Planet Outlaws

A feature film made as a compilation out of portions from the Buck Rogers sci-fi serial loses much of the original's dramatic structure and makes the ramshackle special effects appear even sillier.

Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) takes off in his airship in 1938, only to be flung into the future year of 2500! Now, Buck and his trusty cohort, Buddy (Jackie Moran) must assist mankind in the battle against eeevil uber-criminal, Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) and his army of bucket-headed human robots!

Absolutely absurd, yet tons of fun to watch, PLANET OUTLAWS is the 1950's feature length, condensed version of the original serial from the 1930's.

Contains wobbly, acrobatic aerial dogfights, big-big ray guns, "advanced" solid state / analog technology, gravity belts, life on Saturn, amazing hats, lots of capes, and dubious underground fortresses.

Sit back and enjoy the irony of an ancient film about the still-distant future...

Have watched many times and also the serial it came from... Love the old science fiction movies... Especially in black and white... Yet I wonder if any one has really watched this oldie... Every time I have seen it, one thing keeps bugging me about the character of Buck Rogers... Here on the IMDb site for "Planet Outlaws" the military rank of Buck is Colonel... Yet every single time I have seen this movie I distinctly hear Buck Rogers being referred to as Lieutenant ( excuse the spelling )... Not once in the movie have I ever heard Buck being referred to as Colonel Buck Rogers... Probably not the best review posted to this site but it is my first and thought I would put this to you all... I give it 5 out of 10... cheers

Very edited down version of the famed 1939 Buck Rogers serial.

This lasts 71 minutes and the original Buck Rogers serial lasted nearly four hours! That might be all good and well to those who just want a brief blast (sorry) of the original Buck Rogers but watching "Planet Outlaws" is no way to judge the full complete serial (which is now available for all to see in a fine print).

For starters, the original serial concludes with Buck and his young "Boy Wonder-type" pal Buddy having an amusing light hearted little chat with each other - this is gone from "Planet Outlaws"!

This serial is an important part of screen science fiction history. Granted, it is not as grand as Metropolis or Things To Come (1936) but it is more fun than them. I struggle to think of a pre-1939 space production that has this sense of fun. It is more fun and better made than Flash Gordon (1936).

Flash Gordon (1936) has a studiobound feel while Buck Rogers (1939) has outstanding location filming at Red Rock Canyon. Flash walks around in short pants while Buck has long pants. Other things make Buck a better serial as well.

Okay, some might think I am building up this serial too much. After all it is a show with fireworks blowing out of the back of spaceships, but who cares - it was 1939 after all! 1939 might have been the year of Gone With The Wind to most serious film fans - but give me the FUN of Buck Rogers any day!

This film is a condensed version of the 1939 serial starring Larry 'Buster' Crabbe as 'Buck Rogers'. I assume that when television came along, studios often edited down the serials into a movie-length version for viewing at home. I know they did that with one of Bela Lugosi's serials, "The Phantom Creeps". Unfortunately, this is NOT a super-successful idea, as the resulting film seems a bit choppy and episodic. Plus, by 1953, the special effects and stories of Buck Rogers seemed incredibly dated! In fact, you just have to see how incredibly awful the space ships are--they're so bad they are tough to describe in mere words--and you might find yourself laughing at it!

As for the story, in many ways it's just "Flash Gordon" (also a Crabbe serial) all over again but with a few changes in the plot. Here with Buck Rogers, he arrives in the future instead of the present day like Flash Gordon. It seems that Rogers and his sidekick were in a dirigible accident and got frozen--and just happened to successfully unfreeze 500 years in the future. Oddly, despite having no idea about this ultra-modern world, Rogers magically could out-fly and out-do everyone of the 25th century!! What a guy! Once he's no longer in Popsicle form, he joins the resistance--a group trying to overthrow the gangsters running the planet. So, for help, Rogers and his pal try appealing to the residents of Saturn--and this backfires so badly, the Saturnians offer the gangster boss (Killer Kane) their help! Oooops! Will Buck manage to fix things or will his 'help' result in the complete obliteration of the opposition?! Tune in and see for yourself.

Overall, the film is incredibly dated and manages to both be interesting as a curiosity AND dreadful and boring at the same time. I think the longer you watch it, the more dreadful it becomes, so in hindsight I think it might be good that they did distill the serial after all. A curiosity and interesting for some, but amazingly hard viewing otherwise.