Mystery of the River Boat

I was expecting this to be more of a western almost, with a gambling boat or something, from the title. The riverboat in question is a rather durable one, even for a piece of scenery in a serial. It survived a fire, a boiler explosion, a broken levee and flood, and crashing into several shanty boats along the way.

Robert Lowery makes another predictable serial performance. He was fairly good in the Batman serial, but tries way too hard to be Kane Richmond. He does know how to swim though, as I believe he hit the drink in six of the thirteen chapters. Lyle Talbot is always enjoyable, and plays one of the many bad guys (as usual). The surprise here was Mantan Moreland, who I had not previously known had done any serials. Mantan gives the best performance of anyone here, giving the limited and somewhat comic role he was given. He makes the serial worth the time to watch, as do some above par special effects, particularly during the levee break sequences (though I am not sure if they were actually filmed for this serial or are stock footage).