I’m starting a new thread to recover (and hopefully add to) my previous reviews of several Movie Serials. The original threads are littered now with broken Tinypic links and—naïvely—I originally added online polls so that IMWANkers could rank the quality of each serial. And while there had been some forum interest in the serials, only about three other members had ever seen any of them—so the polls were rather meaningless. This time around I will rely mostly on writing text. Previously, I had done screen captures and image clean up, but all of that work is now lost, and I am discouraged from trying to recreate it.

What are Chapter Serials? some of you may ask. Well, they were serialized motion pictures shown in movie theaters, with a 10–20 minute chapter being shown each week to advance the story. Most of the chapters ended with a “cliff hanger,” a dangerous situation or deathtrap, which was used to create lingering excitement—“How could the hero possibly escape and/or save the damsel in distress?” Cliff hangers hooked the audience into coming back next week in order to find out. Serials were part of 10¢ motion-picture theater bundles, which included a serial chapter play, some cartoons, newsreels, documentaries, and a feature film to provide children (and adults) with a Saturday afternoon worth’s of entertainment.

The Serials covered several genres: westerns, jungle adventures, comic characters, espionage, crime fiction, and science fiction. Most ran 12 or 15 chapters in length, were fairly low budget, and involved a lot of fist fights as the heroes and their trusty sidekicks (or “saddle pals”) battled the henchmen (“heavies”), who were themselves being directed by a mysterious mastermind criminal (“brain heavy”), who often turned out to be a prominent citizen or a friend of the hero. In the end, good would always triumph over evil.

I like them. And I hope to watch and review more of them now that I have some quarantine time on my hands.

Zorro's Fighting Legion

Chapters: 12
Company: Republic Pictures
Release Date: 1939

Cast: Reed Hadley
Sheila Darcy
William Corson
Leander De Cordova
Edmund Cobb
John Merton
C. Montague Shaw
Budd Buster
Carleton Young

Plot: After centuries of tyranny, the Mexican people revolt in 1810. By 1824, they have formed the United States of Mexico. To remain free, the country needs gold and the troops and munitions that gold can provide. Benito Juárez (future president of Mexico) worries that the gold shipments in the province of San Mendolito will never reach Mexico City. Local nobleman Don Francisco and his son Ramon ensures Juárez that they have organized a legion of patriots to protect the shipments.

Unbeknown to them, the four leading members of the San Mendolito council: Felipe, Manuel, Pablo, and Gonzales are enemies of Mexico, and one of them is also the mysterious Don del Oro (the Yaqui Indian God of Gold).

Soon afterwards, Francisco is mortally wounded in a pub duel with one of Don del Oro's bandits. Zorro arrives too late to save him, but the audience (and Ramon) overhear Zorro calling Francisco "Uncle" before the man dies. Deducing that Zorro must be Don Diego Vega, Ramon offers control of the Fighting Legion to him. Zorro then goes on to win the trust of these patriots, and they work together against Don del Oro's control of the Yaqui tribe and the secret machinations of the San Mendolito council.

This is one of the better movie serials, and clearly the best Zorro serial, and it remains very true to the character as portrayed in the written works of Johnston McCulley: Zorro works with a group of allied caballeros, plays the fop as Diego, carves a Z on a bandit, swings from a chandelier, jumps across a ravine on horseback, and so on. Noticeably missing, though, is his black horse, Tornado, and all of his normal companions. But, as this is a Zorro adventure set in Mexico, and not California, that is to be expected.

The timeframe in the various Zorro adaptions over the years play loosely with historical dates. This serial is set in 1824. Since California won it's independence from Spain in 1821, and was ruled next—-and harshly so—-by Mexico, it makes sense that Don Diego would come to Mexico hoping to aid a new, democratic government there. The Mexican president at that time, however, would have been Guadalupe Victoria, not Benito Juárez as the serial suggests. (I didn't know until I looked it up, but the writers should have known better.) Even so, that doesn't do too much harm here as Juárez's primary role in this is to frame the first and last episode. To make this fit in with other Zorro adventures, Zorro would have been about 42 here, but the actor Reed Hadley was 28.

The storyline is quite good: greedy men wish to gain control of a politically-unstable Mexico and to exploit its people and wealth. Disguising one of their members as Don del Oro and playing upon the superstitions of the local Indian tribes is handled as you might expect of Hollywood in the 1930s, but it helps to give the evil council a credible source of muscle in the larger battle scenes against Zorro's Fighting Legion. Most of the serial, though, focuses upon a smaller group of bandits and Zorro and a few of his most trusted allies. The Don del Oro disguise is very good: a golden set of plate mail armor and a large idol headdress. In one scene, it looks like the armor helps save Don del Oro from a gun shot.

The musical score throughout is excellent, helping to build up suspense for the cliff hangers, many of which also have very good resolutions. Zorro's stunt man in this serial is legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt. One of the most memorable moments is where he drops from stage coach horses, lowers himself between their legs, and he slides over the ground till he reaches the back of the Stage coach where he climbs up again. It certainly looks as if the horses trample him as his body flops 180 degrees under them. This scene is an obvious inspiration for a similar scene years later involving Indiana Jones and a truck, but this one stands out since there were no special effects or editing here to help Canutt, who acted the scene twice at his own peril.

And, if you're getting burned out over drawn-out chapter serial fist fights, well, this serial doesn't have them.

What would I change about this movie? Not much. Maybe in the scenes where the deadly golden arrows are shot, I would play down the strumming sound of the released bow string. And, even though I like the fact the Legion is singing in the opening credits, I don't think any one really wants to hear that jaunty li'l tune every time each chapter starts. But even that is coming from the perspective of watching them one episode immediately after another. I would have loved it as a kid coming to the theater each week.

My favorite:
J-Men Forever
A 1979 release, this re-edits clips from Republic serials and dubs new voices (similarly to Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lily?"), mostly by Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman of Firesign Theatre. The J-men, under the supervision of J. Eager Believer, are attempting to stop the rise of rock'n'roll as it is spread to the kids by the evil DJ The Lightning Bug, who is a master of disguise. I have watched this innumerable times, it's effin' hilarious.
Clips are from Adventures of Captain Marvel (he transforms with the magic word "Sh-Booom!"),Captain America, Spy Smasher, and Commander Cody, among others. So much fun.

J-Men Forever is a very fun movie, Jason, and also one of my favorites.

And it's obviously my favorite, too, as I star in it.

The Caped Madman!

How have you been? I hope this virus hasn't hampered your superheroical adventuring activities.

Zorro Rides Again (Republic, 1937)


Mini Review: Starring John Carroll as James Vega, a singing cowboy descendant of Zorro in modern times. Zorro is seen in traditional old west settings as well as also alongside cars, trains, and skyscrapers in the big city. The main villain (Noah Beery, Sr) attempts to illegally take control of the California-Yucatan Railroad. Features some great stunt work by Yakima Canutt, and a memorable scene of Zorro weilding a Gatling gun.

I'm good, Simon. Thanks; I hope you are well. I've been keeping obnoxious, some might say doubly obnoxious.

That's a good one.

Zorro's Black Whip (Republic, 1944)

Mini Review: Linda Stirling stars as a Zorro-like character, the Black Whip, who fights corrupt politicians in the Territory of Idaho circa 1889.  She assumes the role after her brother (the original Black Whip and newspaper crusader campaigning for statehood) is killed. Republic was unable to use the Zorro character because of 20th Century Fox's 1940 Mark of Zorro movie deal, but they still hoped to capitalize on the Zorro name. Plus, they wanted a vehicle to help showcase Linda Stirling, who had success in Republic's earlier serial, The Tiger Woman. Throughout the serial, the Black Whip is assumed by the rest of the cast to be a man. (They obviously don't get a good look at her.)

Son of Zorro (Republic, 1947)

Mini Review: George Turner stars as Jeff Stewart, a descendant of the original Zorro. This serial is set in an 1860's post-Civil War America.  Former cavalry officer Jeff must fight bandits who have the entire region at their mercy, and who are charging 50% poll taxes and harboring bandits. This is a job for Zorro!

Ghost of Zorro (Republic, 1949)

Mini Review: Clayton Moore (TV's Lone Ranger) stars as Ken Mason, an eastern surveying engineer and—unknown to him at the beginning of the serial—the grandson of Don Diego Vega. Mason resurrects the Zorro persona to fight the men trying to keep the Pioneer Telegraph Company out of New Mexico. Eugene Roth plays the main villain who fears that freely-available communication in the area will expose his criminal empire.

King of the Rocket Men

Chapters: 12
Company: Republic Films
Release Date: 1949

Cast: Tristram Coffin
Mae Clarke
Don Haggerty
House Peters Jr
James Craven
I. Stanford Jolley
Stanley Price

Plot: Jeff King is a member of Science Associates, a group of the country's most brilliant men. The serial begins with some of their members dying—-"accidents" arranged by the nefarious Dr. Vulcan. As it often goes in these types of adventures, "Dr. Vulcan" is secretly one of the group's members, but it takes some time for the hero to realize this.

In the first chapter, King helps to save Vulcan's latest target, Professor Millard, from a planned lab explosion, and then safely relocates him (and much of his equipment) to a secret cave laboratory. Only Jeff King knows Millard is still alive, and together they use Millard's atomic-powered Rocket Man flying suit and other scientific inventions to battle Dr. Vulcan, who has a few inventions of his own.

This is the first of the "Rocket men" serials, and helps spawn three sequels: Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies Of The Stratosphere, and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. Commando Cody also gets a TV series. The rocket suit used for most of these consists of a metal helmet, a leather flight jacket, a rocket jet-pack, and a control unit attached to the front of the jacket.

King is played by actor Tristram Coffin. (Apparently Kirk Alyn was Republic's first choice to play Rocket man.) Coffin wasn't exactly the classic matinee hero: svelte, small jawed, pencil-thin mustache, and over 45, he definitely plays against type. Coffin had made a decent career of playing slick con men and well-suited weasels in serials before this, but he turns in a good heroic performance. He has one or two sardonic lines in this serial, which I believe that most Republic heroes would have had a harder time pulling off.

Also playing against type is Mae Clarke, who, in her 40s, is a bit older than the typical serial damsel in distress. But she's also more capable and useful than most, and has some good action scenes where she manages to trip up some of the criminals. Frequently she is paired with House Peters Jr, who certainly looks younger and more heroic than Coffin, but here, in his role of heroic assistant, he can only manage to battle one criminal at a time. Don Haggerty play's Vulcan's main henchman, and he is quite good in the role.

This serial really flies by. By 1949, Republic had cut the opening chapters of their serials from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, and each of the remaining chapters are only 13 minutes each. So, there was little time for character and plot development. After you script in a fist fight, an exchange of gun shots, a car chase, and show Jeff King get out of his 1947 Dodge, pop the trunk, and strap on the rocket pack, there's not a lot of room for anything else.

This serial suffers a bit from following the "Republic serial formula" too closely, and you can see that despite it being called by many a GREAT serial, it is also considered one of the LAST great serials. The decline of the serials is quite evident as Republic uses many of the same cliff hangers from its previous serials--and quite a lot of the exact same footage: car crashes, explosions, trucks smashing off the dock and into the water, …. Still, despite this, King of the Rocket Men is quite good, and it manages to throw in a few twists: I especially like how at one point Jeff King's associates become convinced that he is Dr. Vulcan.

The name of this serial is rather misleading, and you might certainly get the impression that Jeff King is the glorious leader of a whole squadron of Rocket men, but, apart from a brief moment where Professor Millard temporarily wears the suit, King is the only Rocket man in this serial. Republic Pictures loved the name King for its heroes, and this started when they purchased the movie rights to Zane Grey's Sgt. Dave King of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. From there, they produced King of the Texas Rangers, King of the Forest Rangers, and after King of the Rocket Men, King of the Carnival.

But the special effects and the flying sequences are too notch. Using the same techniques perfected in Republic's earlier serial, The Adventures of Captain Marvel, flying effects experts, Howard and Theodore Lydecker, use their system of wires, pulleys, and a man-sized dummy. Combined with some smoky spring board jumps for takeoffs, high leaps down from raise platforms for landings, and a wire rig and matte-work close up flying scenes, they manage some remarkable moments (these same scenes are reused in all of the "Rocket men" serials). I especially liked the stunt landings, sometimes smashing into the side of an airplane, being thrown into the back of a truck onto a criminal, and smashing headfirst through a house window. With moments like this, you can almost stop wondering about why Jeff King's rocket pack isn't burning his backside and legs off.

The climax of the serial has Dr. Vulcan using Millard's Decimater invention to wreck havoc on New York City by creating a gigantic tsunami (this footage is taken from RKO's movie, "Deluge"). Only by timely intervention by Rocket man is total disaster avoided. Oh, and a fleet of United States bombers (which look strangely like Japanese Army Sally Mitsubishi Ki-21-Ia bombers bombing China) arrive immediately afterwards. That's good enough to give the mayor of New York (or whoever that politician was there at the end) a chance to take credit for Rocket man's triumph over Dr. Vulcan.

Captain Midnight

Chapters: 15
Company: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: 1942

Cast: Dave O'Brien
Dorothy Short
James Craven
Bryant Washburn
Sam Edwards
Guy Wilkerson
Luana Walters
Joe Girard

Plot: Criminal mastermind, Ivan Shark, has his airmen bomb key production centers hoping to cripple America's war efforts. In order to stop him, Major Steele has his men trying to locate Captain Albright (a.k.a. Captain Midnight), a former serviceman and aviation expert, who works secretly for Steele on special military intelligence missions.

Inventor John Edwards has developed a bomb-sighting range finder, which Ivan Shark seeks to secure to improve his bombing raids or to help out his [unnamed] country. It's possible that this "foreign powers" idea was added late to the script after the bombing of Pearl Harbor a few months earlier to help add a little more relevance to Ivan Shark's otherwise purely criminal organization, but this plot element is quickly dropped.

James Craven is a joy to watch in this one as the villainous Ivan Shark. Constantly barking orders and insults at his henchmen and always insisting on trying to kill Captain Midnight by using one of his elaborate death traps, the most outrageous of which involved a spinning room where the walls pull away to reveal a huge fire pit beneath, and then he sends a huge grind stone from above to crush Captain Midnight who's holding onto the room's central pole shaft for dear life.

Ivan Shark is also a master of disguise, and he uses this throughout the 15 chapters to pretend to be most of the major heroic players. You can tell he loves it, and early on he dresses as some odd masked Arab just for giggles it appears. You can also see that his daughter, the lovely and vicious Fury Shark (Walters), is maybe just a little tired of her father's dress up adventures.

It's nice to see a woman criminal in these serials, and equally nice to see her and the heroine get into a few scrapes together. There's not enough of this, of course, and Fury's main purpose in this serial otherwise is to take charge of Shark's men whenever Ivan is momentarily captured or endangered when out taking a more active role in his missions.

It may be a bit telling to say that I enjoyed the villains in this chapter play a lot more than the heroes. Ivan Shark is smart but short-fused, Fury tries to sound far tougher than she is, and Shark's henchmen are rather inept, quarrel amongst themselves, and even lie to their boss to help to try to cover up their own failures. At one point, three of Shark's men get into an almost Three Stooges type moment taking turns punching each other. And, since it's rather obvious to the audience that many of the actors playing the heroes also get a dual-role chance at being one Ivan Shark's "disguises," the division between hero and villain in this one sometimes gets a little blurred.

In contrast, Dave O'Brien is a bit over the top as Captain Midnight, and he's always in a hurry it seems, even when he relates his plans to others. He's rather authoritative, and, well, smug. In the early goings, I was hoping that someone would wipe the cock-sureness off his face. But, little chance of this as this is a Columbian serial, and Columbia liked to have their heroes able to hold his own against three or four men at once. Still, I grew to like O'Brien in the role. He has an interesting voice.

His two most trusted allies are Ichabod 'Icky' Mudd (Wilkerson), a tall, lanky, balding southern mechanic and inventor, and Chuck Ramsey (Edwards), Captain Midnight's ward, a smaller, gung-ho man in his twenties. The duo alternate between being useful and being bungling doofuses who can't effectively hold on to their guns nor tie up criminals.

Captain Midnight works closely with Major Steele (Girard), an older, gruff U. S. Army Intelligence officer, who seems to have no ability whatsoever to command Midnight, and who instead grumbles a lot, but still does everything the Captain asks of him.

Inventor John Edwards goes from being a trusted ally of Captain Midnight to amnesiac patient and then finally to a rather unlikeable high-strung demanding take-my-ball-and- go-home sort of whiner. His daughter, Joyce Edwards (Short)--and I guess "love interest" for Captain Midnight--is in this serial to scream at every opportunity--so much so that one can't help but laugh at her and hope that Fury bitch-slaps her into silence. I think she was Dave O'Brien's real life wife. A great moment comes when Ivan Shark is working his death trap to kill Captain Midnight, and Joyce is screaming so much that Shark turns around and angrily tells Fury to "KEEP HER QUIET!"

But, overall, this is a very good, fun serial, I thought. Despite being 15 chapters, there isn't a single "recap" chapter, and the pace moves along rather swiftly. There's adequate suspense and many cliff hangers, which, like many of Columbia's effort, don't involve the hero leaping out in time, but just in being tough enough to “shake off the death crash.”

What would I do to improve it? It probably could be trimmed down to 12 chapters and not lose much. Ivan Shark has an Asian servant named Fang, who appears here, I guess, in a very minor role because he was in the radio broadcasts. All he does though is to answer radio messages and phone calls. Using him to tie back somehow to the Japanese backing Shark's terrorist activities could have added some serious war-time relevance.

Plus, instead of always showing Shark put on the make up, they could of had him appear as someone else without the audience knowing right away it was him in disguise. That would have left the crowd guessing more.

Oh, and Columbia's chapter previews always make me cringe since they normally can't use the hero in them (since he's about to die), so they always make it sound like the hero's friends have to go on without him, or they feature the villain (which is a better approach). I hated "The Robin Previews" in the Batman serial.

As it is, though, Captain Midnight is one of my most favorite Columbian serial to date.

I wonder how they made an aviator sound exciting on the radio.

I haven't listened to them. Here's one:
http://otr.com/ra/midnite/Captain%20Mid ... 8bk%29.mp3

Jungle Jim

Chapters: 12
Company: Universal
Release Date: 1937

Cast: Grant Withers
Betty Jane Rhodes
Raymond Hatton
Evelyn Brent
Henry Brandon
Bryant Washburn
Al Bridge
Paul Sutton
Al Duvall

Plot: Bruce Redmond (Washburn) leads a safari into the African jungle in search of Joan Redmond (Rhodes), heiress of a large fortune, who was lost at sea 15 years earlier along with her father and mother. Redmond and his henchmen, Slade (Bridge) and La Bat (Sutton), hope to locate the white lion goddess of the Basumbo tribe, and--if this goddess is Joan--to eliminate her so that Redmond can inherit the family wealth for himself.

In order to help ensure their success, La Bat kills a friend of Jungle Jim (Withers) who was hired to lead a rival safari hoping to find Joan and to return her to America. Jungle Jim and his pal, Malay Mike (Hatton), take charge of this second expedition, following the first and hoping to bring the killer to justice.

To complicate matters, a second group of criminals (siblings on the lam), the Cobra (Brandon) and Shanghai Lil (Brent), control the warrior Basumbo tribe through Joan--who believes that the Cobra is her father.

This serial begins aboard a schooner caught in a storm somewhere off the coast of Africa. Savage animals are freed from their makeshift cages, and wealthy hunter Tom Redmond is lost overboard during the action, leaving his wife and young daughter (Joan) in the charge of native cabin boy, Kolu (Duvall). Life boats are launched, but we never know if any of the crew other than Joan and Kolu ever make it to shore. The audience is left to piece together how those two were adopted by the Basumbo tribe, and when during the next 15 years that Joan became convinced that the Cobra was her father. We do learn in the later Chapters that Kolu has kept quiet about Joan's history because the Cobra had threatened to kill her otherwise.

So, this is another lost, young white girl becomes the goddess of a native tribe story, but at least it gives us enough back story as to why she has a good understanding of English.

Betty Jane Rhodes looks pretty good in a traditional, low-cut one-piece jungle-girl outfit, but it feels a little creepy now after realizing she was only 16 years old when this was filmed. Her performance isn't the greatest, but who's to know what a girl raised in the jungle is supposed to talk and act like? And I can understand her crushing on Jungle Jim, but, at 33, Withers is rather old to be returning her affections (luckily none of this is really hinted at until the last moments of the last chapter).

Withers' role as Jungle Jim isn't exactly award-winning, but he does a decent job considering that most of the "location" shots are filmed on actual locations. And I've read that in many of the scenes, the actors were right there in the thick of things with the lions and tigers. A rifleman sniper armed with tranquilizer darts was at the ready in case anything went amiss. And--especially after having just watched the Columbian Captain Midnight serial--it seems a little surprising that Jungle Jim can barely win a fight against one other man. However, give him only a knife and put him up against a full grown lion, or tiger, or crocodile, and Jim can make short work of the beast. I guess it's all a matter of your specialized training.

Raymond Hatton as Jim's partner Malay Mike brings much needed emotion and snappy banter to this story, and he appears an authentic adventurer. One of my favorite moments in the serial comes quite a bit after a scene where Shanghai Lil, "who never misses," does exactly that when she fails to kill Jungle Jim with her pistol at close range. Malay Mike is later captured by the Cobra and Lil, and the Cobra promises Mike that he will be shot in the morning. Mike looks to Lil and says something smart-assed along the lines of, "Could you do me a favor and have her aiming the rifle?"

But, apart from Hatton's performance, and some nice exotic animal footage (which certainly look to me as if they just let wild animals fight each other for real!), there's not much in this serial that would allow me to recommend it to anyone. It does have nice picture quality (and isn't washed out like most neglected serials from this age), and it benefits from being able to make use of Universal's castle set from their Dracula movie. But, it's mostly a back-and-forth in the jungle: captured and led back to the castle, escape to the jungle, get captured and led back to the castle again, lather, rinse, and repeat storyline.

Al Bridge does well as the lead thug, Slade; his nasal voice helps to deliver some nice lines, but Brandon as the Cobra and Brent as Shanghai Lil are given almost nothing to do.

Al Duvall gives a good performance as Kolu, who, for this serial was Joan's manservant and not quite the same as in the comic strip who serves as Jim's strong native companion. Likewise, for the sake of this story, Jungle Jim is moved from his normal stomping grounds in southeast Asia to darkest Africa (and, no doubt, he brought all of the tigers in this serial along with him).

One saving grace is the Chapter recaps, which, since the serial is based upon Alex Raymond and Don Moore's comic strip, uses comic strip panels to tell what happened last week. That's a very novel approach, and I always looked forward to the hands opening the comic section and then the zoom in to the Jungle Jim comic. However, the illustrations here were pretty bad, and looked more like they were quickly traced from photos than anything Raymond might have actually drawn. He might have, I suppose. If so, they're nowhere near his best work.

Another nice touch is that at the end, when Jungle Jim is taking Joan back to America to claim her fortune, she tells the Basumbo that she will return and bring back great things for them. I appreciated hearing Joan was going to use her wealth for the benefit of the people who had taken care of her for all those years.

Batman

Chapters: 15
Company: Columbia
Release Date: 1943

Cast: Lewis Wilson
Douglas Croft
J. Carrol Naish
Shirley Patterson
William Austin

Plot: Japanese prince and scientist, Dr. Daka, works secretly from within America's borders during World War II to bring down the United States' government. He has a machine that is able to turn men into powerful zombies under his control. Working with him are several "dishonored" Americans, criminals who are specialists in various aspects of technology and industry. Costumed crime fighters (and secret agents working for the U.S. government), Batman and Robin, attempt to put an end to Daka and his gang.

I wish this serial were good, but it really isn't. However, it is the very first serial that I ever saw as a child (my Dad had an abridged version of it on Super 8mm film), so it did leave a favorable, lasting impression on me. But, even back then, I didn't need to hear my older brothers sneering and laughing at it to realize how stupid it often was: for example, the scene with the slow-moving electrical sparks running along a metal wire. Despite all of that, I managed to be impressed. I particularly liked the "Make the change," scene, where the criminals release a gas that changes the color of their car, rotate their license plates to different plates, and turn around and head back towards Batman who is chasing them. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and it started me plotting up ways that I could use something like that myself. Luckily, Batman saves the day in this serial, so that probably steered me away from a life of being a science criminal.

Okay, so, if we can look beyond the baggy costumes, floppy capes, silly devil's horns, the lack of a Batmobile, the presence of utility belts but never using anything out of them, a mostly-out-of-shape Batman who speaks with a--I don't know--Boston accent?, the war-time propaganda and racism, and the fact that Batman and Robin can't even handle three normal criminals at once, what do we have?

Well, we have the first time Batman was ever done up on film. And, unlike most serial adaptions of comic book characters, not that much is changed about the character: he's Bruce Wayne, who pretends to be a do-nothing playboy. Batman is aided by a young boy, Robin, who is his ward Dick Grayson. Linda Page, his girlfriend/fiancé in the serial, comes from the earliest Comic Books, and, like in the comics, she's disappointed that Bruce is basically a coward and a layabout. And Bruce and Dick have a butler, Alfred, who knows their identities and helps them the best he can.

Plus, this serial actually inspires the comic books to change to become more like it: Batman gets a Bat's Cave, Bruce and Dick go through a grandfather clock to get to the cave, and Alfred becomes a skinny butler with a pencil-thin moustache. I enjoyed William Austin as Alfred: he's comical, a bungler, but fun and determined to help. And he's given plenty of opportunities to help out: driving the car, wearing various disguises, playing parts in setup stings, and even getting into a few of the fights.

I am surprised, though, that Batman and Robin are such poor fighters, especially as this is a Columbia serial--and their serial heroes normally can lick a dozen men blind-folded. Plus, the dynamic duo aren't very dynamic, and they appear to be lacking in most forms of athleticism and agility. On occasion, though, Douglas Croft as Robin, manages to do quite well, especially when you see him running forth grabbing a thug, or pulling a nearby blanket, coat, or curtain over their heads.

My favorite scene has a henchman swing at Robin--who moves out of the way--and the criminal punches the wall instead. That looked pretty good. In fact, Robin looks good. Having an actual 15 or 16 year old play the part gives the serial some needed realism.

And, really, Batman's costume isn't that bad. From the right angles, Lewis Wilson makes a convincing comic book hero, and does well also as Bruce Wayne. Shirley Patterson does well enough as Linda Page. I probably would be too harsh, though, if I said I didn't see much difference in her performance before and after they turned her into a zombie.

To be fair to Shirley Patterson, I'm sure that she did everything they told her to do. I got more enjoyment out of watching the smaller character roles played by Charles C. Wilson (Police Captain Arnold who takes credit for Batman's exploits) and Charles Middleton (who plays the dour, strongly-independent radium miner, Ken Colton, but who is better known to serial watchers as Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon).

But for me, this movie is all about J. Carrol Naish as Dr. Tito Daka. Despite being Irish himself, Naish spent much of his movie career playing Latin, Arab, and East Indian characters. Here, he portrays an evil Japanese prince and represents, obviously, the "Yellow Peril." Propaganda or representative of the legitimate American attitude towards the Japanese during World War II? Oddly enough, I didn't much notice the racist remarks as a kid, but I cringed mightily when I watched it about five years ago. This time around, well, I laughed, and I laughed hard. I'm sorry. It's comical; it's so bad and over-blown, I think you have to laugh at it. It'd be wrong to do anything else.

Dr. Daka has some nice toys: radium gun (that blows things up, but which requires plot-driving radium ventures), and his electric-brain-zombie-making machine and radio headset control caps. Really, with these items, you wonder why he didn't do much better. His zombies were super-strong, and that gun blasted apart things like they were cheap props in a low-budget serial. Daka should have just turned his whole
crew into zombies and just started killing everyone wholesale. And, despite the promise of having recruited experts in various scientific and industrial fields, all Daka seems to use these guys for is so that he can explain to them the virtues of the superior Nipponese and the greatness of Emperor Shōwa Hirohito. Meanwhile, of course, he wants to steal some great new America plane prototype

All in all, I'm mixed on this one. It feeds my nostalgia, and it's Batman. But, if this were anything other than a Batman movie, it wouldn't be worth much.

Batman and Robin

Chapters: 15
Company: Columbia
Release Date: 1949

Cast: Robert Lowery
Johnny Duncan
Jane Adams
Lyle Talbot
Ralph Graves
Don C. Harvey
William Fawcett
Rick Vallin
Michael Whalen

Plot: Batman and Robin go up against the Wizard, a masked criminal mastermind who has a device able to control cars, trains, and even crowbars remotely. Robert Lowery serves as Batman in this second serial, and again, really isn't well-suited: with his pot belly, he's more of a "Fatman," and I liked the previous Batman outfit better than this one; the cowl is particularly silly looking. There really is only one good angle for it.

The Metal utility belt has been replaced with some sort of yellow buckled sash. But that doesn't stop Batman from taking a full-sized blow torch out of it. Even worse, they then show him tucking it and the hose "back in" once he's done using it. That thing is huge! And then, in the next scene, it's gone.

This Robin is older, wears tights over hairy legs, and--was that a bald spot I saw in a couple of scenes? I get the impression that maybe the low-key fighting action in this serial might be because of the sock-like shoes he's wearing. Robin prances about sometimes and other times looks like he's afraid of slipping. In one rather silly scene, he's fighting in his bare feet.

Lyle Talbot does a good job as Commissioner Gordon, and I enjoyed Jane Adams as Vicki Vale. She helps the story along, has a brother tied in with the mob, and--as Batman states--takes a lot of pictures that no one ever sees." Look beyond the fact that Gordon shines the Batsignal in broad daylight and only Vicki seems to notice that Batman is driving Bruce Wayne's car, and this isn't too bad.

Still low budget, but marginally better than the first serial in some regards.

I preferred Prince Daka to the Wizard, but that has everything to do with the acting. The Wizard is pretty cool dressed all in black, and has hypnotic eyes. Not a dreadful serial by any means, but it's definitely evident that by the end of the 1940s, the cliff-hanger chapter play was on life-support as an art form.

Are you watching on dvd or streaming?

I own just over 100 chapter serials on DVDs (picked up over the years from eBay auctions, private
collectors (when iOffer allowed DVD copies to be sold and traded), and some professional copies
off Amazon, Oldies.com, and others).

Many of the serials today can be found on YouTube, but few are actually in the Public Domain, so they
get taken down a lot.

The best place to get serials these days are from The Serial Squadron, who take serial preservation
and restoration seriously. They make their archival copies from the best prints available. They're not
cheap (about $15 apiece for DVD copies), but I've gotten some from them in the past to help ensure
that they can keep restoring as many as possible. Now that they have Blu-rays coming onto the market
(about five or six a year at $21.95 each), I plan on getting some nice copies of my favorites.

They haven't actually released them yet (or haven't gotten around to sending me my copies yet), but the
Serial Squadron lately is offering bundles on Blu-Ray discs. The Squadron is a small operation, and Eric
Stedman, the main Editor/Restoration Director guy who handles most everything can't crank these things
out, but after restoring and releasing these over the years for about $20 a serial, he's gotten to the point
now (which increased shipping costs) that it makes more business sense to burn multiple serials onto the
larger capacity Blu-rays and sell four semi-related serials together.

As I own most of my serials on DVD, I haven't invested much in his better blu-ray restorations of the serials,
but I have pre-ordered all of the Zorro serials bundled together, and another bundle that features many of
my favorite serials together.

Eric has also been working with TCM, so the channel has been showing his Lone Ranger restoration like
one episode a week. Also, the Squadron has a streaming service for $9.95 a month, which would be a great
way for someone to binge and sample a bunch of serials at one time for not too much money.