Planet Outlaws

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.

Final words from this edited version of the 1939 serial, as the added on narrator warns the viewers of the threat of evil dictators. In this case the one in the film is Killer Kane but was obviously a thinly veiled allusion to Hitler when the serial was originally made.

The whole film is a grim allegory to the Nazi regime, right down to the mindless slave labour of Killer Kane's 'Robot Battalion,' fitted with a mind controlling helmet, they work till they die. A terrible reminder of the Nazi death camps.

Re-edited and released again in 1953, with an introduction and voice-over to explain the plot, it now returns as a warning against the then perceived 'Red Menace' of Starlin's Russia.

The editing is choppy at best but does get rid of a lot of the padding and recapping of the plot that make the old serials rather slow and boring to watch for today's modern audience. What we're left with is mainly the action which is somewhat simple by today's standards but was probably exciting at the time it was made.

The whole film is as corny as a box of Kellogs and with Buster Crabbe in the lead role, this is really a Flash Gordon story in all but name. Playing Buck Rogers who finds himself suspended in time and reawakened in the 25th century, Crabbe's easy going charm helps carry things along. As he quickly acclimatizes to his new environment and leads Earth's forces against the named 'Planet Outlaws' led by the aforementioned, Killer Kane.

It's strange viewing this from today's perspective, as in this future world there are no computers, mobile phones or even radar! The spaceship pilots have to look out the windows to see what's happening. Plus it seems the ships of the future only have one seat in them and everybody else stands. It all seems very primitive when compared to today's mega-budget special effects films but that's been rather unfair.

This is more something to watch as a reminder of how it used to be and seen like that, it's quite enjoyable. Just don't expect too much!

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

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.

Planet Outlaws was a science fiction movie that was cobbled together from material taken from a 1930's Buck Rogers serial. This was no doubt done because in the post-Atomic bomb Cold War years of the 50's science fiction was really popular. In fact, the film-makers have presented the story as an allegory against the evils of communism, with a dictator whose minions are turned into unthinking servile robots! But whatever the underlying message, this is an old-style action movie where the good guys are really good and the bad guys are complete rotters. There is no ambiguity at play here that's for sure.

The film begins with a brief sequence to set the scene - a hot air balloon piloted by Buck Rogers and his buddy crashes and is buried in snow in the North Pole; they go into suspended animation and are awoke 500 years in the future where they immediately align themselves in a conflict between decent folks and a criminal overlord called Killer Kane.

This would very possibly have seemed like quite an old fashioned film even in the early 50's. It was after all culled from material from a 30's serial. But they have tried to make it as relevant to the times as they could, however, editing a serial down to a 70 minute movie does present some problems. The result is a somewhat frantic movie with lots of big events dealt with very briefly; we have, for example, three trips to and from Saturn as opposed to one proper one. Buster Crabbe stars in the lead role and I suppose he has an uncomplicated clunky charm, if a little dull; his nemesis Killer Kane is not a very interesting villain either. It's unquestionably a very silly film indeed with some amusingly daft spaceships and costumes but it does have some decent sets and some quite impressive model work for the cityscapes. The incessant soundtrack in the background does become a little wearing though, as does the film overall to be honest. As all of these types of movies are, this one does have a time capsule appeal but it's excessive clunkiness makes it a little too tedious, despite the constant action.