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THE
ADVENTURES OF
CAPTAIN AFRICA
(1955)
By Bruce Dettman
With only a few
exceptions most Hollywood sequels don’t live up to expectations although
there are a handful of efforts such as The Bride of Frankenstein
and Godfather II which prove that this doesn’t necessarily have
to be the case.
Usually sequels are limp
and uninspired re-workings of the parent product, lazy retreads churned
out quickly to take advantage of the success of the original. But
sometimes sequels are even worse than this. Sometimes they are simply
drop dead awful.
The Adventures of
Captain Africa, a cliffhanger produced by Columbia Studios in 1955,
falls into this latter category. It is, in fact, one of the worst
serials ever made, not a minor achievement given some of the bottom of
the barrels chapter-plays turned out in the closing days of this film
genre.
Originally The
Adventures of Captain Africa was intended to be a follow-up to
Columbia Studio’s earlier offering The Phantom produced in 1943
and based on the popular Lee Falk comic strip character. The Phantom
starred Tom Tyler, a former record-holding weightlifter and western
player, who in costume physically bore a startling resemblance to Falk’s
purple-suited and masked creation. A solid serial but not a great one,
it boasted good action and was fairly loyal to its comic strip
storyline.
Twelve years later the
folks at Columbia (that is to say producer Sam Katzman) got it into
their heads to make a second Phantom serial, this one staring John Hart
who had appeared in the studio’s earlier cliffhanger Jack Armstrong,
The All American Boy and would go on to replace Clayton Moore for a
couple of seasons on The Lone Ranger television show.
Cliffhangers had been
dying a slow death beginning some years earlier and their life
expectancy wasn’t long. Budgets had been slashed and early TV adventure
and comic book inspired shows were beginning to encroach on their
territory. In order to trim costs even further many serials produced in
the 1950s were shoddy makeovers, old concepts with a thinly applied coat
of celluloid paint that relied heavily upon resurrected scenes from
older and better serials. To this end actors were often hired to match
stock footage of other performers from earlier productions, often even
dressed in the same costumes.
Such was going to be the
case of the Phantom sequel. In an interview recorded many years
later, Hart explained that the entire Phantom sequel was actually filmed
with him in the proper costume (stills exist depicting this). However,
a stumbling block occurred, when King Features, who owned the rights
to the character of The Phantom, wanted too much money to use him again.
This did not, however, deter skinflint Katzman who decided to go ahead
with the project only altering the character’s name to Captain Africa
and slightly changing the familiar comic book costume. Again according
to Hart—who erroneously also claimed that Tom Tyler actually purchased
the rights to The Phantom and refused to relinquish them—aside from
certain shots, the entire serial was scrapped and re-filmed as The
Adventures of Captain Africa. Captain Africa wore a similar double
holstered gun belt as his precursor but the skintight purple outfit with
the striped trunks, hood and mask were replaced by a heavy-turtleneck
sweater and an aviator helmet and goggles. It was hardly an improvement.
Frankly, the serial is a
total mess. Screenwriter George Plympton and director Spencer Bennett
went back to the drawing board and fashioned a crazy-quilt concoction
made of scenes from the first Phantom serial, the aborted sequel,
several other of the studio’s cliffhangers and shot after shot of stock
footage clumsily woven together within a totally nonsensical storyline.
To aid in making some sense out of this a voice-over narration was also
introduced. It didn’t help.
The plot, which takes
place in what is described as the Near East has something to do
with an attempt on the part of Nat Coleman (Bud Osborne), an animal
trapper, and Ted Arnold (Rick Valin), an adventurer who works for a
world government agency (hmmmm the United Nations perhaps), to help
Nat’s native assistant Omar (Ben Weldon) who is working against the evil
intentions of bad guys Boris and Greg, to help restore his country’s
throne to its rightful heir, the disposed caliph. Although they get into
assorted scrapes along the way they are invariably assisted by the
mysterious Captain Africa, described as a strange being that the
natives fear but worship.
The Adventures of
Captain Africa, in addition to being one of the talkiest, most
long-winded, action free and dullest serials ever produced, also looks
as if it was filmed thirty years earlier. In comparison to watching this
crawl along observing paint dry is an exciting spectator sport.
One can only imagine
what the actors made of all of this. The reshuffle from the earlier
shoot and attempt to integrate so much diverse footage into the action
as a means to curb costs must have made things very confusing. Moreover,
serials, particularly Columbia serials, were on an incredibly minuscule
budget already so the idea of having to film this production twice must
have really caused havoc with the front office.
In any case, the
performances, like the serial itself, run the gamut from indifferent to
embarrassing, but to be fair, given the mishmash of the production, one
can hardly hold the most likely bewildered players responsible. It was
undoubtedly a payday they wouldn’t have minded forgetting about.
As Captain Africa poor
John Hart has little to do but stand in a bunch of potted
plants—doubling for an exotic jungle—pretending to observe the action
going on around him. Likable Bud Osbourne, traditionally a fixture in
“B” westerns, probably has more dialog in this than the sum total of
lines spoken by him in all his other films combined. He seems completely
out of his element and Rick Valin, who shares most of his scenes with
Osbourne, looks similarly uncomfortable and perplexed. The always
enjoyable Ben Weldon as Omar gets to play a good guy for once but seems
more silly than sincere. While there is really no female lead, a
lackluster June Howard portrays Princess Rhoda with all the pizzazz of a
park bench. Familiar faces Lee Roberts and Terry Frost are the bad guys
Boris and Greg.
Judging by this
production, the motion picture serial was not just dying. It was
mercifully putting itself out of its own misery.
July 2010
BLACKHAWK
(1952)
By Bruce Dettman
The comic book Blackhawk debuted in
1941 in an issue of Military Comics. It was the combined creation
of Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera and Bob Powell. Blackhawk was the
name taken by Janos Prohaska, an American pilot who joined the Polish
Air Force in 1939 to fight the Germans who, under the orders of arch
enemy Captain Von Tepp, had killed his brother and sister.
His response was to
create his own small army of dedicated men, all representing different
international backgrounds, to wage war against the enemies of democracy.
In this capacity – and now known as Blackhawk – he adopted an all blue
uniform with a yellow and black insignia with the other members of his
team decked out in the same attire sans the decal.
There was also a
short-lived Blackhawk radio series which ran in 1950. When two
years later Columbia Pictures decided to film a cliffhanger based on the
comics they had one of their screenwriters George Plympton (the others
were Royal Cole and Sherman Lowe) listen to one of the broadcasts to get
an idea of the flavor of the characters and stories. The result for him
was constant confusion as the airwaves were filled with a myriad of
different accents from the actors making the storyline almost
incomprehensible.
For this reason the
serial version of Blackhawk featured no such accents and all the
members of Blackhawk’s team speak in perfect English. Because of this
change the concept lost nearly all of its international flavor but at
least the kids in the audience were able to understand what was going
on.
The plot of Blackhawk
is not particularly inventive, revolving as it does around a group
saboteurs led by the evil Laska out to destroy various American targets.
For the rest of the serial the Blackhawks do everything in their power
to thwart these enemies of America. Incidentally, for whatever reason,
the Blackhawks do not carry firearms. As explained by the serial’s
narrator at the beginning of each episode they have “no weapons but
their strong fists and alert minds,” not always sufficient weaponry when
facing dangerous agents armed with handguns. Quite often the Blackhawks
find it necessary to turn and run in the midst of a confrontation, a
rather disconcerting sight in a movie serial.
For the lead role of
Blackhawk (the “Fearless champion of freedom”) Columbia opted for Kirk
Alyn, fresh from his role as the screen’s first Superman. As the Man of
Steel, Alyn—and probably the director—had gone for a bigger-than-life
approach. Alyn’s Superman wasn’t exactly a braggart or boastful but he
was a bit on the cocky and bullyboy side. He took great pride, perhaps
even glee, in his powers and what he was able to do with them. He toned
things down for Blackhawk. No swagger here, just a dedicated
resolve to go after the enemies of America. His comic book past—the
revenge angle and all—is not dealt with. Alyn is fine in the part. He
seems to believe in what he is doing, probably the biggest hurdle for
any actor in a serial.
The other members of the
Blackhawk team are fairly forgettable. Robbed of their international
identities they’re pretty much just a bunch of faceless and
interchangeable guys running around in identical uniforms with little if
anything to give them individual traits or personalities. For the
record they are Chuck, the American (John Crawford), Olaf, the Teuton
(Don Harvey), Stanislaus, the Swede (Rick Vallin), Andre, the Frenchman
(Larry Stewart) and Hendrickson, the Pole (Frank Ellis). The only
member of the group who stands out is Chop Chop (Weaver Levy) who
fortunately is spared his comic book counterpart’s stereotypical Chinese
garb and his trademark pig tail.
The villains of the
piece, obviously working for a certain unnamed foreign government, are
your standard Columbia henchmen including Zon Murray, Marshall Reed,
Nick Stuart and Pierce Lynden. The head of the gang, his identity kept
secret for a couple of chapters, is Mr. Case portrayed by Michael Fox.
Even though it’s Case who pulls all the major strings, it’s Laska,
played by the sultry Carol Forman, who is (thankfully) the most visible
on-screen opponent of Blackhawk. Foreman was the serial’s last great
female villain and appeared in numerous cliffhangers produced by both
Republic and Columbia. Aside from her appearance in Superman
where, as the so-called “Spider Lady,” she sported a silly blonde wig
and just didn’t seem much of a legitimate match for the Man of Steel,
she was always terrific in her bad girl roles not to mention being
extremely easy on the eyes and often dwarfing the charms of the
so-called heroine. This was not an issue in Blackhawk, however
because this was one of the few serials ever produced, perhaps the only
one, where there is no heroine for the hero to save. There is only Laska,
the beautiful but evil enemy of America to contend with. And she’s a
handful with a self-serving mind of her own which ultimately gets her in
trouble with Case. “You are thinking of yourself rather than the party,”
he tells her in the last chapter. Of course, she doesn’t listen.
Unlike many other
serials of this later period which had become extremely studio bound as
location shooting was minimized for budgetary reasons, Blackhawk
is just the opposite. Interiors, even studio street scenes, are
rare—although a few scenes can be found in foundries and industrial
plants—but the majority of the action takes place in country locations,
all of it looking pretty similar. There are fights in fields, on rural
roads, in orchards and on farmlands. Not having to build special sets
obviously cut down on costs for skinflint producer Sam Katzman who in
addition employs a very cheap animation process—as was the case in his
Superman serial—to depict a kind of flying disc that the Blackhawks have
to contend with.
Blackhawk could
have been a much better serial had the writing been stronger and the
characters of the unit been presented in a more interesting and
individualized manner. As it stands, each episode seems to be little
more than the bad guys being interrupted at work on their various
sabotage plans—most of which involve the attempted use of a special ray
gun (supposedly firing its charge at three times the speed of light!)—by
the group and engaging in some pretty clumsy fisticuffs. The fights
aren’t very well choreographed either (lots of obviously missed punches)
and, as in many Columbia serials, escapes from the cliffhangers are
rarely ever explained. Typical is an episode where the Blackhawks are
pushed onto train tracks by the bad guy’s car with a speeding locomotive
headed their way. The train hits them, their car lurches across the
tracks and they simply get out unscathed.
There are some pretty
embarrassing scenes as well, one particular one coming when Blackhawk
snags his parachute line just as he jumps out of a plane, seeming to
freefall to his death until he lands practically in the arms of Chuck
whose chute had successfully opened earlier. The sight of these two guys
hugging each other in space is pretty tough to take.
With a better budget and
a more inventive script Blackhawk could have been a lot more
interesting. But it was 1952 and the motion picture serial was pretty
much on its last wobbly legs. Just as with the unrepentant Laska, there
was no real way of saving it.
April 2010
Cliffhanger
Commentary:
‘Jungle Girl’
By Bruce
Dettman
Sex is generally a relatively benign quantity in
classic cliffhangers. Pretty girls are an active and much necessary
ingredient of the formula, some occasionally decked out in fairly
suggestive and exotic outfits, but with few exceptions most of the
distaff side are showcased not as main courses, but rather as ornamental
side dishes ready to be served up as possible victims to a river of
molten lava, a plunge from a mountain top or an uncomfortable brush with
a buzz saw. Ironically, it was the women in the early days of cinema
that really got the motion picture serial up and running.
There was Pauline, Helen, Elaine, and other damsels
in distress, and sometimes they gave as well as they got. It took the
ladies a bit longer to get a foothold in the talkie serials with early
players being little more than attractive window dressing. Things began
to change, much for the better, with some cliffhangers that suddenly
exploited the female sex and pushed them to the forefront of the action.
Moreover, the exotic femme fatale of far off locals, personified in
mainstream films by such appealing actresses as Dorothy Lamour,
Maria Montez, Yvonne De Carlo and others,
had become very popular with the public and good for the box-office as
well.
One of the most important cliffhangers promoting
this shift in format was Republic’s Jungle Girl (’41),
directed by William Witney and John English
and starring lovely Frances Gifford in the title role.
Jungle Girl was based on the 1929 Edgar Rice Burroughs
novel of the same name but had little, if anything, to do with the
original plotline. Republic was even responsible for the name
Nyoka Meredith, a factor which would figure in copyright issues
when the studio decided to make a sequel. Ms. Gifford invests what is a
fairly one-dimensional part with enormous energy and sincerity. The plot
devised by writers Alfred Batson, Ronald Davidson,
Norman Hall, William Lively,
Joseph Pollard and Joseph O’Donnell has
Nyoka living with her father, Dr. John Meredith, in Africa, the latter
having decided to distance himself from society due to the criminal
activities of his twin brother Bradley (both portrayed by Trevor
Bardette). He raised Nyoka in the jungle and is looked upon with
a reverence bordering on worship by the local natives for his medical
knowledge. They have even allowed him to be privy to their hidden stash
of diamonds. Only Shamba the witch doctor and his followers view the
doctor with disfavor. When Meredith’s twin, in league with a nefarious
cohort named Slick Latimer (Gerald Mohr), learns of the
diamonds they lure Dr. Meredith away, murder him and replace him with
brother whose physical resemblance initially fools everyone, even Nyoka.
The remainder of the serial is spent with the
jungle girl aided by aviators Jack Stanley (Tom Neal)
and Curly Rogers (Eddie Acuff) tangling with all these
various individuals as the culprits try to find a means to steal the
gems. Despite director Witney maintaining it to be one of their team’s
best directorial efforts—and to this day it maintains a substantial
reputation among serial aficionados—Jungle Girl is a bit
on the creaky side and not nearly the celluloid romp that distinguishes
its aforementioned follow-up, Perils of Nyoka starring
Kay Aldridge as Nyoka (though with the different last name of
Gordon). Although Jungle Girl was released only a year or
so before Perils, it has a decidedly older, less polished
and streamlined look and feel to it. Its legacy, to a large degree, is
due to the casting of Gifford, a one-time Paramount
contract player who was beautiful, athletic and undeniably sexy in her
form-fitting jungle duds. Apparently just being raised in the jungle has
taught Nyoka not only how to swing through trees, but incredibly (and
not very believably) how to single-handedly best a lion and alligator, a
good thing because Neal and Acuff are rarely of great help during these
wildlife wrestling sessions although, to give them credit, they do help
her out of some tight fixes, too many of which have to do with fire. A
few of the cliffhangers are also not thought out or that well executed.
Particularly coming to mind is a sequence on a
teetering log. In the more strenuous and demanding action sequences
stuntwoman Helen Thurston did the doubling for Gifford.
Dave Sharpe, donning wig and jungle skirt, was
responsible for the remarkable tree swinging sequences many of which put
similar Johnny Weissmuller/Tarzan scenes to
shame. The supporting cast is a mixed bag. The lead villain is the
always dependable Gerald Mohr with Frank Lackteen
as native bad guy Shamba and the always reliable Trevor Bardette
effective as both Nyoka’s principled father and his back-stabbing twin.
Real-life bad boy Tom Neal, who several years later nearly
killed fellow actor Franchot Tone with his fists and
eventually ended up in prison on manslaughter charges, is handsome and
rugged as main hero Jack and handles himself well in the action
sequences, but when he opens his mouth comes across as a real blockhead.
Sidekick Eddie Acuff tries too hard to be funny with all
his asides and mutterings, but, well, just isn’t.
Tommy Cook, later Little Beaver
in Adventures of Red Ryder and who also showed up in
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman where he tangled with
Johnny Sheffield’s Boy, was always one of
Hollywood’s more obnoxious child actors and doesn’t change his ways here
as native boy Kimbu. Also seen are Emil Horne in his
familiar gorilla outfit, Jay Silverheels, a few years away
from gaining media immortality as Tonto to Clayton
Moore’s Lone Ranger, as one of the natives, plus old familiars
Bud Geary, Ken Terrell and Al Taylor.
The serial was filmed at various California locals
and looks about as much like Africa as Brooklyn looks like Hawaii which,
I suppose, is appropriate since the natives appear more as tropical
islanders than Africans. In nearly every scene, set against those rocky
crannies and dusty trails at Iverson Ranch usually
featured in Republic’s western productions, you wouldn’t be surprised to
suddenly see Roy Rogers or Wild Bill Elliott
on horseback tearing around the corner. Jungle Girl, while
trendsetting in many ways, does not, for various reasons hold up as well
as some of Republic’s other famous serials of the period. While there
are pleasing performances and some good action sequences, there is
something faintly disjointed and awkward about the execution of the
plotline as well as some jarring editing and unimaginative photography
that combines to render it more shopworn and beleaguered by age than it
should be, given the freshness of other Republic products of the same
period.
All the same, for all of this there is—and always
will be—the lovely, talented Frances Gifford.
February 2010
Don
Daredevil Rides Again
By Bruce Dettman
When,
thanks to Walt Disney acquiring the trademark name
Zorro for his own weekly series which would end up being put on
the back burner for a couple of years, Republic had to
make a decision on whether to simply retire the character—who for so
long had been such a stable of their western cliffhangers—or just drop
the moniker and reinvent the mythology behind the old costume, it wasn’t
hard to figure out which route the budget conscious company would take.
In truth, the only legitimate Zorro serial the studio had
ever produced had been ‘39s’ Zorro’s Fighting Legion, with
the remainder of their Zorro franchise being devoted to
the sons, grandsons, and other relatives of the original character (with
one outing, Zorro’s Black Whip, not even mentioning the
name or featuring and actual family descendent, employing only the name
in the title).
What did it really matter then, particularly given
the last dying gasps of the cliffhanger in the 50s, if the Zorro
trade name was sacrificed so the mask could live again? The result of
this decision was Don Daredevil Rides Again, a 12 chapter
western cliffhanger directed by Fred C. Brannon
and written by Ronald Davidson, which brought the familiar
black duds out of the mothballs while at the same time adding several
new wrinkles to this story of a masked avenger in the Wild West.
When and old Spanish land grant is determined to be
a forgery, a group of ranchers are in danger of losing their property to
local political boss Roy Barcroft who has his men
attempt—by any means possible—to stake out mineral claims and homesteads
on their land. Resisting this is Aline Towne,
granddaughter of the original owner of Doyle Ranch and neighbor
Robert Eisner. Things are looking pretty grim for them until
Aline’s lawyer, cousin Ken Curtis, shows up from the East
circumvents Barcroft’s plans by filing on Aline’s behalf for the
property. There are still other ranchers in a vulnerable position,
however, and Barcroft wastes no time in going after them. In an attempt
to curtail his felonious schemes, Ken, at the urging of crusty old
foreman Hank Patterson, decides to impersonate Don
Daredevil, a character created by his grandfather some 40 years
before, a fact which initially makes some to the bad guys and locals
wonder if this isn’t actually the ghost of the masked rider.
Interestingly enough, the Daredevil gear apparently includes the same
guns the original masked rider used which, given the date of the
historical period of this serial, would indicate six shooters were
employed in the 1840s. Don’t think so. Oh, well, a minor detail. In
truth, this is anything but a remarkable or standout serial. There’s a
huge amount of old footage, much of it derived from earlier
Republic/Zorro outings, the cliffhangers are exactly what one would
expect in the limiting confines of a western time frame and setting
(numerous plunges off cliffs, fires, explosions in line shacks, etc.)
and you can always see what’s coming a good mile away.
Yet, perhaps because of the memories it somehow
stirs of older and better days of the cliffhanger, the likable cast and
yes, that old much put-upon Zorro costume, Don Daredevil, for those not
expecting anything but an entertaining ride, can be diverting and even
fun. Ken Curtis (who seems to be wearing an old
Allan Lane getup), years before he would assume the role of
grizzled old Festus on TVs long running Gunsmoke,
is a rather slender hero to be tangling with the likes of bad guys
Roy Barcroft, Lane Bradford and John
Cason, but he somehow pull it off. He’s more of a thinking man’s
serial hero than most and seems to resort to his Don Daredevil alter ego
only as a last resort. Not always the most accurate shot (in fact, until
the last episode no in this serial seems to be able to hit the
proverbial broadside of a barn) he also gets himself in trouble not
watching where he is going while galloping along, subsequently colliding
with a sturdy tree branch which knocks him to the ground and places him
at the mercy of one of the villains. However, I did like the scene where
he gets wind of the fact the fastest gun in the west Dale Van
Sickel is looking for him. Instead of trying the impossible and
outdrawing the gunman, he tosses his own gun away and instead beats him
in a fist fight. Speaking of fighting, although stuntmen such as
Tom Steele (also seem briefly as an outlaw as is Dave
Sharpe) can clearly be glimpsed at work, the actors seem to be
doing much more of the action work than usual. Old pros Bradford,
Barcroft and Cason are always up to their villainous tasks and, aside
from a few nameless/faceless cronies who appear just long enough to be
sacrificed (therefore not needing much of a paycheck from Republic),
it’s those three that Don Daredevil mostly has to contend with.
In addition, the cast includes I. Stanford
Jolley (as perhaps the most overtly corrupt sheriff of all
times), Lee Phelps, Michael Ragan and
Guy Teague. Uncredited, Jack Ingram and Bud
Osborne show up as bartenders. Again, you’ll never find
Don Daredevil Rides Again on any list of great serials, but
does have its moment, some good performances and its own fans as well.
And just as you can’t keep a good man down, the mask wasn’t finished yet
and would return three years later in Man with the Steel Whip.
But that’s another story.
January 2010
ZOMBIES
OF THE STRATOSPHERE
By
Bruce Dettman
Republic Studio’s famed
Rocketman flying suit figured prominently in three cliffhangers and one
TV series all produced as the 1940s came to an end and the 1950s took
off. In addition, a trio of different heroes donned the leather-jacketed
uniform fitted with a jet pack and a cone-shaped flying helmet, Jeff
King, Commando Cody and Larry Martin. This begs the question were there
three different suits which each man wore when needed or were these
traded off from one savior of the world to the next, sort of like rental
tuxedos? We know that Professor Millard invented the first suit in
King of the Rocketmen in 1949 and gave it to King to use but then
what? Suddenly in 1952’s Radar Men from the Moon it’s said to be
Cody’s invention. Not a single mention of the good professor. Later in
that same year in Zombies Martin is designated as the suit’s
owner (he also seems to occupy Cody’s old office and his female helper
Sue, although using different first names, looks like the exact same
person, actress Aline Towne who worked for Cody). Confused? Well, it
gets even worse when the next year Commando Cody gets the thing back for
his television series where he is played by the same actor, Judd Holdren,
who once impersonated Larry Martin. So what gives? Wasn’t Professor
Millard smart enough to register a patent on his revolutionary flying
suit or did he farm the things out to a series of do-gooders he thought
were worthy of the honor? Or was Commando Cody just a name that Larry
Martin used on occasion like Jim Albright used Captain Midnight? I guess
I’ll leave this to greater minds to untangle.
Speaking of untangling,
Larry Martin has his work cut out for him in Zombies where for
twelve chapters he tries to figure out what is behind the visit to Earth
of two strange looking invaders from Mars named Marex (Lane Bradford)
and Narab (Leonard Nimoy—yes, that Leonard Nimoy). Although the
title and even some dialog refers to these two as zombies, there is
nothing about them resembling the resurrected corpses of folklore and
cinema that audiences have become familiar with. But it is a catchy
title.
What these two are up to
thanks to screenwriter Ronald Davidson’s script is nothing less than
blowing Earth off its axis with the use of a hydrogen bomb so that Mars
can take up the identical cosmic space and be rewarded by the superior
and friendlier climate the Earth has so long enjoyed. It’s an audacious
plan, to say the least, but these two are up to the challenge and it
takes the better part of the serial for Larry Martin to get wise to
things.
Marex and Narab have the
help of a scientist (Dr. Harding) who they blackmail into assisting
them, plus the usual strong-armed, home-grown henchman perfectly willing
to aid conquering space invaders never seeming to give any thought to
what’s waiting for them around the corner once the Earth is no more. To
complicate matters, the Martians, who can stay underwater for up to half
an hour, have a secret hideaway where they keep their H-bomb and this
sets in motion too many sluggish scenes of both villains and heroes
navigating through the depths.
As with most serials
filmed during the dying days of their production, Zombies sports
a relatively small cast with lots of old footage from earlier
cliffhangers but it mostly works. Judd Holdren, a veteran of a number of
serials, is bland but serviceable as Martin. Aline Towne, always better
than most of the films she found herself in, has little to do here but
hold down the fort while the heroes are off battling the bad guys (“Can
I go with you this time?,” she pleads at one point.) Western heavy Lane
Bradford is an odd choice for lead zombie Marex and John Crawford takes
up the villainous slack as the head terrestrial criminal. Also on hand
are Wilson Wood, Stanley Waxman, Craig Kelly, Ray Boyle and the
stunt/actor team of Tom Steele and Dale Van Sickel. And if you listen
closely you will hear Republic’s bad guy of all seasons—who is sorely
missed in this effort—Roy Barcroft lending his voice to that of both an
unseen radio announcer and a western wrangler in a scene lifted from an
old Roy Rogers oater.
The aforementioned water
sequences not withstanding, Zombies of the Stratosphere moves too
quickly and has too many over-the-top elements coming at the viewer to
stop for long to consider the incredible far-fetched scenario being
viewed. Author Davidson not only manages to resurrect Republic’s famed
water heater robot from 1940’s The Mysterious Dr. Satan (with
scenes lifted from that serial) but takes advantage of the cold war
atmosphere of the times and briefly brings the dreaded Ruskies into the
storyline.
Although there had been
science-fiction elements in a number of their earlier cliffhangers, the
post WWII world with its missiles, atomic power and reports of flying
saucers provided new thematic blood to the tiring old serial plots.
Whatever minimal logic there might have been in the serials of the past
was jettisoned in favor of pushing the sci-fi envelope to the max, at
least given the limited budgets and juvenile heroics inherent in chapter
plays. Director Fred Brannon helms the action here with good pacing and,
courtesy of the amazing Lydecker brothers, lots of flying sequences from
the earlier Rocketmen efforts. It’s probably the weakest of the three
Rocketmen productions but still has many moments of Saturday
matinee excitement and thrills.
November 2009
The
MONSTER and the APE
(1945)
By Bruce Dettman
Robots caught on quick.
It was only a few years after Czechoslovakian
author Karl Capek coined the term for his play R.U.R (which stood
for Rostrum’s Universal Robots) that cinema took notice and began to
integrate these metallic wonders into their storylines. The most famous
robot to be found in silent pictures was the female “robotrix” portrayed
by actress Bridget Helm from the German science-fiction film
Metropolis produced in 1926. From then on not only did the term
robot become a recognized part of the modern vernacular but part of
movie history as well.
Nonetheless, until relatively recently, robots were
rarely to be taken seriously save by the kids who flocked to theatres to
see them menacing the hero or heroine in cliffhangers, fantasy movies
and science-fiction thrillers. Robots could be found in everything from
serials like Flash Gordon and The Phantom Creeps to more
well-intentioned efforts such as Gog, Devil Girl from Mars,
Tobor the Great, and Target Earth. Robots have changed over
the years, become more sophisticated than their earlier counterparts,
but have never really gone out of style. My generation’s most well-known
robot was Robby who made his debut in the science-fiction classic
Forbidden Planet. Years later the phenomenal success of Star Wars
made robot C3PO an overnight household name. As a kid, when I first got
hooked on those serials shown on Saturday afternoon television, my
personal favorite robot was from Republic Pictures’ The Mysterious
Dr. Satan (1940). Known among fans as the “walking water
heater,” this studio creation appeared with some modifications in other
serials as well.
Robots were rarely the centerpiece of most of the
films they appeared in—usually being featured as the mad scientist or
main villain’s artificial henchman—a good example being Columbia’s 1945
cliffhanger The Monster and The Ape. Monster films were
very big during this era so I suppose, despite the ongoing popularity of
robots, the term monster was considered more of a box office lure for
the kids.
In many ways Monster and The Ape borrows heavily
from the better known Mysterious Dr. Satan in that the main
thrust of the storyline is focused around the chief villain’s attempt to
lay his hands on a remote control device that will allow him to command
what he intends to be an army of obedient metallic slaves (as in
Mysterious Dr. Satan we are only introduced to the single
prototype) to do his bidding.
But there the similarities pretty much end. Whereas
The Mysterious Dr. Satan is regarded as one of the best serials
Republic Pictures ever produced, Columbia’s Monster and the Ape
has little to recommend it save to those with a decided taste for the
unintentionally laughable.
Its strongest asset is its cast which is unusually
impressive for a serial.
The leading man (as engineer Ken Morgan) is Robert
Lowery, a second stringer for most of his film career who appeared in
many B films including Universal shockers The Mummy’s Ghost and
House of Horrors. Lowery usually came across as a very serious,
almost humorless individual which made him a bit of a bore in a lot of
his films but which serves him well as a one-dimensional serial hero.
Lead villain Ernst is portrayed by George Macready whose clipped
delivery, fierce demeanor and intellectual decadence made him one of the
best known villains of the period, his evil nature being showcased in
such “A” productions as Gilda with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford.
Professor Arnold, the good scientist, is Ralph Morgan, brother of the
better known Frank of Wizard of Oz fame. Morgan appeared in other
serials, on both sides of the law, including Dick Tracy Versus Crime,
Inc. and Gangbusters. In the role of Arnold’s daughter Babs
is Carole Mathews. The attractive and sophisticated Matthews lends a
touch of class and spunky realism to the proceedings which regrettably
cannot be said of Willie Best who antics are best left forgotten.
Backing up Macready are familiar black hatters Jack Ingram, Anthony
Warde, Eddie Parker and Stanley Price.
One of my chief complaints with The
Monster and the Ape is that it goes on much too long. It should have
been a twelve rather than a fifteen chapter cliffhanger. Things often
drag on unmercifully. One entire chapter is practically taken up in its
entirety by a protracted scene in which Anthony Warde returns the
chained gorilla Thor back to his cage. Every moment of this journey—with
the curious simian pausing at just about every juncture to examine some
object of interest, however insignificant—is recorded with the
frustrated Warde pulling on the chain and chastising the beast to get a
move on. It’s simply interminable.
Still, even with some better editing and
compression of plot and action, The Monster and the Ape
still wouldn’t rank very highly as a serial. It had potential with its
strong cast but the script by Sherman Lowe and Royal Cole is painfully
redundant even by serial standards and the cliffhangers almost
consistently unremarkable. The direction of journeyman Howard Bretherton
is sluggish, disinterested and meandering, even the action stuff.
As far as our robot friend goes, he moves like a
scowling, somewhat drunken Nazi Storm Trooper and hardly heads the list
of filmdom’s most engaging or interesting metal men. He sounds much
better on paper than how he appears in this serial which is pretty much
a way of summing up the whole effort.
The best thing about The Monster and the Ape
is its title. I imagine a lot of kids back then reading it on a marquee
came away afterwards feeling pretty much the same.
September 2009
The
New Adventures of Batman & Robin
(1949)
By Bruce Dettman
Before
home videos became and integral part of our daily lives, cinematic
historians could often be found putting the kibosh on the chances of
ever catching up with certain obscure cliffhangers. I specifically
recall reading in the mid 1960s that due to copyright problems as well
as disturbing reports that a number of films had mysteriously
disappeared-such productions as Republic’s Lone Ranger, Drums of Fu
Manchu, Jungle Girl, as well as Columbia’s The Phantom and
Superman would never again be viewed by the general public. However,
as soon as VCRs became nearly as popular as light beer, and studios took
note of a small but rabid interest in many of their old properties (some
of which turned up in sub-par bootleg editions which earned them
nothing) a lot of so-called ‘lost’ movies began to quickly re-emerge.
Funny what incentive a bit of the green stuff will often provide.
Columbia’s 1949 serial Batman & Robin, a sequel to the studio’s
earlier Batman (1943) was never in this lost or misplaced category. As a
matter of fact, as a part of the Batman craze then sweeping the nation
in conjunction with the ABC series with Adam West and Burt
Ward, both serials were shown around the country, particularly in
college towns, for their camp quality. Unfortunately, I never saw the
serials at that time. I did, however, exhibit a mild interest in the TV
show (in truth, as a healthy high schooler, I evidenced more curiosity
in Julie Newmar’s Catwoman than the Caped Crusaders) but, as with
the majority of the public, it died quickly. Mostly I knew Batman
from comic books although I was foremost a Superman fan. Still I
picked them up sporadically, particularly those ‘World Finest’
editions where the Man of Steel teamed up with or, thanks to some
lapse in memory or exposure to blue or white kryptonite, often warred
against the cowled one.
Just
about the time I was growing out of comic books (yes, there was a time
when adults grew out of comic books) Batman and Superman
were getting pretty silly. Anyone remember Bat-Mite, Bat-Dog
or Super Monkey and Super Horse? Anyway, we all know what
eventually happened to Batman. In the wake of other major comic
character excesses he became big business; Michael Keaton beget
Val Kilmer who beget George Clooney. The dark angst ridden
Batman of creator Bob Kane’s strips returned with a baroque
vengeance and to big box office bucks. Interesting then at this
juncture of Gotham City’s favorite son’s celluloid career to take a step
backwards in time and examine the newly released 1949 cliffhanger
Batman & Robin, the first of three Columbia productions which hit
the video stores last summer.
For
this sequel, filmed a full six years after the first, the cast was
totally changed. Gone were the urbane, east coast accented--and rather
gangly Lewis Wilson as Bruce Wayne and the spunky gee-whiz
Douglas Croft as Robin to be replaced by Robert Lowery and
Johnny Duncan respectfully. Lowery, a seasoned veteran of
countless ‘B’ escapades rarely came off as likeable in his films.
Whatever he wished to have projected, he invariably emerged as rude,
sarcastic and arrogant (see The Mummy’s Ghost sometime where he
practically insults the entire cast while trying to play an engaged
college boy). As Wayne, when not being Don Diegoish around reporter
Vicki Vale (Jane Adams), he is clipped and constipated (poor
Alfred the Butler gets a lot of sarcastic verbal abuse). As Batman
he seems to almost be contemptuous of his crime fighting duties like a
kid forced to mow lawns on a hot baseball Saturday. Duncan, thick
tongued and Brill-Creamed as Robin, looks not so much like the
Boy Wonder as a long in the tooth juvenile who you wouldn’t want
hanging around y our new set of whitewalls much less your teenage
daughter. In fairness, much of this may be attributed to the super hero
costumes the two are forced to wear, embarrassing sartorial deficiencies
that no self-respecting mother would whip up for their kids’ Halloween
costumes. Lowery’s cowl is particularly a bad job (although it seems for
the sake of the action sequences there’s a better fit in the stuntman’s
mask undoubtedly allowing him better visual latitude in the fight
sequences). I can’t believe either actor felt comfortable or confident
in these things. Perhaps it affected their attitudes on the set.
Joining
in the cast are a great many familiar faces including the always
dependable Lyle Talbot as Commissioner Gordon,
William Fawcett as eccentric and feisty inventor Professor
Hammil (though to me he’ll always be crusty Id Pete from TVs Fury
series) and a host of bad guys including Don Harvey, Greg
McClure, House Peters Jr. and Ralph Graves. Of course,
this is a Columbia serial, another Sam Katzman bargain basement
job where more comers are cut than in a high speed police chase. Gone is
the Batmobile, replaced by a dusty Mercury. Batman & Robin stash
their costumes in file drawers in the Bat Cave and there’s a submarine
miniature that looks like the kind I used to power in my bathtub with
baking soda. Well, you get the picture.
The
plot concerns itself with the Dynamic Duo’s attempt to search for a
remote control device stolen by a masked criminal mastermind know as
The Wizard. It’s a long 15 chapters, poorly paced and without many
exciting or cleverly engineered chapter endings. As usual in Columbia
serials the fights are badly staged and the action sequences often
awkwardly choreographed. I also hate the gong the studio too often used
at the conclusion of each chapter to signal the hero’s dilemma. Listen,
I love serials. I really do. There’s just enough of a kid in left to
still suspend a lot of belief that other adults ordinarily can’t
relinquish once they’ve ostensibly accepted society’s notion of mature
conduct and tastes. Still, even in the context of fantasy and illusion,
I need a little help getting through things, and that’s why so many of
the Columbia serials, Batman & Robin included, make matters
difficult. There is just too much sloppiness in continuity, story flow,
abandoned logic and plot progression that one is constantly questioning
what has gone before, what has actually happened and the motives of all
characters. I know directors like John English and William
Witney at Republic relied heavily on story boards to chart the
action and plot. It is hard for me to believe the same care was taken at
Columbia. Studio President Harry Cohn reportedly hated
cliffhangers just as he did shorts. They were necessary evil, nothing
more. He farmed them out to people like Sam Katzman who
made certain that his directors such as Spencer Bennet were told
to work fast, to deliver the goods a cheaply and quickly as possible and
it shows. Boy, does it show!
This is
not to say the Batman & Robin isn’t without merit or that it isn’t a
fun, though uneven roller coaster ride at times. There is a naiveté and
simplicity about it that is at times charming. The problem is that you
just can’t help continually telling yourself how much better it could
easily have been with a little more time, a little more care, a little
more money. What might have been is never far from your mind when you
watch most Columbia serials but somehow this is particularly true with
Batman & Robin.
July
2009
Adventures
of
Captain Marvel
By Bruce Dettman
The
legendary lawsuit waged between Captain Marvel of
Fawcett Publications and the Superman folks over
at Detective Comics, which ultimately put the Captain out
of the print business, was a bit ahead of my time. Yet thanks to a smart
trade, I did have one of his early comics in my collection (regrettably
long gone—Thanks, mom!) that showcased not only Cap, but Mary
Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. as well. At the time
I remember not being terribly impressed by the character, viewing him as
a sort of anemic Superman clone and, to be honest, couldn’t have cared
less that a few lawyers, rather than some diabolical fiend, had
curtailed his crime-fighting career. I suppose lots of people agreed
with me on this issue (even though in his heyday he was outselling
The Man of Steel) and as Superman’s fame grew into something
more substantial than merely a pulp character, his exploits explored
beyond comics in film, radio and television, the schism between the two
heroes grew wider and more pronounced.
The one
area, however, where Captain Marvel had it all over
Krypton’s favorite son was on the screen. While Columbia’s
two Superman serials, produced in the late ‘40s, did well at the box
office and were occasionally entertaining in crude sort of way,
Republic’s 1941 effort Adventures of Captain Marvel
is considered by many serial aficionados to be one of the greatest,
if not the greatest serials ever produced. And there’s much to support
this view. Unlike the original WHIZ comic book origin of
the character where Billy Batson first turns into Captain Marvel in a
New York subway, he’s depicted here as the junior member of a scientific
expedition visiting Siam in search of facts about the ancient
Scorpion Dynasty. Accidentally separated from his fellow
explorers in a tomb, young Batson is confronted by Shazam,
the holy shrine’s guardian, who bestows upon him the magical powers to
transform into Captain Marvel whenever he utters the word
“Shazam”.
For the
rest of the serial, Billy/Captain Marvel makes it his business to
protect the expedition—who have uncovered The Scorpion, a dangerously
powerful weapon consisting of five lenses which are divided between the
group—from the hooded Scorpion and his henchmen who also seek the
incredible device. One of the prime reasons Captain Marvel
stands out as a serial character, at least for me, is his absolutely
unpolluted commitment to deal with his adversaries in the most
no-nonsense and direct manner possible. This is one good guy you just
didn’t get many second chances to tangle with, not once he had his mitts
on you. As portrayed by Tom Tyler, a champion weightlifter
whose other screen credits included playing The Phantom,
The Mummy and numerous cowboy heroes, Marvel disposes of
villains like a hungry great-white going after tuna and with just about
as much soul searching. Whereas Kirk Alyn’s Superman is a
bit of a smug bully boy, Tyler’s Captain Marvel is an
angry, steely-eyed avenger with no patience for society’s wrongdoers.
His motto is eradication and that’s just what he does. Whether machine
gunning a retreating group of desert tribesman or systematically hurling
assorted baddies off a skyscraper roof, Captain Marvel is
all business. Tyler has little dialog to work with—in fact, his weakest
moments come when he has to appear human and converse—but the actor
looks great in his tights and when doling out punishment possesses a
nasty countenance which served him well as Kharis in
The Mummy’s Hand.
Stuntman extraordinaire Dave Sharpe handled all the
excessive physical demands with great leaps and landing and was it not
for Sharpe’s bushy hair which contrasts with Tyler’s slicked back locks;
it would be hard to spot the difference. Particularly effective are the
shots of the Lydecker brothers’ amazing Captain
Marvel dummy flying over the landscape, beautifully integrated
with the takeoffs and landings of Tyler/Sharpe. For kids in the 40s, and
to a degree even today, these images were the things which dreams are
made of.
The
supporting cast is equally satisfying. Frank Coghlin makes
an energetic and earnest Billy Batson and the usual stable of Republic
players led by familiars Robert Strange, Kenne
Duncan, John Davidson, Jack Mulhall
and George Pembroke are all good. Louise Currie
is a spunky and attractive heroine. Reed Hadley, a year
after portraying the masked man in Zorro’s Fighting Legion,
shows up as a local tribesman. Gerald Mohr (or at least
his menacing voice) as The Scorpion is a worthy foe
for the Captain and Billy Batson in his signature role as the hero’s
youthful sidekick (of course named Whitey) is always enjoyable. If
you’re a serial fan there is little in this production to fault.
Co-directors Witney and English were never better at choreographing
their action or in creating atmosphere and tension, even when you knew
Captain Marvel would surely find a way out
of his dilemmas. It’s wonderfully paced, photographed and scored and the
stunts are terrifically crafted.
For
slam-bang, relentless, unpunctuated action and thrills, this is a must
see. Aside from the wide variety of exciting cliffhanger situations it
delivers, it also has, thanks to footage lifted from several other
big-budget films cleverly slipped into the action, a larger and more
lavish look than most serials. After nearly 70 years, Adventures
of Captain Marvel is still a treasure. As was William
Witney.
June
2009
FEDERAL
OPERATOR 99
(1945)
By Bruce
Dettman
During
the
so-called Golden Years of Hollywood whenever the studios needed
to depict a character playing classical music on the piano they
invariably chose Beethoven’s familiar (some might say overly familiar)
Piano Sonata Number 14, more popularly known as The Moonlight Sonata
(and for the record, when it was necessary for organ music to be
introduced it was more often than not Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D
Minor). While this was ok in a feature film when it was a single
moment in the celluloid proceedings, it became pretty repetitious, even
downright annoying in the Republic serial Federal Operator 99
when the chief bad guy and gangland kingpin Jim Belmont (one of the
studio’s more benign and commonplace monikers for their villains) played
snatches of the piece in just about every one of the twelve chapters. On
would think that Belmont (played with greasy charm by George Lewis in
what was probably his best role in a serial) would have mastered at
least one other piece of music—even Chopsticks—but apparently
this
was not the case.
This aside, Federal
Operator 99 is a pretty satisfying serial. Directed by a trio of old
pros, Spencer Bennet, Wallace Grissell and stuntman extraordinaire
Yakima Canutt, it is a fast-paced and entertaining cliffhanger with lots
of exciting chapter endings, mostly solid performances and good action.
A straight cops and robbers scenario, it lacks the accoutrements of the
wilder serials with their extraordinary gadgetry and bigger than life
hero and villain, but there is a sturdiness and sincerity about it which
makes up for this.
The storyline by Albert
De Mond, Basil Dickey, Jesse Duffy and Joseph Poland follows Jerry
Blake, Federal Operator 99 (as in most serials, he is never identified
specifically with the F.B.I.) trying to round up the aforementioned Jim
Belmont, one of the nation’s most notorious criminals, following his
escape from a train on the way to prison.
During the course of the
action, Belmont hatches a series of crimes and schemes that keep the
intrepid Blake very busy.
The British Born (1911)
Marten (Sometimes billed as Martin) Lamont is on the face of it a rather
odd choice for a serial hero. With his English accent and a less than
impressive physical presence (face it, he just doesn’t look tough) he
just seems out of his league when facing the likes of Dale van Sickle or
Tom Steele, but the usual great Republic stunt work when he is being
doubled quickly makes you a believer. A mostly second or third tier
player in films (including parts in such big productions as The
Adventures of Robin Hood, How Green Was My Valley and
Pride and Prejudice) he had also been a feature writer for Time
Magazine and a producer at NBC radio. Federal Operator 99 was
his first and only starring role in a cliffhanger but he had appeared
earlier in small roles in both The Adventures of Captain Marvel
and The Mysterious Dr. Satan, two of the best chapter plays ever
produced. Federal Operator 99 is not in the same league, but it’s
a solid and enjoyable effort and much of the credit must go to Lamont
who plays the part in a sober and realistic manner bringing a sense of
earnestness and believability to a role that could have just as easily
been phoned in.
In addition to the
aforementioned Lamont and Lewis, Federal Operator 99 boasts a
particularly strong cliffhanger cast. One weak link, however, is Helen
Talbot as Joyce, the titular female tagalong and convenient victim for
Blake to rescue. At best, Ms. Talbot, who appeared in one other
cliffhanger, the studio’s King of The Forest Rangers the next
year, is peppy and pert but there is something almost distractingly
collegiate about her as if she is moonlighting from a sorority bash to
help out Blake as a kind of lark. She isn’t much of an actress and it
shows. Fortunately, countering her gee-wiz theatrics, we have the always
dependable Lorna Gray as Rita, one of Belmont’s nefarious team. Gray
(who also acted under the name of Adrian Booth) had the talent and looks
to handle just about any role, even when cast opposite The Three Stooges
(I always thought she would have made an outstanding Lois Lane), and
doesn’t disappoint here. She’s not the over-the-top villainess Vultura
who she portrayed so terrifically in 1942’s Perils of Nyoka, but
her Rita is street smart, sassy and about as nice to look at as she is
untrustworthy and deceitful. Neither Ms. Talbot nor Ms. Gray is ever given a wardrobe change – which I’m sure neither actress appreciated –
but do get to meet up for a nice, albeit short-lived tussle in the front
seat of a truck.
Others in the cast
include Hal Taliaferro as chief henchman Matt, Leroy Mason, Bill
Stevens, Maurice Cass, Forrest Taylor, Jack Ingram, Jay Novello and Tom
London.
Federal Operator 99
boasts some nifty cliffhangers here with Ms. Talbot usually being the
recipient of the potential dangers. She is tied up and almost sliced and
diced by an airplane propeller not to mention gassed and nearly baked
alive in an industrial incinerator. The oddest cliffhanger for me,
however, is when Blake, riding a motorcycle, is sent hurdling over a
cliff. The dummy, designed by the Lydecker boys, seems to be making a
right hand turn signal in mid-air before plunging into the waters below.
Safety first.
Admittedly, Federal
Operator 99 on paper looks fairly routine and not all that
imaginative a concept, but because of pleasing performances, a
satisfying if offbeat hero, good action and solid directorial pacing it
succeeds surprisingly well. It’s not an “A” caliber serial by any means,
but it’s still a good and entertaining one.
May 2009
The
Phantom
By Bruce Dettman
I
believe it was in the third grade when I decided to go ‘trick or
treating’ as the Phantom. I’m not exactly certain why this
was since I traditionally emulated characters I was fanatical about such
as Superman, the Wolfman or Zorro.
In this case, I really knew very little about the history and mythology
of Lee Falk’s famous creation since there was no Phantom
TV show, the serial was never shown in my theatres and I didn’t
regularly follow the comic strip. All I really knew was that I thought
his purple getup with the mask and two holstered pistol set looked
pretty cool. Later, when I became interested in cliffhanger history, I
saw stills of Tom Tyler in costume and was amazed at how
much he resembled his fictional counterpart. I yearned to see the
Columbia product, but kept reading it, like a lot of other
serials, was lost and unlikely to ever be seen again. However, thanks
largely to the video revolution, this is no longer the case and recently
I was able to finally catch up with the long illusive chapter play. How
would it hold up?
Thematically, the plot of The Phantom owes a great deal to
Adventures of Captain Marvel ’41 which, of course, also
starred Tyler, Professor Davidson (Frank Shannon—Dr.
Zarkov in Flash Gordon serial) and
his daughter Diana (Jeanne Bates) are seeking the lost
African city of Zoloz, the legendary location of great hidden treasure.
Also attempting to get to the loot first are local crook Singapore Smith
(Joe Devlin) and international racketeer Dr. Bremmer (Kenneth
MacDonald). Fortunately for the Davidson’s, the mysterious
Phantom is in their corner and single-handedly braves fire, explosions
and all manner of deathtraps to aid them. But wait now,
‘single-handedly’ is perhaps an inaccurate descriptive phrase. For the
record, although the Phantom is strong of limb, exerts an almost
supernatural influence over the local natives, has a command of magic
and occasionally manages to cleverly extricate himself from some near
fatal cliffhangers, it is more often than not his canine comrade Devil
(brilliantly played by Ace, the Wonder Dog)
who should receive the most credit for showing up in the nick of time.
Were it not for Devil, the Phantom would have been sunk in quicksand,
devoured by an alligator and riddled by shotgun pellets. Yet each time
the Phantom cheats death thanks to his tail-wagging pal, his response is
to remind his native servant to tie up the heroic dog so he won’t tag
along in the future. Fortunately for The Phantom’s hide, Devil always
manages to break free and body guard his unappreciative master.
The 15
chapters, directed by B. Reeves Eason, are a cut above
other Columbia serials as far as pacing and action are concerned with
several of the cliffhangers rather unique. On the downside, however, the
stock animal footage, cheesy jungle sets and limited locations give the
proceedings a highly restrictive and claustrophobic feel. The music is
credited to Lee Zahler, but on several occasions I
distinctly heard cues for some of Cy Feuer’s Republic
scores, particularly Mysterious Doctor Satan. Moreover,
since the same gang of technicians at Columbia were responsible for the
sound effects in the studio’s Three Stooges shorts. I
couldn’t help think of ‘The Boys’ when the Phantom was punching it out
with some baddie, and the fact that Kenneth
MacDonald, often a Stooge villain, was also the Phantom’s
nemesis didn’t help matters, but that’s my problem. Another complaint is
that much too much time, sometimes up to three minutes, is spent showing
what went on in the previous episode.
In the
casting department, Tom Tyler delivers a fine, controlled,
heroic performance as the masked hero (whose outfit in the print I
watched kept changing from what appeared to jet black to a softer gray);
although I prefer his steely-eyed, no-nonsense work in Captain
Marvel. Jeanne Bates is a real cutie as the much
put upon heroine with an almost modern independent streak and the
aforementioned MacDonald is his usual slimy gentlemanly self. There are,
however, several excruciatingly bad performances, particularly from the
gal who masquerades as a jungle princess. And again, Ace as Devil is
quite impressive, although director Eason really should have removed him
from all scenes involving fisticuffs as the frenetic animal frantically
interjects itself in each slugfest almost tripping up the combatants. I
must also mention the fact that, in my copy of Chapter 11, something
quite jarring occurs. Apparently, the legitimate soundtrack was lost
because the actual voices of Tyler and the rest are gone, replaced by
what sounds like modern impersonators, and not very good ones at that.
The result is a rather comical one and somewhat suggestive of those
bottom of the barrel European and Mexican B films of the ‘60s quickly
dubbed into English. Luckily, this problem is only evident in the one
chapter.
The Phantom is certainly not one of the great serials—economic
short cuts, an uneven script and some poor performances work too much
against it—but it’s definitely a game attempt at transferring the
character to the big screen. Short-comings aside, I’d still rather sit
through it a dozen times—and possibly even a real alligator attack—than
the recent Phantom film with Billy Zane.
April
2009
SON
OF ZORRO (1947)
By Bruce Dettman
Unlike the Lone Ranger—who
we only know had a brother who was murdered in an outlaw ambush, an act
which set in motion the events that would ultimately lead to his wounded
sibling taking up the mantle of the legendary masked man—and a young
nephew named Dan Reid who occasionally helped out the Ranger and Tonto,
both on radio and later on TV, Zorro turned out to be quite an active
family man. Although the chronology of these descendents can be rather
confusing to chart due to inconsistencies in historical time and place,
it is obvious that the senior Zorro bequeathed to his offspring his
legendary prowess as a righter of wrongs, many of who opted to take up
this heroic role and do something about injustices in their own times.
Republic Studios, the best home cliffhangers ever had, produced two
legitimate Zorro efforts, the feature film The Bold Caballero
starring Robert Livingston in 1936, and the superior serial Zorro’s
Fighting Legion (1939) featuring Reed Hadley. Aside from these two
outings, however, it was Zorro’s relations who filled the screens with
chapter plays of thrills and adventure. John Carroll was Zorro’s great
grandson in 1937’s Zorro Rides Again, an exciting cliffhanger set
in (then) modern times and Clayton Moore, in his pre-Lone Ranger days,
became Ken Mason, Zorro’s grandson in Ghost of Zorro (1949) an
adventure set in the old west. There was also Zorro’s Black Whip
produced in 1944 and starring Linda Sterling as Barbara Meredith, aka
“The Black Whip” (an identity inherited from her murdered brother Randy)
which has no other connection with Zorro save the name as referenced in
the title and the mask and costume. Whether there was some distant
relationship between Zorro and the Black Whip, perhaps competing cousins
of some sort bent on establishing their own heroic identities (but using
the same mail order costume company), has yet to be established. This
aside, this brings us to The Son of Zorro, produced in 1947 and
starring George Turner as Jeff Stewart who only mentions in passing
that Zorro was an “ancestor on my mother’s side.” Where the “son”
business comes from is anyone’s guess.
Despite the traditional
western outfits and weapons (Colt peacemakers and such) this serial is
actually set just following the Civil War and involves Stewart returning
home only to discover that the community has been taken over by a band
of crooked politicians bent on destroying the locals with a crippling
toll tax levied on their roads. Since normal resistance meets with no
success in such a corrupt environment Jeff elect to get out the old
Zorro duds and do something about it which he does for thirteen
relatively entertaining chapters.
Most of the later Zorro
serials follow fairly established formulas, even more so than other
serials. For instance, all of them seem to have a chapter where Zorro’s
is apparently unmasked until it is revealed (in the subsequent chapter)
that someone else—usually his servant—has conveniently borrowed the
masked man’s outfit to protect his identity. Because the costumes stay
the same from one serial to another—with a few slight sartorial
differences—lots of old footage is incorporated into each new
installment of Zorro’s career.
The cast is a mixed bag but
ok.
George
Turner, who had few other credits to his name, has a certain boyish
charm but is very slight of frame and does not appear particularly
formidable as Zorro. Peggy Turner, a stable in both serials and “B”
westerns, is attractive and always appealing, but Stanley Price,
generally featured in cliffhanger roles on the villainous side of the
fence, is woefully miscast here as the masked man’s Mexican assistant
Pancho. Otherwise the cast is filled with a host of familiar faces
including the Republic’s villain of all seasons Roy Barcroft, Ernie
Adams, Edward Cassidy as one of the most blatantly corrupt lawmen you
will find this side of Washington D.C., Edmund Cobb, Ken Terrell,
actors/stuntmen Eddie Parker, Dale Van Sickle and Tom Steele, Si Jenks
and Jack Kirk.
The directorial team of
Spencer Bennet and Fred Brannon are no William Witney and John English,
but they keep things moving at a satisfying pace even if everything is
pretty predictable even by serial standards. The cliffhangers are the
usual western sort, no room in the old west for the sort of wild
scientific stuff that was part and parcel of serials set in modern
times. Therefore you get a lot of wagons over cliffs, dynamited
buildings and dwellings set afire.

Still The Son of Zorro
tries his best to be a chip off the old block and do his distant
relative proud even if sometimes he just doesn’t seem quite up to the
task. But then the original Zorro is a tough act to follow.
Or just maybe he was
adopted.
March 2009
Cliffhanger
Commentary:
The Black Widow
By
Bruce Dettman
In the waning days of the serial, with the studio system tottering on
its last arthritic legs and unwilling to spend much on this dying
cinematic genre, and the infant terrible, TV, waiting in the wings to
flex its growing muscles, the makers of cliffhangers had several options
before eventually calling it quits. The first was to come up with
something new, a unique character or theme to excite audiences and make
them forget the tried and true serial formula.
A good example of this would be the creation of the Rocketman character
who appeared in various incarnations in four different Republic chapter
plays, (‘King of the Rocketmen’, ‘Radar Men of the Moon’,
‘Zombies of the Stratosphere’ and ‘Commando Cody, Sky
Marshal of the Universe’). Another cost-cutting device was to
integrate as much pre-existing footage from old serials into new
products as possible so fewer scenes, particularly those expensive ones
requiring action setups and often costly miniatures and models, would
not have to be newly filmed. The third idea, undoubtedly spearheaded by
writers who had pretty much run out of traditional concepts and
exhausted most conventional plotlines (well, conventional as far as
serials were concerned), was to totally lay aside logic, to try anything
that might come to mind…to go for broke, as it were.
‘Black Widow’,
produced by Republic in ’47, and helmed by the directorial combination
of Spencer Bennet and Fred Brannon, did not create any new characters or
give audiences and exciting hero to root for (just the opposite in fact)
but certainly did utilize a lot of old footage—thanks to an oddball
screenplay by Franklin Adreon, Basil Dickey, Jeffrey Duffy and
Sol Shor—as well as introducing a pretty quirky storyline beneath
what on the surface just looked like another in the studio’s standard
crime cliffhangers. Bruce Edwards as hero Steven Colt, a mystery
writer who has turned his literary sleuthing towards solving a real
crime, moves through this serial like a snail on valium. He exudes
absolutely or pizzazz of any sort and reminds me of my junior high
school vice-principal Mr. Kranz who should have taught a class on
narcolepsy. It’s very difficult to watch this somnambulistic character
lazily interrogate some bad guy and the, thanks to Tom Steele’s
stunt work, instantly be transformed into a kinetic barroom brawler with
the metabolism of a hummingbird. Just doesn’t quite jell. On the other
hand, co-star Virginia Lindley (other times billed as Lee) as
reporter Joyce Winters, is spunky with a peppy personality who, in
addition, exudes a kind of mild contempt for the literary criminologist
turned shamus (with derision she often refers to him as ‘Sherlock’) but
this doesn’t seem to bother him. Little does.
The bad guys (and a gal) are an improvement and on occasion I almost
found myself rooting for them instead. First up is Carol Forman
as Sombra. Now, as readers of SR might be aware, I was not much of a fan
of Forman’s performances in Columbia’s ‘Superman’ serial where, in her
Barbara Stanwyck ‘Double Indemnity’ blonde wig and evening gown,
she appeared pretty ridiculous as the main villainess, the Spider Lady.
Here, however, she’s a vast improvement. Looking quite smashing with her
dark locks and eye-pleasing tight Oriental dress, she projects a
commendable sense of contempt and indifference at the plight of all
those she attempts to destroy at the request of her father, world
conquering wannabe King Hitomu who she regularly calls upon via a
scientific gizmo, a sort of matter transporter. She’s one of Republic’s
better female villains, and as I said, looks quite fetching as well. Her
father is portrayed by sometime actor Theodore Gottlieb
who had and oddball career in his own right. I saw him interviewed years
later under the name ‘Brother Theodore’ when, as a comedian, he was
doing standup work and also professed to having certain occult powers.
For awhile he showed up periodically on the David Letterman show.
In any case, despite his grandiose plans of taking over the world,
provided he lay his hands on a newly developed rocket engine, the
diminutive and rather fierce looking actor has little to do in the
serial except appear for a few moments in most every episode seated on a
throne wearing what appears to an Arabian Nights costume to bark orders
at Sombra. Using a phony mind reading business as a front, the obedient
offspring—who sometimes uses spider venom to rid herself of
adversaries—attempts, rarely with success, to carry out his various his
various missions and devilish plans with the help of henchman Anthony
Ward. Other cast members include the always reliable I. Stanford
Jolley, Forrest Taylor, Sam Flint, Ernie Adams, Gene Roth, the
beautiful Ramsey Ames and Keith Richards.
Like most of the later Republic efforts, this one relies heavily on a
great deal of studio stock footage from earlier cliffhangers but that’s
a given at this point. Anytime you spot the familiar coupe you know
you’re in for a lot of old shots. Speaking of automobiles, this gang has
theirs equipped with a nifty little special feature which allows them to
change the color of their car by the mere touch of a switch which ejects
a spray of paint changing the color of the vehicle. Why the paint does
also cover the windshield and tires is not revealed. Despite the tepid
hero who makes one yearn for the likes of Charles Quigley, Kane
Richmond, Ralph Byrd and others, there’s something mildly
entertaining about this serial. It’s certainly not up there with the
great ones, but its screwy premise and characters, capable cast and
willingness to suspend all sense of logic and belief makes it kind of
amusing, strangely endearing and, well, fun.
February 2009
Cliffhanger
commentary
The
Tiger Woman
(1944)
By Bruce
Dettman
It sometimes amazes me the
things Hollywood could get away with in serials which never would have
made it past the boys at the Breen Office or for that matter any of the
other regulatory agencies that policed movies in the Golden Days of the
movies. Did they even bother to take a gander at the content of
cliffhangers which were, at least in theory, primarily aimed at juvenile
audiences, the group most would think of when considering protection
from gratuitous violence and or moral and social corruption? Take
Republic Studio’s 1944’s Tiger Woman for instance. The audience
is no sooner drawn into Chapter One than it is introduced to the title
character, the reigning queen of a certain undisclosed country who
presides over the territory and safeguards her subjects with a feverish
intensity. Interlopers are not merely escorted to the border with a
stern order not to return and a minor slap on the wrist, but are
summarily tied to a rope and dangled over a stalactite infested
subterranean cave and dropped into a lake of volcanic fire below. Talk
about a quick cure for an immigration problem. It also becomes fairly
obvious from the dialog that this isn’t a once in a lifetime episode,
but rather than this sort of cold blooded and horrific sacrifice goes on
all the time thanks to the Tiger Woman. Or as one native character
explains “Once the Tiger Woman gets her hand on a white man it’s the
end.” And she’s the heroine of the film!! Can you imagine if a
mainstream film of the same period tried to foist off a central female
character responsible for such wanton murder? Even Joan Crawford in her
fullback shoulder pads and at her nastiest couldn’t get away with it. Of
course, the heroes of this serial work for a huge oil company and I
think you’d have a hard time getting away with this one as well.
In any case The Tiger Woman
(who inexplicably sports a leopard spotted outfit which is not nearly as
appealing as Francis Gifford’s earlier Jungle Girl getup and at
times looks more something a Ziegfeld girl or Radio City Rockette might
sport) is played by Republic’s then newest female discovery Linda
Stirling, a former model whose first foray into cliffhangers this was.
According to Ms. Sterling, her studio audition was more in the nature of
an athletic test than a traditional acting scene. And this would
certainly come in handy in a serial such as Tiger Woman where the
heroine gets involved much more with physical action than in other less
athletically demanding chapter plays. Whether riding, shooting or
employing judo moves, this is one lady who is not afraid to mix it up.
She does have help, however,
in the person of intrepid heroes Allen Saunders (Alan Lane), later the
popular (save with his co-stars) star of many B westerns, and the always
reliable (and future Cisco Kid) Duncan Renaldo as Jose who for a short
time in his career seemed to always show up in serials as the hero’s
staunch allay. Lane is not much of an actor, painfully stiff and rigid
(even for a serial hero), but Renaldo, as always, is relaxed and
enjoyable to watch. Fleshing out the cast, mostly as villains, are
familiar serial mugs George Lewis, LeRoy Mason, Robert Frazer, Keene
Duncan, Stanley Price plus a large contingency of the studio’s
actor/stuntmen including Tom Steele, Duke Green, Eddie Parker (the same
year he doubled Glenn Strange in House of Frankenstein), Ken
Terrell and Cliff Lyons.
Veteran director Spencer
Gordon Bennet helms this time with the aid of Wallace Grissell from a
script by Royle Cole, Grant Nelson, Jesse Duffy, Basil Dickey and Ronald
Davidson. There’s only one Lydecker in the credits this time, Brother
Theo, but he’s more than up to the challenge of creating the necessary
miniatures and special effects of which there are some good ones. I
particularly enjoyed the rapid-tossed boat going over the cliff in
Chapter Four.
The plot has two rival oil
companies—one bad, one good—vying for a patch of oil rich land
controlled by The Tiger Woman and her subjects, a race of brown-skinned,
blow pipe wielding natives. In reality our feline gal is none other than
Rita Arnold, the heiress to a vast fortune who as a small child was lost
in the jungle following a plane crash. The villains decide, since she
seems to prefer the overtures of Saunders and Jose, to knock her off and
substitute a replacement for her who will sanctum their drilling but it
doesn’t quite turn out that way and lots of action and mayhem and action
ensue.
The Tiger Woman is a
good solid serial. Lots of action and for a novice actress, Sterling is
appealing, likable, decorative and convincing in the action sequences.
No wonder Republic decided to employ her services in many more serials.
Good pacing and lots of exciting tight corners elevate this one to B+
status.
January 2009
Cliffhanger
commentary
The Scarlet Horseman
By Bruce
Dettman
I’ve always had a
thing for masks. I even have a modest collection culled from various
countries prominently displayed on my living room wall. As a kid—and
wouldn’t the shrinks have fun with this?—this fascination led me to
fashion a whole array of homemade facial coverings which I regularly
donned at play, as well as following with great enthusiasm all the
various masked heroes on the silver screen, a great many of them being
featured in serials. There was Zorro and my old favorite
the Copperhead from Republics’ Mysterious Doctor
Satan. And, of course, the Lone Ranger. Everyone,
it seemed, eventually turned up on occasion wanting their mugs
concealed, from Buck Jones to the Durango Kid.
The Scarlet
Horseman, a 1946
Universal serial, isn’t one of your better-known masked daredevils. I
recall seeing a few chapters of this sometime in the late 50s and
finding the hero’s costume somewhat bizarre, a reaction unchanged by the
years. The shiny blouse and baggy trousers are bad enough (suggesting
the kind of festive outfit you’d expect on a gypsy), but the mask with
the big eyeholes and the drooping, pillow case-like sides gives the
Horseman the appearance of a most bedraggled and unhappy rabbit.
Anyway, for a
cliffhanger, the plot, as created by screenwriters Tom Gibson,
Patricia Harper and Joseph O’Donnell, is
somewhat complex and overly embroidered. It has to do with a plan to
break up 1875 Texas into several parts. In order to accomplish this, the
villains of the piece kidnap the wives and daughters of prominent state
legislators and hold them prisoner in order to force their spouses to do
their political bidding. Working against them, however, are two Texas
investigators—one of whom dons the trappings of a Comanche god called
The Scarlet Horseman—and a Wells Fargo Agent. There are a few subplots
as well and numerous characters, both bad and good (and with peculiar
names like Zero Quick), to keep track of. Personally, I like my serials
a bit leaner in the plot department.
A couple of other
things bothered me about this serial, small things really, but they kept
repeating themselves which is often the case in cliffhangers since every
week producers knew they might be catching a paying customer yet
unfamiliar with the storyline. There are the sounds of the Scarlet
Horseman’s horse’s hooves, exaggerated by the studio magic so you’d
swear the guy was riding through an echo chamber or his shower stall
rather than over the dry prairie. Even more disconcerting, however, is
the five-note bugle calls heard each time the Horseman makes an
appearance. At first I couldn’t figure out who was playing the thing—it
couldn’t just be a musical cue since other characters make reference to
it—but I finally realized he was blowing his own theme song on a kind of
kazoo. “Doot-ta-doot-ta-do!”
Paul
Guilfoyle is an odd
choice for the Scarlet Horseman. With his worn and craggy hound-dog
features he was usually cast in films as petty crooks, bums and unsavory
squealers, although he isn’t bad in the part. His partners are
Peter Cookson, who handles most of the action stuff (there’s
just no way the Horseman could effectively duke it out that mask on),
and Harold Goodman. Villains and supporting
characters include familiar faces like Jack Ingram,
Edmund Cobb, Danny Morton, Cy Kendall
(as a Mexican no less) and Guy Wilkerson (in the part of a
Shakespeare quoting baddie) with Virginia Christine as the
brains behind the villainy and Victoria Horne as her
Indian confederate. Uncredited players include Paul Birch
and Ellen Corby (of TV Waltons
fame). I could be wrong in this, but I also believe Milburn
Stone is the narrator.
There’s lots of
economic corner cutting in Scarlet Horseman with a great deal of footage
from earlier (and better) Universal serials. As soon as Cookson
inexplicably dons an all black outfit you just know he’s going to be
matched with some shots of an earlier serial western hero, in this case
I believe it’s Dick Foran (or at least Foran’s stuntman).
The cliffhangers are predictable stuff for a sagebrush serial:
stampeding horses, falls off cliffs, rampaging steers, barn fires etc.
Directors Ray Taylor and Lewis Collins try
to keep the pace going, but there’s generally too much talk, too many
characters and a leaden, ponderous feeling to the whole thing, mask or
no mask.
December 2008
FEDERAL
AGENTS VERSES UNDERWORLD, INC. (1949)
By
Bruce Dettman
J.
Edgar Hoover, the dictatorial head of the F.B.I. for the better part of
the 20th Century, knew early on the power and importance of
film, moreover that if used correctly it could serve his career and
political agenda well. He consequently made it a point to ensure that
depictions of the F.B.I. in movies be in keeping with the professional
image of the organization that he had taken such pains to tailor and
promote. He liked his agents to be clean-cut, mature and professional.
He also wanted them to be single-minded in their objective of ridding
America of crime (although he usually kept his distance from the Mafia
which he realized he probably could not do a lot about). Nonetheless,
most early film depictions of federal agents were pretty stereotypical
and unremarkable not to mention unrealistic. Hoover was rarely impressed
by the film and television images of his agents whether depicted in “A”
movies with actors like James Cagney or scores of “Bs” made in the 1930
and 40s. Despite a few acceptable glimpses of bureau methodology in
efforts such as The House on 922nd Street, it
really wasn’t until the 60’s TV series The F.B.I. starring Efrem
Zimbalist Jr.—when the network had to run just about everything past the
director for a green light on production—that he got the look and feel
of the F.B.I. that he desired.
Who
knows what, if anything, Hoover might have thought of the way his men
were portrayed in cliffhangers, the gaggle of incompetent federal men
from The Mysterious Dr. Satan (Republic, 1940) for instance, who
make fools of themselves by being caught in the good doctor’s house of
traps and snares? It’s doubtful that he would have been amused or
entertained though it has been reported that he enjoyed comic books,
particularly Dick Tracy.
Federal Agents Verses Underworld, Inc., produced by Republic
Pictures in 1949, is neither particularly amusing (intended or not) and
really not all that entertaining either. Coming along as the popularity
of the motion picture serial began to wane and studios started to lose
all interest in the genre, it is slow moving without a great deal of
inventiveness on the part of the director (Fred Brannon) or energy from
the assembled players. It is not a terrible serial but it not a very
good one either. It doesn’t even benefit from the unintentional humor
that often characterized and underscored some of the later chapter plays
when writers and directors would periodically toss some pretty bizarre
stuff into the celluloid mix to spice things up. It just plods along,
rarely if ever offering anything even remotely exciting or unique.
The
storyline, fashioned by writers Royal Cole, Basil Dickey, William Lively
and Sol Shor, borrows from numerous older (and better) serials including
a chief thematic ingredient lifted from The Adventures of Captain
Marvel, namely the search for a the partner to a certain Golden Hand
which when combined with its mate is said to bestow upon the owner great
knowledge and power (in Marvel it was the restoration of five
lenses to a magical Golden Scorpion). Hot on the trail is Nila (Carol
Forman), a mysterious woman who wishes to locate the treasure in order
to create a united criminal organization, Underworld Inc., but also on
the scent, and opposing her at every nefarious turn, is intrepid
government agent David Worth (Kirk Alyn).
For
twelve extremely ordinary chapters Nila tries everything in her nasty
bag of tricks to find the Golden Hand and eliminate Worth but frankly is
not very good at either. Not that the F.B.I. agent is world class in the
brain department either. For instance in one chapter Worth intentionally
parachutes onto a moving train and is almost is killed in the process.
In another episode he decides to prevent a plane from taking off by
accidentally driving a car into it nearly blowing himself up.
I
never much liked Kirk Alyn as Superman when he played the Man of Steel
in two serials over at Columbia, but he’s ok here although there is
nothing particularly memorable in his characterization of the G-Men
other than his tendency when in immediate danger to make his eyes very
big as if about to pop out of his head cartoon style. Regrettably this
creates a more comical effect than anything else and detracts from the
gravity of the situations he often finds himself in.
Carol
Forman, always attractive and a good actress, is her usual surly and
unpleasant self as Nila, not quite as memorable as she was in the later
chapterplay The Black Widow where her evil was a bit more
effectively restrained and layered, but is an improvement over her turn
as The Spider Lady in the first Superman serial where she never really
seemed a worthy criminal adversary. She is best here in her numerous
scenes with the always welcome Roy Barcroft who saved many a cliffhanger
from the ineffectiveness of other actors, which brings me to the rest of
the cast of Federal Agents Versus Underworld, Inc.
Alyn’s
investigator assistant Steve Evans is portrayed by a young actor named
James Dale who has to be one of the dullest sidekicks in serial history.
I kept seriously wondering if he was on medication during the shoot.
He’s just along for the ride and hardly that. Rosemary La Planche, a
former Miss America (1941), is pretty but little else. Female roles in
serials are rarely plumbs, but a number of actresses have managed to
bring a few sparks to their portrayals, but Ms. La Planche can not be
said to even do this. Bruce Edwards, who would turn up later as the lead
in the studio’s The Black Widow, has the thankless role of
Professor Williams who is drugged by the bad guys and controlled into
helping their evil cause. When he is killed no one even cares or looks
into why he suddenly behaved in such an uncharacteristic manner. Backing
up the main characters are such serial stalwarts as Dale Van Sickle (who
has a brief speaking part as one of the gang impersonating Professor
Graves, a kidnapped scientist), Tom Steele, Tristram Coffin, Marshall
Reed, James Craven and Robert Wilke.
There’s a lot of old footage here and what new action there is seems
tired and overly familiar. The whole thing has re-tread written all over
it in big capital letters that even the most ardent serial devotee can’t
ignore. No pizzazz, no zip, no fire in the proverbial belly. It’s all
been done before and much better. Even the kid that still resides in me
had a big problem staying with it. Had I still had my three-gear Schwinn
out in the backyard I might have even forgotten Alyn and company and
gone out and had a long ride on it. But the only thing in my backyard
these days are weeds.
November 2008
CliffHanger
COMMENTARY:
‘The Invisible Monster’
BY Bruce Dettman
Invisibility has
long fascinated filmgoers harkening back to 1931 when Universal director
James Whale opted to follow-up his classic production of
Frankenstein with a cinematic adaptation of British author
H.G. Wells’ tremendously popular novel The Invisible Man
starring then unknown Claude Rains.
A series of
predictable and unremarkable sequels followed culminating with the
Transparent One having a not altogether successful run-in
with comedians Bud Abbot and Lou Costello.
Other non-Universal Invisible Men also showed up through the years from
competing film companies including The Body Disappears and
The Amazing Transparent Man up to the recent Hollow
Man with Kevin Bacon. There were even three
separate TV series built around an invisible protagonist. Not surprising
then that the popular gimmick of invisibility would eventually wind up
in a cliffhanger as a central theme (invisibility had already been
explored briefly in other serials such as Flash Gordon) in
the 1950s The Invisible Monster produced by Republic
and directed by Fred C. Brannon with a script by
Ronald Davidson.
This character
(portrayed by the always slightly creepy Stanley Price),
never referenced in the script as The Invisible Monster,
is actually referred to as The Phantom Ruler (or P.R. for
short as when his lackeys call him over the car radio—“Calling P.R.”).
He’s a bad guy customer, who has perfected a beam (which when trained on
a chemically treated costume makes him look something like a Muslim
woman) of his own design that renders him invisible. Problem is the beam
in question must be aimed at him via a kind of spotlight (and in fact,
the thing is indeed nothing more than a modified studio light)
controlled by one of his thuggish accomplices. This rather limits
The Phantom Ruler’s movements. One would think his anonymity was
in jeopardy, after all being followed around all the time by a guy in a
truck with a huge spotlight is kind of a giveaway, but I guess this was
a work in progress.
In any case,
The Phantom Ruler’s intent is to finance the creation of an army
of invisible soldiers. To accumulate funds he must commit a lot of local
crimes, burglaries, robberies and such, and is aided not only by his
henchmen, Lane Bradford and John Crawford,
but by four illegal European immigrants (sans any discernable accents)
whose professional skills he requires for his heists and who he is
blackmailing into aiding his cause. Richard Webb, whose
signature role was just around the corner when he took the lead in the
early TV series Captain Midnight (’54), appears here as
ace insurance investigator Lane Carson out to solve the series of crimes
created by The Phantom Ruler and his minions. For most of
the serial, however, he hasn’t a clue regarding the invisibility factor,
thinking these are just routine thefts. Webb’s a bit on the stiff and
disinterested side—even for a one-dimensional serial hero—and doesn’t
seem to have a great deal of enthusiasm for the role as he seemed to
when he later played Midnight, but he’s physically acceptable. Backing
him up, and I mean this literally as far as lots of the action goes, is
pistol-packing Aline Towne as Carol Richards, his
assistant even though they get off to a rocky start when he questions
her involvement (“Isn’t that a rather unusual job for a woman?”).
While during the
various slugfests, she usually ends up being knocked out, she is more
than ready, willing and able to join in when lead is being traded and is
often seen backing up Webb with her revolver. Towne was a likable,
pretty and capable actress who appeared in numerous Republic
serials in the dying days of the cliffhanger. Other members of the cast
include stuntmen extraordinaire Dale Van Sickel, Tom
Steele and Dave Sharpe as well as John
Crawford, George Meeker, Marshall Reed,
Ed Parker, Bud Wolfe and (uncredited)
John Hamilton, TV’s Perry White, as one of the
blackmailed immigrants.
The Invisible
Monster,
like so many serials produced during the waning days of the serial, is
no more formulaic than any other late cliffhanger—relying on lots of
stock footage from earlier chapter-plays, some of it not matching
terribly well—yet there is something tired and particularly arthritic
about it. Everyone seems to just be going through the motions knowing
the fate of this sort of entertainment was a foregone conclusion.
Fred C. Brannon
could be a competent if pedestrian helmsmen, but this time around
there’s little energy or pizzazz coming through. Everything is as
predictable as an I Love Lucy repeat. It’s serviceable at
best and downright boring most of the other time. A real Invisible
Monster might have spruced up things a bit, but I’m afraid only a bit.
October 2008
CliffHanger
Commentary:
‘Zorro’s Black Whip’
By Bruce
Dettman
You have to wonder
what Johnston McCulley thought—if he thought anything at all—about
Republics’ third Zorro cliffhanger outing, ‘44’s Zorro’s Black
Whip. Since McCulley was, at best, an entertaining pulp
writer, albeit a prolific one, the creator of Old California’s masked
Robin Hood was probably overjoyed to see new royalties roll in, yet it
still must have been odd for him to note what strange things were
happening to his original creation. Of course, in reality, nothing was
happening to his creation because, title and credit acknowledgements
aside, Zorro is not present in this serial. He is not mentioned a single
time. Instead, the hero is a masked character called The
Whip, killed in the line of duty in the first chapter,
mourned by his spunky sister Barbara who decides to carry on the family
tradition (luckily not only does the same suit fit them both but, for
reasons never fully explained, she is devilishly proficient with a gun,
whip and horse) and wages war against those forces out to deny 1889
Idaho statehood.
Now
this serial was made long before women became commonplace as gun-toting,
karate chopping heroines in the cinema. You had a few exceptions like
Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel and Sheena in the comics but, for the most
part, strapping on a six-shooter and tangling directly with males was
new terrain for the so-called fair sex. Little boys of the period
probably were not overly crazy about this role reversal though I’ll
wager those fathers who escorted their offspring to Saturday matinees
probably didn’t mind all that much. In any case, Republic was lucky in
this casting of the unique role to have serial star Linda Stirling
under contract because, in all honesty, a lot of actresses probably
couldn’t have carried it off (although I wouldn’t have minded seeing
Adrian Booth give it a try).
Linda,
beautiful, tall and athletic—and helped by a lot of excellent stunt
work—played it straight and heroically and pulled it off fairly well. Of
course, suspension of belief is a big part in viewing any cliffhanger,
but I must say credulity is stretched even further than usual
when
the cast of villains (guys like John Merton and Hal
Taliaferro) are totally oblivious to the fact The Whip
emerges after Chapter One with a noticeably more provocative wiggle and
form, even after, in some instances, they physically tussle with her.
All this aside, Black Whip, energetically directed by the team of
Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace Grissell,
can be quite entertaining, and not just because of Linda wielding that
black whip or the myopia on the part of the bad guys.
There’s
a lot of good action sequences and chapter endings (thanks in no small
measure to Yakima Canutt’s second unit work), even if some
of the footage is redundant, culled from earlier Zorro outings, and too
often features the western cliffhanger staple of our heroes unconscious
in wagons plunging over cliffs. George J. Lewis, usually
seen in villainous roles in serials (and later in life as Guy
William’s father in Disney TV’s Zorro), provides
the
muscle
when Linda needs it (and who gets slugged over the head in nearly every
episode). The cast also includes such stalwarts as a pre-Superman
John Hamilton, Tom London, Duke Green,
Francis McDonald, and stuntmen/actors
Tom Steele and Dale Van Sickel.
It’s not a great
serial, by any means, but it’s and entertaining one and, at times, a
good deal of fun, the most important ingredient of any cliffhanger.
September 2008
Secret Service
in Darkest Africa
By
Bruce Dettman
I don’t think I’m
giving away state secrets when I admit I don’t watch serials for their
depth of plot and/or characterization or their political correctness, in
fact, quite the contrary. I watch serials so the kid still lurking
around in this 58-year-old body has a therapeutic release from the
escalating depressiveness, insane pace and moral dankness of modern
life. Personally, I take great satisfaction in the fact that although I
love history, literature, classical music and politics, I can still get
wrapped up in a Wild Bill Elliot western, and old Superman
TV episode, A Daffy Duck cartoon or yes, a ‘Republic’
cliffhanger. As far as I’m concerned, this keeps me (relatively)
sane—and I bet I’m not alone in this. Which brings me to Secret
Service in Darkest Africa…
When I was a kid
in the 50s, World War II was just around the corner, still fresh on
people’s minds—that is when they weren’t thinking of ‘Wonder Bread,’
‘Commies,’ ‘Lucille Ball’ and buying affordable tract homes—and it was
pretty hard to escape reminders of it, not only in the classroom, but in
movies on TV and in stories told by relatives and friends who survived,
or relations of those who didn’t. On top of this there were neighborhood
garages where, hanging next to hack saws and garden gloves, were
canteens from agonizing days on Tarawa and field packs from dusty
marches in Sicily. In my own home, my uncle had given my older brother
the shell of a hand grenade (great paperweight) and a bayonet he
‘removed’ from a Japanese soldier in New Guinea. World War II was just
like the ‘Wild West’ for me, an arena of obvious good guys (us) and even
more obvious bad guys (them).
Behind our house,
in a wonderful rock quarry, I did my 10 year-old best with my plastic
Mattel helmet, a replica of an M-1 and a gas mask from a Army surplus
store to keep alive the memory of ‘Guadalcanal’ and ‘Wake Island.’
Movies helped too, and not only the splashy, big budgeted stuff like
‘Sands of Iwo Jima’ or ‘Guadalcanal Diary’ either. Hollywood serials
wasted little time in getting into the action as well, with Spy
Smasher to Secret Code and King of the Texas
Rangers chapter plays turning to the war effort for inspiration.
Secret Service in Darkest Africa starring Rod
Cameron as Rex Bennett (the second of two times he would play
the character) is my favorite World War II cliffhanger. Cameron was tall
and as square-jawed as a Chester Gould drawing, had the acting range of
an umbrella stand, but was solid and no-nonsense and you believed his
earnestness. He had knocked around Hollywood for years as a stuntman and
later graduated to action parts, particularly westerns. Eventually he
appeared in several TV cop shows that (hopefully) made him rich. I also
read that later in life he divorced his wife and married her mother
which, I think speaks volumes about his real life courage.
There’s not a
great deal of plot to ‘Secret Service’ which, for the record, has
to do with Bennett, and American secret agent, trying to curtail Nazi
attempts to win over Arab support of their war effort. But boy is there
action, much of it a good deal uglier and grittier than your usual
standard serial fare (villains die almost every episode) since we were
in a real shooting war at the time and a lot of regular cinema rules
went out the window. As far as the fist fights, I don’t recall ever
seeing quite so much furniture broken up in any other cliffhanger (the
plywood bill on this one must been staggering) and director
Spencer Gordon Bennet, along with his stunt crew, really devise
some lengthy and wonderfully choreographed brawls (often employing first
person viewpoints reminiscent of later 3D setups). The action only
pauses on occasion for a bit of dialog and then we’re right back into
the thick of it. The cliffhangers are wonderfully choreographed and
initiated (thanks again to the Lydeckers and some great exploding model
work). I particularly enjoyed the booby-trapped gravesites in Chapter
Four. For some reason, there’s an awful lot of horsemanship involved as
Rex gallops through the supposed African countryside (which looks about
as much like Africa as Harlem does Salt Lake City) in pursuit of the
Nazis and their Arab co-conspirators. Rex often ignores his pistol in
favor of a sword, not always the smartest move, but it paves the way for
some athletic dueling scenes.
Backings up
Cameron in the cast are Joan Marsh, whose one spunky gal,
as fast with a glib line directed at her captors as a shot from the
revolver which she uses to full and lethal advantage. Duncan
Renaldo is Rex’s staunch and always reliable French comrade and
the heavies are an impressive bunch which include Kurt
Kreuger—who made a career out of playing blonde Aryans during
the period—Frederic Brunn, Sigurd Tor and,
in a dual role, Lionel Royce as the kidnapped Sultan (no
one ever spent more time shackled to a wall) and his Nazi impersonator.
Mort Glickman’s score isn’t quite as memorable here, no standout theme
you can come away humming, but you certainly can’t fault Bennet for
keeping things moving. The thrills pile up as quickly as the bodies.
August 2008
G-Men
Vs.
The Black Dragon
By Bruce Dettman
One of my great
disappointments as a kid watching cliffhangers was that Republic never
made a sequel to ‘Mysterious Dr. Satan’ featuring my favorite hero, the
Copperhead. Instead, much to my parent’s distress, I had to settle for
creating a backyard version where I rigged my own bargain-basement—but
occasionally dangerous—chapter endings (“Bruce, get away from your
father’s power tools and why are you wearing your rain hood in the
summer?”).
In point of fact,
most serial characters did not have encores although there were
certainly exceptions (Zorro, the Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy, Jesse James
and Superman being a few of those who immediately come to mind). I
suspect, as in the cases of Captain Marvel, the Phantom and Fu Manchu,
copyright and legal issues often had something to do with this, but just
try and explain this to a 10 year-old kid hot to see his idol up on the
screen again. One character that did return to fight again was Rex
Bennett who was featured in two Republic outings, ‘Secret Service in
Darkest Africa’ and in his debut offering ‘G-Men Vs. The Black Dragon’
(both ’43).
Bennett,
described as being an American Special Investigator, was played in both
by Rod Cameron. The only difference between the two performances is
that, in the first, Rex sports a suit and in the second a military
uniform, Although occasionally assuming villainous roles in his long
career in action and outdoor films—most of them westerns—Cameron, a man
of few words, was born to play heroes what with his granite-like
jaw-line, handsome features, dark curly hair and impressive height.
Moreover, there was something unflinching and resolute about Cameron’s
tight-lipped heroes. When he said something you could usually take it to
the bank. He was not a guy to mess with or take lightly, a quality which
served him well in his two serials.
The plot for
‘G-Men,’ set in World War II, is fairly predictable and straightforward
with Rex,
his
Chinese secret agent pal Chang (Roland Got) and British agent Vivian
Marsh (Constance Worth) trying to disrupt the activities of Japan’s
Black Dragon Society led by Haruchi (Nino Pipitone) who has been
smuggled into America (in a mummy case, no less) to inflict havoc for
the Axis cause. Director William Witney, sans his old pal John English,
went it alone this time and turned in a rugged, action-packed, nicely
paced and often ingenious cliffhanger heavy on patriotic resolve and
no-nonsense retribution against America’s enemies. Along with the
exciting chapter endings and breakneck pacing, there’s a good cast as
well. I very much enjoyed Constance Worth (in her only serial
appearance) as British agent Vivian Marsh. She brought something rarely
evidenced in serial heroines, maturity, polish and even a kind of edgy
sexuality. She played in the role like a grownup, no wide-eyed “Gee whiz
stuff” and even handled herself pretty well cuddling a machine gun.
Nino
Pipitone as Haruchi is properly sinister, just over the top enough with
his maniacal villainy and stereotypical Japanese mannerisms for serial
fans of that era to really hate. Roland Got as Rex’s buddy Chang is
acceptable though I would have preferred Keye Luke in the role. Others
in the cast include Noel Cravat and George J. Lewis as the henchmen,
Donald Kirke, Maxine Doyle (real life wife of director Witney), Ivan
Miller and the redoubtable C. Montaue Shaw. Although I harbor a slight
preference for the second Rex Bennett serial (I think it’s all those
nifty sword fights), this is still a remarkably feisty, high energy
effort with lots to recommend it. The cliffhangers are well handled, the
stunts ingeniously choreographed, Mort Glickman’s music properly
stirring for a war serial. My only complaint—a mild one at that—for some
reason it was more obvious than normal Tom Steele was standing in for
Cameron in the fight scenes. I wouldn’t have minded a third Rex Bennett
outing but it was not to be. World War II ended and so did old Rex. Glad
to have him on our side when we did though.

July 2008
The
Mysterious Doctor Satan
By Bruce Dettman
Whenever
someone mentions the fact that serial helmsman extraordinaire William
Witney apparently considered the 1940 Republic serial ‘The Mysterious
Dr. Satan’ to be a ‘stinker’ and one of his lesser directorial efforts,
I remind myself George Orwell wrote ‘1984’ in a hurry, solely for the
purpose of making a quick buck and apparently also didn’t think much of
the finished product. Undoubtedly, lots of folks would take a dim view
of my comparing a classic novel with a low budget serial, but in this
case I am not referring to the end result as much as the creator’s
intimate relation to it. Whatever Witney’s reasons for taking such a
dim and critical view of ‘Satan,’ there are a lot of serial aficionados,
myself included, who view ‘Mysterious Dr. Satan’ as one of Republic’s
finest chapter plays. As a matter of fact, it still remains my favorite
serial of all time, a preference I’ll readily concede has much to do
with my initial adolescent introduction to it, and introduction
marinated in intense juvenile romanticism. Yet a recent viewing has only
further cemented my deep affection and admiration for its many sterling
qualities.
As is
now common knowledge, ‘The Mysterious Dr. Satan’ was initially intended
to feature Superman, then a neophyte to the big screen. Thus far the Man
of Steel’s only film appearance had been as an animated character in a
series of stellar Max Fleischer cartoons produced by Paramount.
Republic, noting the growing popularity of the character, wanted in
fast. Somehow, negotiations broke down – money problems apparently being
the key factor – and the deal soured. There are lots of stories
regarding this history. One often cited that the original character of
Dr. Satan, later emerging as a pin-striped, continental criminal
mastermind, was originally conceived with actual costumed devil horns
and was to be played by Henry Brandon who did such a good job as Fu
Manchu for the studio. This was not to be however, and while suggestions
of Superman saga can certainly be spotted (a girl reporter named Lois,
as an example) writers Franklyn Adreon, Ronald Davidson, Norman Hill,
Joseph Poland and Sol Shor set out to create a new storyline and set of
characters. What they came up with was a new version of Dr. Satan, sans
Superman, a malevolent sophisticate with old-world charm and a desire to
take over the globe with an army of robots.
For
15 action-filled chapters two things stand in his way, perfecting a
long-distance device capable of controlling his metallic army (of one),
and a masked hero called ‘The Copperhead.’ One wonders if originally the
serial’s creators thought of making ‘The Copperhead’ some sort of super
hero like Krypton’s favorite son, but in the end opted against it (why,
as an example, does he decide to scale the outside of a downtown
high-rise rather than using the elevator or even stairs—had the original
utilized a flying hero at this point?) No, ‘The Copperhead is all flesh
and blood, a tough character, but human all the way. He is, in fact, Bob
Wayne, a young man who learns in the first chapter from his soon to be
murdered guardian, the governor of the state, that his real father was a
controversial figure from the old west, a misunderstood night rider
known as ‘The Copperhead’ who righted wrongs wearing a distinct mask to
conceal his identity. No sooner has he digested this rather startling
news than Dr. Satan’s minions kill the governor. Bob, wishing to both
redeem his real father’s reputation and revenge the murder, sets out to
find and punish the crazed scientist, adopting the identity of ‘The
Copperhead’ when necessary. 
Interestingly enough, the censors originally had a bit of a problem with
revenge being the only motivating factor in Bob’s pursuit of Satan which
is why in the revised script he is deputized by the authorities to take
part in the official government manhunt. Casting has for a long time now
been the big bugaboo when fans of serials have debated the merits of
this cliffhanger. For many years the critics, who otherwise heaped heavy
praise on much of it, were nearly unanimous in disliking Robert Wilcox
as Bob Wayne. They invariably used the words “dull” and “bland” to
describe him although bestowing great praise on the athletic
achievements of his alter ego ‘The Copperhead (stuntman Dave Sharpe was
never more impressive than in this serial with his astounding leaps, a
favorite being when he hurls himself through a window into a
subterranean basement, only his curly hair, as opposed to Wilcox’s
straight locks, giving him away at times). However, things have shifted
in the last couple of years with Wilcox’s less theatrical, more
realistically grim and sober style becoming more popular with fans.
Moreover, the first scene where he learns of the identity of his
biological father in, thanks to the actor’s sincere line delivery and
earnest reaction, genuinely was moving, something rare in a serial.
Equally
impressive, if not more so, is Eduardo Ciannelli in the title role. Like
Bob Wayne, Dr. Satan practices a subdued and contained style of
communication and expression. With his continental accent—some of his
lines delivered almost in the hissing style of a serpent—and charming
manners he is the epitome of the cultured but deadly villain. Others in
the cast include Ella Neal as Lois (a dead ringer for Lois Lane in her
early comic book incarnations); the always solid C. Montaqgue Shaw as
scientist Scott; William Newell as Speed Martin, Bob’s photographer
buddy’ Charles Trowbridge as the slain governor; plus the likable Jack
Mulhall and Dorothy Herbert, the latter a champion horsewoman of the
period (who, as Lois’ pal Alice, does some remarkable things astride her
steed in the early chapters, then practically and inexplicably
disappears from the action). Ciannelli’s men include tope henchman
Walter
McGrail
as Stoner, who gleefully follows his boss’s orders, Bud Geary, Ken
Terrell and Al Taylor. Rumor has it stuntman Tom Steele was the robot. A
key ingredient that makes ‘The Mysterious Dr. Satan’ so effective and
memorable cannot, however, be found in a masked hero, a killer robot or
even a wonderfully mad scientist, but rather in the overall mood and
evocative style and design of the serial. Regardless of what directors
William Witney or even John English might have come away thinking of
this cliffhanger, it remains one of the most atmospherically charged of
chapter plays. In music (Mort Glickman producing one of the most
memorable serial scores), lighting, camera work and low-key performances
it delivers an atmosphere wonderfully charged with the threat of danger
and intrigue. I can think of no other serial that is quite so nourish in
style and execution. Yet for all of this it is also a rambunctious,
kinetic and spry adventure filled with great moments of athleticism,
terrific cliffhangers and daring do.
For me
it is everything I love about serials rolled into one glorious 15
chapter ensemble; a terrific villain, a mysterious hero, damsels to
save, non-stop action, great stunts, cliffhangers and an outrageous
plot. Oh yeah, a classic if a bit feeble robot too. What more could a
serial fan ask for except perhaps a good popcorn fix?
From 1997 through 2008 when it ceased publication,
SERIAL REPORT MAGAZINE, edited by Boyd Magers, regularly published a
quarterly column by Bruce Dettman in which he reviewed motion pictures
serials.
Glass House Presents thanks Boyd for permitting us
to reprint these writings on the great motion picture cliffhangers that
entertained audiences for nearly forty years.
Boyd is one of the recognized experts on the motion
picture western. Please visit his website at
www.westernclippings.com/
July 2008
In Retrospect
TAC:
Dettman's Documents
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