There’s a lot going on in Superman Crashes Through, starting with some power company guys beating up on the Atom Man’s thugs. The power company guys are out on a call about an explosion in the cave base. But when the cops get there (again), it’s empty (again).

It seems like another of the serial’s logic oversights, but then later on Pierre Watkin is talking with Kirk Alyn about it. Lex Luthor (Lyle Talbot) really is teleporting his equipment out of the cave and then back again. Why no one stakes out the cave–not just the police (who are always off screen in Atom Man vs. Superman) but maybe Superman? Only no. Alyn’s got more important things to do.

Like get Noel Neill fired. She’s happy with it–happy enough it seems like a plot twist waiting to be revealed–and goes to get a job at Talbot’s television station.

But before Neill can get fired, Watkin has to be wrong about something else (he’s majorly wrong twice in Crashes) and Alyn has to trick Talbot into reopening the dimensional portal. It’s not a particularly exciting escape for Superman, but it does get the serial moving again.

It’s nice to see Neill do something different. Though Alyn gets something different too; he gloats about Neill losing her job and teases her at her new one. After it was his fault she got fired.

Alyn’s a bit of a jackass here, which probably explains why he and Tommy Bond get on so well in this chapter.

Bond gets the cliffhanger, foolishly chasing down thugs by himself. So he deserves getting it. He doesn’t deserve the cliffhanger’s silliness however. Atom Man vs. Superman’s cliffhangers all seem to have been left laying in the Kryptonite too long.

CREDITS

Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet; screenplay by George H. Plympton, Joseph F. Poland, and David Matthews, based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; director of photography, Ira H. Morgan; edited by Earl Turner; produced by Sam Katzman; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Kirk Alyn (Superman / Clark Kent), Noel Neill (Lois Lane), Lyle Talbot (Luthor), Tommy Bond (Jimmy Olsen), Pierre Watkin (Perry White), Jack Ingram (Foster), Don C. Harvey (Albor), Paul Stader (Lawson), George Robotham (Earl), and Fred Kelsey (Police Chief Forman).