Planet Outlaws

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...

It's just over an hour long, watchable and kinda fun. Is it good? Yes and No, it depends on how much you like Buck Rogers and silly "B" Sci-Fi flicks. It's a classic example of older, fun "B" Sci-Fi that fans of the genre might enjoy. It is not what you call a good movie just silly fun.

This was originally a 1939 Buck Rogers Serial. In 1953, it was re-edited and put together to create this short feature film. I have not seen the original serial, so I'm unsure just how much was cut out for this movie but I'm sure it was all the unnecessary extra stuff.

Buck Rogers fans the film should delight, Sci-Fi fans might enjoy it while others might want to pass on this one.

3.5/10

Someone at Universal Studios got the bright idea to edit out all the cliffhanger chapter endings and re-release an old Buck Rogers serial as a feature film in 1953. The advances in science have rendered it laughable in those Cold War years, now the film is high camp.

The original serial had the notion that a 20th century dirigible pilot and junior sidekick Buster Crabbe and Jackie Moran crash near the North Pole and their bodies are cryogenically frozen and thawed out by those who found them 500 years later which is about the same time that the Starship Enterprise was doing its thing. But this is not a Star Trek world that they've come back to. Although in the original Star Trek series in one of the comic episodes a humanoid people did take on the gangster culture from 20th century earth.

In this film because we did not deal with the Al Capones and Lucky Lucianos back in the day as we should have, they're on top now and the boss of all bosses is a guy named Killer Kane played by Anthony Warde. Fortunately Crabbe and Moran fall into the hands of the Resistance who have holed up in a Hidden City. There are some other humans on Saturn and most of the film is devoted to making an alliance with them.

Science Fiction as a film form does have a half life. Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov can write about the wonders of the future, but you can read it and use your imagination and a hundred, a thousand years from now it will adjust depending on how far humans advance. But once it's on film it stays.

The Buck Rogers films are pretty laughable and campy for today, but I wonder what Gene Roddenberry's vision will look like a hundred years from now, just how much will he have gotten right?

Tacked on is a prologue and epilogue of narration where a Cold War era message is hammered home. That too is a relic of the times.

The old movies, and especially the old serials, had a naive charm of their own. Starting with the characters, there was no ambiguity here. Bad guys did bad deeds and only bad deeds. Good guys did good deeds and only good deeds. This characterization is very apparent in this movie. Killer Kane is all evil and Buck Rogers is the next thing to a saint.

The futuristic sets and apparatus are a hoot. They would be laughed out of todays science fiction films. Compare with Stars Wars, big difference. The space ships eject sparks more appropriate to fireworks than a rocket engine. Saturn is a rocky planet, not a gas giant. The uniforms are ridiculous. Why bother with pressure suits and space helmets. Computers, what are they? The hero, of course, is indestructible, and so on.

All of this elements, and a few more, make old movies the charmers that they are.

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!