It's not surprising that the magician Cagliostro attracted the attention of Universal execs looking for a vehicle for Bela Lugosi, and then later Boris Karloff in the early 1930s - the mad mysterious physician inspired several books and films over the years. But the treatment turned out here by Nina Wilcox Putnam isn't very good - it simply rips off Dracula with its story of an immortal man who falls in love with a young woman who looks like his former love - only she's in love with a handsome young man who has a Van Helsing style mentor. There's black servants and a killing spree and invisible rays - it isn't very scary or memorable. What's more there's not much Cagliostro either - just "Dr Astro" (it's set in the present day). However you can see several things which were later used by John Balderstone when he turned this into The Mummy.
It is a shame Lugosi or Karloff never got to play Cagliostro - and certainly both men made movies with worse stories than the one here. But this was definitely not a Classic that got Away and Universal made the right decision not to make it.
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