Darkened rooms (1929)

Phony spiritualists were given a good going-over in the early talkie melodrama Darkened Rooms. Evelyn Brent stars as Ellen, a fraudulent medium working in cahoots with genuine clairvoyant Emory Jago (Neil Hamilton). The plotline is secondary; the film's main purpose was to emulate the methods of such professional "de-bunkers" as Mrs. Harry Houdini by exposing the various tricks of the spiritualist's trade.