AKA: Sucker Money) is directed by Melville Shyer and Dorothy Davenport (as Dorothy Reid) and written by Willis Kent. It stars Mischa Auer, Phyllis Barrington, Earl McCarthy, Ralph Lewis and Mae Busch. For the era it was made this deserves credit for being a fore runner to a splinter of films dealing with spiritualism - notably as a fake exercise. Unfortunately for dramatic worth it has nothing of note to offer. Plot essentially has fake medium Swami Yomurda (Auer) using his nefarious means to swindle persons of wealth out of money. Enter an undercover reporter who is intrepid in trying to unmask the scammers and save the day. The End! It's all a bit creaky, the direction, the acting and the production as a whole really doesn't have much going for it. The premise at the core is interesting enough to hold attention for the short one hour run time - even if the first fifteen minutes drag and hardly entice one to stay through the rest of the play. Plenty of séance scenes are decently played, and thus rewards those into such shenanigans, but it becomes tiresome and the writing simply isn't good enough to drive home some thriller possibilities. 4/10