Miracles for Sale

Clever variation on the amateur sleuth movies so popular at the time. Morgan (Young) is an expert magician who devises tricks for other illusionists, and also arbitrates between greedy tricksters and genuine psychics. In fact, the script goes to some lengths to allow for real psychic experiences, probably so as not to offend believers. Anyway a dislikable trickster is murdered under mysterious circumstances, while fetching ingénue, Judy Barclay's (Rice) life is threatened. But why, and by whom. Now Morgan has to play amateur detective and unravel the various strange happenings.

MGM produced, so no production corners are cut. This shows up in several fairly elaborate sets. The magician theme cries out for noirish touches that are occasionally present, but not enough to create real atmosphere. Nonetheless, there are enough spooky twists to keep up a good level of moody suspense. The plot's pretty involved, as might be expected with all the tricks going on. So you may need the proverbial scorecard. Still, a couple scenes are really jarring, especially the splayed bodies inside diabolical designs.

In the lead, Young is super-smooth and likable, while spook girl Holden (Madame Rapport) gets to look other-worldly. There's some humor, but thankfully it's not clownish as was common for these amateur sleuth films. Anyway, the 70-minutes amounts to an imaginative little B-entry for a studio that did not specialize in them.