Flickering Shadows - The Shadow Chapter Play!

My memories The Shadow serial are not all that positive, as the cliffhangers in this one are pretty humdrum. Basically, stuff falls on the the Shadow, and in the next chapter he gets up pretty much none the worse for wear, dusts himself off and wanders out only to repeat the whole magilla again. It's not strong in that category. But there are other charms to this one that I really could dig this time out. For one thing, I've read a lot more Shadow novels since I last watched this movie, and that background helps to appreciate some of the smaller touches.

This serial offers a lot of story, with effectively two cliffhangers per episode with one just being resolved before the actual end of the episode. The Shadow is running around at breakneck speed most of the time and he has plenty to do. Some serials drag a bit waiting for the inevitable, but this one sure doesn't. Sadly, much of the action takes place in bright sunshine and that doesn't allow much mood to develop. 

The villains in this thing are really good. The head baddie is called "The Black Tiger" and he's the usual mystery villain who could be any one of five guys, and though the mystery was a bit lame when solve, I find that's often true of the novels as well. The real treats are the henchmen. This is a fine and varied array of henchmen as I've ever come across in a serial. They seem to break into three squads (there's a lot of them) with two playing fairly straight, but one trio actually does some comedy shtick and there's bits of characterization with them. One isn't too bright, and they actually show one of his pals reciting "Red Riding Hood" to him, and another is a jovial if murderous cuss who seems really to be pals with one of the Shadow's alias identities.

And it's that identity that I'm sure gives folks a pain on this flick. Lin Chen is a creation of Lamont Cranston who is the Shadow in this story, and sadly it's played as one of the more painful Oriental stereotypes I've come across. Jory struggles witht the buck teeth off and on throughout the serial.

Veda Van Borg is gorgeous and makes an adequate Margo Lane, though she does squeal a lot. Roger Moore (not that one) is the guy playing Harry Vincent and he gets lots of action in this one, as he does the work of all the Shadow's agents including the taxi driver Shrevvy who is absent. Likewise, we get no Burbank nor any Hawkeye. Vincent drives him around all through the story and even gets captured a time or two himself. The acting is pretty good even if the story feels a bit dull and repetitive. 

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Batmania - An Evening With Batman And Robin!

Comic book lore is filled with delightful myths. One of the more famous is the supposed meeting on the golf course between the publishers of DC and Marvel which gave birth to the Fantastic Four after the latter heard about the success of the Justice League of America. Great story, likely untrue. My favorite bits of lore is that Hugh Hefner saved comics when he showed a vintage Batman serial at the Playboy Club (or mansion) which got great laughs and so inspired the producers of the Batman TV show that a rich market was out there for a camp take on superheroes. The success of the show lifted many boats allowing comics to hang on for a few more years. Apparently, it's not true either and the confusion perhaps comes in that the serial was shown at a place called the "Playboy Theatre". The creators of the show say they weren't influenced by the serial and only the comics, and there's no denying they read the comics since many of the plots for the first season are from actual published Batman stories.  But still I have to suggest that they at the very least saw the serial Batman and/or its sequel Batman and Robin. 

There's no denying that there is marked similarity between the tones of the movie serial and the television show, with the use of humor to hide the inherent weaknesses in the concepts. Also, the TV show from the outset used cliffhanger endings which tells me the producers were indeed trying to emulate the vintage serials even if they had not been inspired by them but rather the comic books which gave birth to both. The real truth is that Batman the TV show was a smash hit (for a short time) and as we all know success has many fathers who want to grab a share of that glamour. 

1943's Batman is a Columbia serial and the truth is those don't age well. The budgets were relatively tiny and they had squeeze out fifteen chapters with fourteen death-defying endings. The aspect of this show which can startle a modern viewer is the raw racism which marks the portrayal of the Japanese villain. J. Carroll Nash as he lisps his way through a thankless role which does showcase his utter evil but does it in a a pretty ham-fisted way. But such is the stuff of serials of the era -- mighty entertainments which will make a modern sensibility flinch more than a little bit. The hideout which is a haunted ride detailing the horrors of the war in the Pacific and beyond is a nifty touch about the times and points to the war to come in the Pacific. 

The serial is entertaining in its way and so Columbia not only produced a sequel in 1949 but years later found it a ripe vehicle to send out to the arthouse theaters which often thrive on college campuses and in larger cities. The serial gained a rep as a four-hour blast of feckless fun and proved a useful respite from the incessant worry about crime, war, and impending nuclear devastation. And so they slapped the title An Evening with Batman and Robin on the vintage show and sent out across the nation where is was met with no small success. There is little reason to doubt that this successful burst of camp fun didn't trigger the TV show as well. 

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The Saturday Serials - Mandrake The Magician!

Mandrake the Magician is not one of the strongest serials every made, that's for sure. By the time of this serial, the formula for a serial was so ingrained that often the format overcame the specific details of the source material. That's certainly true in this one as for a show called Mandrake the Magician there is precious little magic, even of the hypnotic type that dominated most Mandrake outings. And then there's the hat, the problematic top hat once again meets an early demise and is replaced with standard head gear used by many an serial action hero. And finally there's the mustache, in that there is no mustache. Why they bothered to adapt such a well-known character and then proceed to ignore almost all of the visual details that defined him is beyond me, but it put me in a unimpressed mood as I watched the show which on its own ain't all that bad, though terribly generic.

Warren Hull is Mandrake in this show and he's okay, a capable enough actor with sufficient charisma to hold your attention, but most of the show you would be forgiven if you didn't realize he was Mandrake. Al Kikume as Lothar is an interesting choice, as it does avoid some of the more uncomfortable racial overtones, at least the more potent ones. Again I have to say, the story is such that poor Lothar has relatively little to do aside from helping out in the fisticuffs a few times. The other actors in the movie are perfectly adequate to the task at hand, sadly that task was not as well defined by the producers and directors as it might've been.

All in all Mandrake the Magician is a serial that is a dandy for folks who are fans of serials in general, but Mandrake fans might be disappointed. There has been some serious surgery done to this movie's soundtrack also and the version I saw offered up some pretty indifferent replacements on sections where the sound was missing. In fact I'd have to say that lack of quality made the original elements more impressive by comparison. 

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The Saturday Serials - The Phantom!

Lee Falk's The Phantom has been adapted to the big screen a few times. The first time was in 1943 by Columbia Pictures. Columbia serials could be uneven, but they did do a pretty good job with the superheroes. The Ghost Who Walks in this picture ain't exactly the one from the comic strip, but he's darn close with only smallish details like the nature of the "Deep Woods" and his relationship to Diana Palmer really showing any glaring differences. Tom Tyler, who had played the titular character in Columbia's Captain Marvel two years before is perfect physically for the role of the Phantom.  He tall and athletic, and fills out a super suit as well as anyone in the era. Only Kane Richmond is a bit more classically handsome, but Tyler seems perhaps a bit more rugged and that last characteristic suits Lee Falk's creation to a tee.

The story is like most serials a contrivance meant to create numerous opportunities for cliffhangers and there are some decent ones here and for the most part the solutions are not cheats, something I usually find Columbia to depend too much upon. The Phantom is a hero who must use his wits and getting out of traps is the perfect way to showcase that talent. Most serials have a bunch of baddies to give ample opportunity for them to fall before the might of the hero and this one has a hefty batch. They are chasing the "Maguffin" which is an ivory jigsaw puzzle leading to an ancient lost city which it will turn out ain't all that lost. Nor does it seem is it all that far away from the main action.

But these are trifles and the what you have is a rip-snorting adventure with lots of pretty good action including a classic rope bridge that works just about as well as you'd expect. They'd repeat that gag in the 1996 Phantom movie but use a truck. There is an unofficial sequel called The Adventures of Captain Africa. It was a Phantom serial for a bit but they lost the rights and it was changed in the course of production.

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How Green Is The Archer?

I've been hankering to see The Green Archer forever and a day, but for whatever reason I never picked up a copy and never sat down to enjoy this Columbia chapter play starring Victor Jory as the hero seeking to get inside a displaced castle in which is held captive a lovely woman and where a gang of thieves hide and plot their schemes. It's a castle full of the usual, hidden doorways galore, mysterious steps, dungeons in offbeat places, and one of the wackiest garages you'll ever see.

It's generally assumed The Green Archer inspired the creation of DC's longtime bowman Green Arrow. The timing of this film's release over many months and Green Arrow's debut in the pages of More Fun Comics is certainly coincidental if nothing else. But I think this serial has progeny in the TV realm as well, specifically The Green Hornet show. There's a giant hedge that opens up automatically when the villains drive off their lot and they rise up into position to do that by an dandy elevator, and all these gimmicks stay hidden pretty much through the entire movie. It's not quite as cool as the kissing pair billboard or the turntable garage for Black Beauty, but it sure put me in mind of them.

The story is an ambler. The hero drops into the castle and out with varying motives, sometimes it seems forgetting all about the damsel in distress. And the cops appear unusually feckless, though that is kind of explained later as well. One thing which really pops out is the gang employed by the top villain, in that they are an unusually specific and unusually funny gaggle of baddies. Attention is given to them to a surprising degree for a serial, but that's good since it adds some zest to a show which gets rather repetitive quickly.

I haven't mentioned the Green Archer himself yet. Well, he's a ghost supposedly and represented in the movie in three ways. There's a painting and a fake Archer who works for the villain. And then there's a mysterious other Green Archer who  helps the hero and foils the villains and seems to have an unusual familiarity with castle's hidden avenues. Arrows zing all over and some deliver messages, a few deliver death, but always they mark a turn of plot.

This one can get a little rusty, but try to have fun with the bad guys, because they singularly good.

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Blackhawk - Freedom's Champion!

The Blackhawks are a great idea and for a very long time they were an idea and a comic book which found a respectable audience. Launched by Quality Comics, the squadron of heroes were aviators who took it to villains overseas and elsewhere, led by Blackhawk. Eventually the team was brought to the big screen in a Columbia serial with Superman himself, Kirk Alyn in the starring role of "Blackhawk".

To be honest, Alyn looks more fitting as Blackhawk than as Superman. His posing seems more rugged and his acting less particular. Being one of many in their well designed fighting togs, the heroes here look good, even if the stories often fall a bit short. But even there, it's a small complaint.

All the Blackhawks are in evidence, even if the older Henderson (Frank Ellis) only ever gets a tiny role, never leaving the hangar where he works on plane continually. The other Blackhawks get screen time with Olaf (Don Harvey) and Andre (Larry Stewart) getting the least. Stan (Rick Vallin) is featured in the first few chapters because he has a double role as his treacherous twin brother Boris. The majority of the action though is seen by Blackhawk and Chuck (John Crawford). There is though one great scene for Chop-Chop (Weaver Levy) who gets to whip up on a guy attempting to hold him hostage.

The villain of the piece is really the Commies, particularly in the form of Laska, a seductive spy played by Carol Forman (who had also been the Spider Lady opposite Alyn's Superman in the first of those serials). She is outstanding as the nefarious and unscrupulous femme fatale, much better here than as the Spider Lady. She looked like a real-life version of Natasha from the Bullwinkle cartoons but much more deadly.

The serial hums along pretty well, with little maguffins showing up all the time to lead the team into some pretty decent fisticuffs. But alas the serial falls off the rails a bit at the end when Blackhawk and Chuck end up in Mexico for several chapters, which separate them form their Blackhawk comrades and also make the show feel like a western in an odd way. It's a shift in tone which hurts the eventual finale which does bring everyone back together.

But all in all this is a fun one and worth the time. Recommended.

P.S. After I wrote up this review, I discovered that I had written much the same thing many years ago when I first saw this movie on VHS. Now I've seen it on a better DVD transfer and maybe that helped me to like it a bit better than I did then, or maybe I had adjusted my expectations remembering how unlike what I expected at Blackhawk adventure it turned out to be. Whatever, I find I agree with my former self, but maybe have warmed over the years.

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Atom Man Vs. Superman - 1950!

Atom Man Vs. Superman is the second of Columbia's serials with the Man of Steel and coming out in 1950 is among the last serials ever in a world in which television is fast changing the nature of entertainment. In fact there is more than a mote of self-awareness of this transformation in the story itself.

The "Atom Man" of the title is in fact Lex Luthor (Lyle Talbot) hiding behind an enormous helmeted mask, who for much of the duration of the serial pretends to be a reformed criminal helping the authorities. He is of course fraudulent and is instead in the guise of Atom Man leading a cadre of thieves use television trucks and the cover of a television operation to arrange and commit burglaries. One of the dopier details of this story is that Luthor's gang use equipment which is so high-tech that it seems way more valuable than anything they steal. One device is a coin which signals teleportation, another is deadly heat ray, and Luthor even has a rocket, a flying saucer, and a small space ship in his collection. 

The first part of the story though involves a device called the "Main Arc" which can send someone into a nether dimension called the "Outer Dark". It's very much like the Phantom Zone and eventually Superman is sent there and becomes a ghost on Earth. Sadly this gimmick is abandoned half way into the serial.

Once again  Kirk Alyn is Superman and Clark Kent. He seems a little better this time, less mincing and more virile. Noel Neill as Lois Lane is also good as is Tommy Bond, back as Jimmy Olsen. Pierre Watkin is Perry White and a joke about him trying to light a cigar extends through the whole serial. This one makes use of a lot of stock footage, especially near the end and as I've said seems to change gears half way through becoming more episodic and less of a singular story line. 

Nonetheless it's quite an entertainment and well worth any Superman fan's time.

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Superman The Serial - 1948!

When Superman hit the big screen in 1948, the era of serials was almost over. It took Superman an enormous amount of time to make it to the movie theater, at least in a live-action mode. The Fleischer cartoons had filled the void early in the decade, but as the years rolled by and lesser heroes populated the screen, the absence of the Man of Steel was glaring. Part of the problem was of course DC wanting the best deal they could manage. When Columbia took the property it was a pretty good deal I guess.

Kirk Alyn plays both Clark Kent and Superman and does a creditable job, though his moves as Superman can come across a bit mincing at times. Blended with animation for the super stunts, he  provides a handsome version of the famous hero.

Noel Neill plays Lois Lane for the first time, role she will define in years to come. She's almost consumed by her own costume which includes an enormous hat, but still and all her frisky but friendly manner shines through. Jimmy Olsen as portrayed by  Tommy Bond is particularly good and lacks some of the buffoonery the character is sometimes saddled with.

The story begins with Superman's origin story but quickly shifts gears to engage the schemes of the vile Spider Lady (Carol Forman) who has a lot of henchmen and a sprawling plan to capture and use a deadly device called the Reducing Ray. Most of the movie deals with attempts to steal it and later rescuing its inventor.

It's usual serial stuff, with some pretty decent super stunts tossed in. Superman seems singularly reluctant to take the offensive and just rid the city of the criminals, but instead performs as  a soldier in the Daily Planet's war on the crime queen and her gang.

All in all a thoroughly diverting entertainment. It's not a great serial, but it's far far from the worst one. 

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Captain Video - The Movie Serial!

Captain Video - Master of the Stratosphere is a late entry in Columbia Pictures' movie serial catalogue and not the greatest. But it does have some virtues. The serial is an adaptation of the then successful TV show from the now defunct DuMont TV Network. The show had been thrilling kids on weekday afternoons, so it was logical to assume it might do likewise on Saturday at the local cinema. So the movies embraced in this weird way the very medium which was killing them off.

The story is a very straightforward serial offering up Captain Video and his worldwide network of Video Rangers as the counter to world domination by an alien dictator from the roaming planet Atoma. Vultura (Gene Roth) is the dictator's name and he's less impressive than he ought to be. He is assisted by a turncoat Earth scientist named Tobor (George Eldredge) who is arguably more effective as a villain. One weird feature of this serial is that when Captain Video visits another planet that world gets a specific color tone to indicate it. Atoma gets a red tint and another planet much put upon by Vultura, the planet Theros gets a green tint. The Earth alas gets the default tone of gray. Columbia pictures too used animation to pull off a number of its special effects tricks and after any rocket ship launches it becomes a cartoon and spins through animated space.

This serial has a decent momentum, but does become a bit lackluster if only because the scrapes the Captain and his sidekick only known as Ranger (Larry Stewart) get out of, they rarely accomplish on their own, but instead in true Columbia serial fashion rely on other agents or slick editing to accomplish. Captain Video's talent should be smarts, and there are some, but not always.

One cool thing that does show up in most chapters is the Jetcar, a sleek specially designed roadster that supposedly gets the Captain and his partner around in high-speed fashion. The fact they almost never get this car on any actual asphalt but instead only on mountain roads limits its effectiveness. That's one of the weaknesses of this serial, the sameness of the set. Too much of the story unfolds across the expanse of the country backlot or the spires of the Vasquez Rocks, good enough for a western but oddly limiting for a sci-fi adventure. There needed to be some sense of an urban contrast to break up the visual monotony.

Also exceedingly strange is the Captain's pistol which is called a "Vibrator" and which despite that unfortunate name afflicts its victims with an unsightly spasmodic response. The Captain and Ranger stick the gun into the guts of their opponent and literally shake them to the ground unconscious. It's oddly violent in a novel way and disturbing when contrasted to tried and true movie fisticuffs. The show does feature some robots, but alas they dusted off the vintage robots from The Phantom Empire, a groundbreaking serial starring Gene Autry from the 30's. These hapless automatons work hard in a few chapters but reek of a simpler time not in keeping with the seemingly high-tech vibe Captain Video attempts to lay down.

Anther odd thing about this movie is the complete lack of women. There's not a dame on three planets who even shows up for a cameo in this movie. Not on Atoma, not on Theros, and nowhere on Earth does any girl or woman break up the masculine dream of sci-fi adventure.

There was never a sequel to Captain Video, at least not officially. But the Columbia serial The Lost Planet was apparently supposed to be. It features Judd Holdren as the hero and this time a girl does show up. There's much of the same planet hopping we're accustomed to, and the villainy is divided up again between an Earth scientist and a alien dictator (Gene Roth again). Similar but not the same.

All in all as a serial Captain Video was entertaining enough. Not great, but certainly diverting with more than a few above average riffs.

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Activate The Opticon Scillometer!

On Saturdays in the month of May the focus here at the Dojo will be on DuMont's Captain Video and the Video Rangers, the mostly lost vintage TV series which informed much of what developed later on television, movies and comics during the 50's. Captain Video was a television show which directly blended the tried and true action tropes of the classic Western with the cutting edge vibe of Sci-Fi, as often the show itself used vintage Western adventures to fill out the time. Even the comics followed suit as we'll see. The show was filled with weirdly-named gadgets like the "Opticon Scillometer" and such which allowed Captain Video to see all over the world and which he used to fight villainy where he found it. There was a wide array of firsts associated with this seminal TV show and expect to see much of it here.

All throughout the month look for a lot of variety, as we take a month-long look in the Favorite Covers feature at comics which feature characters trying to hitch rides on rockets and missiles and all things ballistic. Like the bronco busters of the Old West, these modern riders seek to tame the power between their legs, a power distinctive to the 20th Century and beyond and symbolic of the constant struggle man has had with the things he can build. 

Of course there will be the usual gaggle of Charlton stuff and whatever else chances to catch my fancy. I've heard something about a movie coming up with some Marvel characters in it; should be interesting. So hang around for May as the Dojo enters its eighth year.

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Blackhawk - Fearless Champion Of Freedom!

Reed Crandall
I've been wanting to see the serial Blackhawk forever and a day. I passed up picking up a VHS copy way back in the 90's, and I've regretted it ever since. Now at long last I can report what it was like to have seen this 1962 Columbia serial.

It was just okay!


Now that's poor commmentary on a movie I've yearned so long to see, but it happens to be the miserable truth. I wish it had been better, but it was just okay. Now to be honest I'd read reviews which spoke of this movie's lackluster nature, but I guess I'd hoped against hope that I'd disagree when I at long last saw it. I don't.

The story is pretty standard for a serial. The Blackhawks are pitted against "The Leader" and his gang of saboteurs who seek to steal a few big secrets such as a ray gun device in some early chapters and then later a secret fuel dubbed "Element X".
Blackhawk (Kirk Alyn) and his comrades, most notably Chuck (John Crawford) battle the Leader, a typical serial anonymous type and his gang led by Laska (Carol Forman).

Harvey, Crawford, Alyn & Vallin
The story begins rather well actually as Stan (Rick Vallin)is kidnapped and replaced by his twin Boris. This section is apparently inspired by this comic book story. There follow a few chapters dealing with this confusion, then the story switches abruptly to a Doctor Rolph (William Fawcett) who invented some ray device and we spend a few chapters spinning around on that maguffin. Finally around chapter six or so the main plot unfolds and Element X is introduced and the gang attempts to steal it sending Blackhawk and Chuck to Mexico for several chapters. At the beginning of this story, there is a pretty terrific series of explosions at an oil field. Blackhawk and Chuck return to the U.S. just in time to rejoin the rest,and to tie up all the loose ends.

Laska Gets Drop On Blackhawk
They try to wedge in a little flying into this saga, but frankly it always seems to be an afterthought and the only action appearing to be a dogfight is when the animated robot saucers from Columbia's Superman serials show up for an exceedingly brief attack. Most of the serial is spent in cars on back roads as the two groups endlessly punch at one another.

Blackhawk and Chuck get the most screen time, as Chuck becomes the go-to sidekick. Stan gets a lot of attention in the first several episodes, as does Chop (Weaver Levy). Olaf (Don Harvey) shows up for a few key fights, but mostly is relegated to second tier status. Andre (Larry Stewart) is in it all the way, but does little but run around a bit and fly some airplanes when an extra pilot is needed. Hendrickson (Frank Ellis) is barely in this movie, always in his mechanics gear and he gets a few scenes, being key to only one sequence really.

Press Book
Early chapters have the five Blackhawks running around in a gang a lot, but later they seem to break up more. That's good, because frankly all of them together is a bit of a mess. It's a shame a more complex plot giving all of them some real work to do couldn't have been worked out, but then I guess that would've required spending some real some money, not something Columbia or Sam Katzman were known for doing on these serials.

Carol Forman Gets Cuffed
Carol Forman is adequate as the femme fatale of the story, though she seems unusually stiff in the early going. She gets a tad more personality as the story unfolds as her role as a woman leading some ignoble men comes to be a real problem for her. The government she works for is not identified of course, but there is some talk of being loyal to the "party" so I guess in 1952 there was little doubt who that signaled.

Kirk Looking Macho
Kirk Alyn is pretty good in the lead role, looking the part, but his mincing way of running while making Superman seemed arguably graceful. Here it comes across a bit girlish in places. It's a problem especially when contrasted with John Crawford who comes across with classic screen machismo.

Blackhawk is a decent serial with some solid actors going through the serial paces. It's a bright saga told exclusively in the daytime, and features a few fun stunts along the way. But it seems to get tired before it reaches what amounts to a climax. It is notable that there was not re-run chapter in the later stages which indicated some more money being spent I guess, but frankly that just meant more time in Mexico where the story sort of grinds to a halt a bit.


I recommend Blackhawk. It's a decent serial, but not one of the best by any means. I did note that Reed Crandall, the regular artist on the series, though not the creator got mention on the credits. Here's the trailer.



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