Mandrake the Magician 12 Chapter movie serial.
Mandrake in this serial works with conjuring tricks and sleight of hand instead of all the all-powerful hypnotism in the comics. Lothar is portrayed as an Asian with hair instead of a giant bald African. Unlike the comics where Lothar handles the fighting, Mandrake goes from fight to fight, which is just as well as Lothar is a weak imitation of the comic character. The fights are not too convincing and the music is a little too loud in the action scenes, of which there are plenty. The villain is The Wasp, a man in a cloak, mask and hat who gives orders to his gang from a movie screen.

Thieves learn that Professor Houston has been perfecting a machine which will create radium energy and plot to steal it. Daughter Betty telegraphs Mandrake for help. He is just returning from Shanghai and Tibet on the S.S.Mohawk. A lama in Tibet has told him a formula for mixing the already tough Platinite with steel to make it even tougher. However, Platinite is very rare and only found in one place, in America.

The Wasp uses the sign of a wasp on a wall as well as a buzzing sound to announce his presence to the professor, which Mandrake later reveals was simply a torch shining through an image of a wasp to project a picture. Mandrake survives two death attempts and a car chase before meeting the professor, with friends Bennett and Webster who turn up just after him. The prof reveals that his ray is far more powerful than radium and gives a demonstration of the inevitable death-ray, which at the end of the first episode is inevitably used on Mandrake.

text from wikipedia

RELEASED 7 DECEMBER 1939, IT ENTERED PUBLIC DOMAIN 8 DECEMBER 1967