Category: Serial
-
Trial by Fire takes a while to get to its first Peril for (sort of) lead Pauline (Pearl White). She’s a young heiress who wants to live a life of adventure–at least for a year–before she marries her guardian’s son. That son, Crane Wilbur, doesn’t really want Pauline to take this year off, but he…
-
Trial by Fire takes a while to get to its first Peril for (sort of) lead Pauline (Pearl White). She’s a young heiress who wants to live a life of adventure–at least for a year–before she marries her guardian’s son. That son, Crane Wilbur, doesn’t really want Pauline to take this year off, but he…
-
King of the Rocket Men isn’t a long serial. It’s only twelve chapters and almost one of them is a recap of the first three chapters. The final chapter spends most of its time setting up a big showdown, with the grand action finale–at least the grand action finale not recycling disaster footage from another,…
-
The Wave of Disaster does have some great special effects for Rocket Men’s finale. Sure, they’re from an earlier film, but they’re still great. The Rocket Man effects are fine too, they’re just boring. After yet another tepid cliffhanger resolution–maybe the first to directly contradict the previous chapter’s version of it–and Tristram Coffin letting the…
-
About halfway through the chapter–the penultimate Rocket Men chapter–Tristram Coffin and Mae Clarke go over a cliff in a car into a lake. They’ve already gone over a cliff together as a cliffhanger. And Coffin forced a motorcycle driver to his death over the cliff into a lake. It really felt like The Secret of…
-
The Deadly Fog is a clip chapter. Sadly, the fog doesn’t refer to the misting effect when Deadly goes into flashback to the moments from the first three chapters. After another lackluster cliffhanger resolution, Tristram Coffin ignores the weapon of mass destruction in a nearby car–he really doesn’t sweat his invention being captured by the…
-
Ten Seconds to Live is a new low as far as Rocket Men quality goes. It’s bad to the point the badness becomes more engaging than the story, partially because there’s no story, mostly because the good guys are just so dumb. The cliffhanger resolution is bad. The subsequent setup for the chapter–Tristram Coffin arguing…
-
Maybe I missed Tristram Coffin revealing his Rocket Man identity to Mae Clarke and House Peters Jr. Or maybe they just don’t question only Rocket Man ever coming to their rescue after Coffin has put them in danger. This chapter is a mild improvement over the previous one, though the cliffhanger resolutions are getting incredibly…
-
King of the Rocket Men made it to chapter seven before having a stinker. And Molten Menace isn’t even an exciting stinker, it’s just a plodding one. It’s also frustrating because it requires lead Tristram Coffin to be stupid about something a scene after he was talking about being cautious about the exact same thing.…
-
With the opening cliffhanger resolution once again being tepid, it seems like Rocket Men is never going to get out of the bad opening rut. Poor Mae Clarke is simply dismissed from the chapter, not very gracious considering she’s just around to be in danger. There’s some brief setup for Tristram Coffin’s next scheme to…
-
Not much happens in Fatal Dive before the action–i.e. fisticuffs–starts. Tristram Coffin gets out of the previous chapter’s cliffhanger, inexplicably abandoning the interrupted fight, and heads off to consult with scientist on the lam James Craven. Meanwhile, House Peters Jr. is hanging around Mae Clarke’s apartment again and they decided it’s got to be Coffin…
-
One of King of the Rocket Men’s unintentional strengths is its brevity. The chapters never go on too long. They’re all just right, even when they’ve got lackluster events. Most of High Peril is lackluster. The opening cliffhanger resolution is lackluster, the group interrogation scene is lackluster, the car chase is lackluster. The car chase,…
-
It’s another quick chapter, starting with a lackluster resolution to the previous cliffhanger–three chapters in, it appears King of the Rocket Men is going to just reveal something previously unseen in resolutions instead of the characters actually having to get out of anything. Unfortunately, Dangerous Evidence’s cliffhanger isn’t particularly impressive either. Especially not after that…
-
The coolest part of Plunging Death is a toss-up. It’s either when lead Tristram Coffin, who doesn’t get to participate in the chapter’s fisticuffs, pulls over to put on his rocket suit and take off to chase the villain or when Mae Clarke starts pursuing the villain in the first place. She and House Peters…
-
King of the Rocket Men’s first chapter, Dr. Vulcan – Traitor, opens with the mysterious Dr. Vulcan killing off members of the scientific establishment. The first couple just die in mysterious explosions, but the third has Dr. Vulcan taunting him with his impending doom. So far, not a great villain. Director Brannon rushes through the…
-
Flash Gordon is all about its gee whiz factor. The serial goes all out to create the planet Mongo, which has come out of nowhere (in space) and is on a collision course with Earth. Only scientist Frank Shannon has a plan to save the otherwise panicked and resigned Earth–take a rocketship to the new…
-
Rocketing to Earth starts out poorly. The cliffhanger resolution is so lazy star Buster Crabbe remarks on it; clearly someone making Flash Gordon knew they’d run out of resolves. Worse, Crabbe and the gang go right back to Charles Middleton’s palace. The past four or five chapters have just been one failed escape or another–and…
-
Trapped in the Turret is the penultimate chapter of Flash Gordon, which might explain some of its inconsistencies. After a stunt person heavy resolution to the previous cliffhanger, Richard Alexander tells scheming Priscilla Lawson she might just try being nice to Buster Crabbe and Jean Rogers. So she does. And becomes a good guy. Apparently.…
-
Once again, the title refers to a finale item. In the Claws of the Tigron doesn’t have much tigron (a Mongonian tiger), but it does have a lot of invisible Buster Crabbe causing mischief around Charles Middleton’s palace. The chapter’s a tad nonsensical–Crabbe, invisible, terrorizes Middleton’s guards while all his friends hang out in the…
-
Once again, the chapter title doesn’t come into play until the very end–The Unseen Peril, or at least what seems like it, shows up in the last scene. The chapter skips a more dramatic cliffhanger, going on just a few seconds longer to do a puzzling one. Most of the chapter involves Priscilla Lawson’s schemes…
-
This chapter’s title, Fighting the Fire Dragon, makes a big promise. There’s going to be a fire dragon and there’s doing to be a fight against said fire dragon. Only the former proves true. Any fight is, presumably, coming in a subsequent chapter. Thanks, as usual, to Priscilla Lawson’s scheming, Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, and…
-
Tournament of Death is an unexpectedly strong chapter. There’s a lot going on. There’s the cliffhanger resolution, there’s Buster Crabbe facing off with Charles Middleton for the first time since Chapter One, there’s Frank Shannon saving the day, there’s Jack Lipson having character development, there’s Richard Alexander having hilarious character development, and there’s Jean Rogers…
-
It’s another heavy chapter. Despite a valiant escape effort, Buster Crabbe ends up back in chains. He and his fellow, shirtless men in shorts shovel radium into king hawkman Jack Lipson’s furnance. Lipson’s still testing Jean Rogers’s affections. She’s got a couple rather good moments as she tries to misdirect Lipson. Lipson’s a little better…
-
Flaming Torture is about flaming torture. Buster Crabbe and his allies get captured when they’re trying to rescue Jean Rogers. While Rogers has an arc with Priscilla Lawson–Rogers has to seduce moron king of the hawkmen Jack Lipson (in an atrociously annoying performance)–all Crabbe gets to do is get tortured. With flames. Crabbe has little…
-
Despite a lackluster resolution to the cliffhanger–there’s a questionably timed emergency response–and some dawdling, The Destroying Ray eventually comes through. Director Stephani, along with the editors, works up a pace throughout and stops at just the right moment for maximum effect. Most of the chapter is a bridge between Buster Crabbe and company in the…
-
Battling the Sea Beast opens with Buster Crabbe fighting an octopus. Mostly it’s Crabbe–quite enthusiastically–feigning a struggle against one or two legs of the octopus, which shows no life once they’re battling. Before it was stock footage; with the fight, it’s a passive prop Crabbe has to get going. And it’s the only fight scene…
-
There’s some good action in Captured by Shark Men, with Buster Crabbe rescuing Jean Rogers from Charles Middleton and then an undersea sequence with a giant octopus. The cliffhanger resolution is relatively decent, with Crabbe up against a giant lizard monster. Most of the chapter is either action or leading up to action, but when…
-
The Tunnel of Terror opens with Buster Crabbe and Priscilla Lawson quickly escaping from the previous chapter’s cliffhanger. The unfortunate lizard monsters (real lizards standing in for giant monsters) make a brief return, but soon Crabbe and Lawson are just on the run from the guards. Pretty soon, Crabbe is on his own and piloting…
-
In just around twenty minutes, The Planet of Peril, the first chapter of Flash Gordon, boldly defines itself. It establishes the ground situation–Earth is about to be destroyed by a collision with another planet and the world’s in panic. It establishes the leads–Buster Crabbe’s a blond, smart guy jock, Jean Rogers is his airplane co-passenger…
-
For the majority of Batman’s fifteen chapters, the serial has a set formula when it comes to the action. Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin (Douglas Croft) get into fist fights with the same five or six thugs. Croft gets beat up early while Wilson takes on at least two of the villain, then two or…
The Stop Button 