Famous illusionist Harry Houdini produced this melodramatic potboiler of suspended animation, reincarnation and betrayal.

When he is discovered frozen for a hundred years in Arctic ice, the revitalized Howard Hillary (Houdini) is desperate to recover his lost love Felice (Jane Connelly). Back in civilization, Howard discovers another Felice, who resembles his love, is being married the smarmy Dr. Trent (Arthur Maude) and disrupts the ceremony. Felice calls off the wedding when she discovers that her father has gone missing for the past year from the scientific expedition that discovered Hillary. Somehow convinced that his love and this new Felice are somehow the same person, Hillary dedicates himself to solving the mystery of her missing father. Trent accuses Hillary of his murder, but Trent is soon revealed as being responsible for the disappearance. Felice is kidnapped by Trent, who wants to drug and then marry her but is interrupted (again) by Hillary. Felice escapes while the two struggle, chased by a henchman to the banks of the Niagara River. When she tries to cross the river in a canoe, the currents carry her down river pursued by Hillary, who must rescue her before she goes over the great falls.

What isn’t explained is why Hillary isn't shocked by the existence of automobiles before he is told the truth of his modern situation., and how he manages to be resourceful enough in a modern world to uncover Trent’s treachery.

Houdini is OK as the hero in this subpar melodramtic production, which is short on logic and long on hokum. — Carl Bennett

This edition of this feature film has been mastered from a VHS videotape copy of a transferred 16mm reduction print, with freeze-framed intertitles each with an Alpha Video logomark on them. As is typical, the disc has been mastered as a sub-par bit-rate rendering jerky image details, as occasionally portions of the picture seem to leap out of alignment to their surrounding details. The video transfer has been made at a faster than natural pace, with some sections running annoyingly too fast. The print itself is contrasty, with plugged-up shadow details and blasted-out highlights, and little of the original 35mm image detail left in this, probably 1960s vintage, sub-par dupe.

The film appears to be missing some footage as evidenced by several splices and by a substantial narrative jump shortly after Dr. Trent’s accusation of murder, as wormy Duval suddenly confesses at the steps of the city prison to a conspiracy to frame Hillary. How Duval was convinced to change from false witness to confessor has been lost with the missing footage.

The film is accompanied by a MIDI-keyboard and digital piano music score performed by Rachel Gutches that does the job but does little to entertain or impress viewers.

Like it or not, this so-so product is the best available on home video that we have seen.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

We can see that this edition is the result of a lot of work — the digitally-generated music accompanying the film is sometimes better than that on the Alpha edition — but to what end? Much of this effort would not have been necessary had edition producer Bruce Cardozo started with a new video transfer from the best-available print, even if it was from a 16mm print.

Take note, this is one of the few times that we recommend an Alpha Video edition over another. This one is to be avoided, unless you’re a masochist.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc is available from Restored Serials Super Restoration Corp.