THE BELOVED SERIALS!

This 12 chapter Republic serial is mainly remembered today for its wonderful villain, the Crimson Ghost, who for no good reason wears scarlet robes (we assume; the serial, of course, is in black and white), a grotesque skull mask, and skeleton-fingered gloves. Speaking with the distinctive voice of I. Stanford Jolley, portrayed physically by an anonymous stuntman, and commanding a huge gang of henchmen, including future Lone Ranger Clayton Moore, The nefarious Ghost is after a superscientific invention, a ray gun called the Cyclotrode, with the help of which he hopes to commit a series of outrageous crimes. As in almost all Republic serials, the running time is taken up with nicely choreographed fist fights, and a variety of vehicle chases. It's all fairly bland and mundane, especially when compared to THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, but full of continuous action and excitement nonetheless. Like many serial villains, the Ghost has a device that turns captives into willing slaves. The hero, played by Charles Quigley, doesn't make much of an impression, but his female counterpart is the smolderingly lovely Linda Stirling... a great plus to any serial in which she appears. We kids liked it all; the incessant Republic fist fights were still new to us at this time. The fact that the plot never goes anywhere at all (a problem that only got worse with the Republic serials made after this one) didn't bother us.

Another 12-chapter Republic serial, this one remains famous today for its villain, the Lightning. Wearing a black metal helmet, a black metal mask, a black leather (all right, maybe denim) suit with breastplate, black gloves with gauntlets, and a black cloak, all heavily decorated with zigzag lightning bolts, like the later uniforms of Captain Video and the Video Ranger, the Lightning is the obvious inspiration for George Lucas' Darth Vader. Like Vader's boss, Emperor Palpatine, the Lightning can shoot lightning bolts from his fingertips, although closer inspection shows him to be holding a small, stubby ray gun. The Lightning also pilots a giant flying wing, from which he can launch thunderbolts that can level a building. He even has a cackling, wild-haired, bug-eyed hunchback assistant -- what more can any villain want? It takes not one but two stalwart and very forgettable heroes to oppose the Lightning, and there is some girl who gets kidnapped a lot, but it is the Lightning's show all the way and the serial stops dead when he is not on screen.

Viewed today, this is a dreadfully claustrophobic production; to cut costs, the decision was made to film most "outdoor" action in the studio on a cramped stage in front of a small rear-projection screen. But in the context of 1950s live space adventure TV, also confined to tiny indoor sets, it fit right in.

These are among the best known and best loved serials today, and they were a mainstay of local TV in the science-fiction-happy early 1950s. In fact, at least two of them were run fairly continually from about 1950 well into the 1960s, in un-edited form. [All serials shown on TV in the 1970s, we are told, were generally cruelly cut down to 2-hour continuous features; if these are all you ever saw, you never saw a real serial.]

After you see one, especially at the age of 10 - 12, Buster Crabbe will be forever your hero and ideal. Energetic and athletic, he could convincingly fend off three monsters at once, and he was a good enough actor to make the viewer take the often absurd goings-on with proper seriousness and interest.

By far the best of these four serials is the original FLASH GORDON (13 chapters, Universal). Flash has a variety of interesting and colorful sidekicks, including ace scientist Dr. Zarkov, the burly Prince Barin and the large, hairy Thun (something of a forerunner of Chewbacca). For females to rescue, Flash has the lovely Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) and the smashingly sultry Aura (Priscilla Lawson). Both Dale and Aura are very obviously unfettered by bras or other underwear, and one can hardly blame King Vultan of the Hawkmen (John Lipson) when he goes wild at the sight of Dale's magnificent rack and slowly reaches out for a feel in what has to be one of the stranger serial chapter endings! Most of all, the great Charles Middleton makes the perfect serial villain, as Emperor Ming, who has his own plans for Dale's perfect pair.

The serial's adventures take place in a wide variety of settings, to include a flying city, a city on the ocean bottom, and underground caverns haunted by monsters. No one will ever forget the stubby silvery spaceships, spitting puffs of smoke and dropping sparks, while emitting a sound like a small motorboat. There are even some very wobbly flying saucers, piloted by the Lion Men, among which Thun is a leader.

Virtually alone among serials, FLASH GORDON has sexual tension. Princess Aura comes close to orgasm whenever she gets a good look at Flash's chiselled profile and rippling muscles, while every Mongo warlord from Ming on down is busy formulating plans to go for Dale's abundant groceries. Ming, of course, comes closest to getting the goodies, actually marrying Dale in the eyes of the Great God Tao (don't ask!), before Flash stages a typically last-second rescue.

FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO MARS (15 chapters, Universal) doesn't hold up nearly as well. Flash has an annoying comical sidekick, "Happy" Hapgood (Donald Kerr), a forerunner of Lyn "Happy" Osborn; Jean Rogers as Dale is now a brunette, and worst of all is attired in nearly every scene in caftan-like costumes that cover up her lovely physique almost completely, from neck to toes; Ming has to time-share with the colorless Azura, Witch Queen of Magic (Beatrice Roberts); and, the smoldering Princess Aura is nowhere in sight, although Barin turns up in pursuit of Ming. We do have a nice alien race, the Clay People, victims of Azura's evil magic. There's not a lot of high-tech on view in the serial. Azura's city is not all that Martian, in fact, being represented [if dim memory serves] by inconsistent clips of various cities seen in the first serial, although it does have neato "light bridges" between buildings, some strange art-deco interior doors, and the irrepressible Ming is attacking earth with a large, impressive ray-gun, the oddly-named "Nitron Lamp." The serial is marred greatly by tacked-on, agitated music that is never at all appropriate to the action it accompanies.

BUCK ROGERS (12 chapters, Universal) teams Buster as Buck with a juvenile sidekick, Buddy (Jackie Moran) and a spunky but unsexy Wilma (Constance Moore). The villain, Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) is a huge disappointment, and almost every viewer of the serial wishes Warde had switched roles with Henry Brandon (wasted as Kane's workhorse Captain Laska). The superscientic wonders of the 25th Century also seem to be in short supply; about all that fascinated kids of the 1950s was the de-gravity belts which allowed Buck and his sidekicks to jump from buildings or spaceships without harm. [Kane's futuristic city is represented by clips from the science-fiction musical JUST IMAGINE (1930), which is also the source of Dr. Zarkov's space ship and many of the small hand weapons seen in all three FLASH GORDON serials.]

Some interest perks when Buck and his pals have to go to Saturn, to form an alliance with the oriental-looking Saturnians, led by Prince Tallen (Philson Ahn), while fighting off the Clay-People-like Zuggs. One neat feature of the underground Saturnian civilization is a pneumatic subway with cars that are transparent cylinders. Like too many serial villains, Killer Kane has a convenient mind-control device to turn Buck and his allies into helpless zombies.

The strange space ships shown in the serial look nothing like the designs featured in the syndicated BUCK ROGERS comic strips of the day. They are vaguely like giant flatirons, but they do spit the smokepuffs and sparks, and emit the motorboating sound, that Universal science fiction serial lovers had come to expect.

FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE (12 chapters, Universal) is the last and by far the least of the Buster Crabbe serials. In fact, it is almost unwatchably dull. The cast is no help. Carol Hughes is a slender, graceful, tights-clad but totally unsexy Dale, Roland Drew makes no impression as Barin, and Shirley Deane makes Aura a shrill-voiced and (in some shots) painfully ugly princess. The clay people of TRIP TO MARS are retreaded as Mongo Rock Men, and there are some laughable robots, called "annihilatons." Ming is given a lovely blonde companion in evil, Lady Sonja, but is so weighed down by the ridiculously elaborate costumes he and all the other characters wear that even he doesn't come up to snuff. A sad commentary on the action, sets and settings is that about the only interesting footage seen in the serial consists of short clips borrowed from a German mountaineering film, WHITE HELL OF PITZ PALU, directed by the legendary Leni Riefenstahl. Apart from these clips there is virtually no action, unless you consider Flash and Barin perpetually creeping about the corridors of Ming's palace to be action. The serial was a box-office flop in 1940, and greatly disappointing to kids in the 1950s.

A very subjective impression is that the two serials most often shown on TV in the 1950s were BUCK ROGERS and CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE. The first FLASH GORDON was not seen nearly as often, and TRIP TO MARS was very seldom shown. I can't now recall whether I never saw it as a kid, or saw it only once, as a few isolated chapters... I think the latter. But in any case, it's impossible for me to think of TOM CORBETT or CAPTAIN VIDEO without thinking of good old Gene Autry in Murania, Flash among the Hawk Men and Shark Men, or the Crimson Ghost plotting his latest bank robbery. I saw them all together, at that most impressionable age of all.

And Jan Merlin says, "I recall playing Flash Gordon with the other kids on the block after seeing the chapters on Saturdays... my little friend, Oliver Wong, was Ming the Merciless for obvious reasons, his younger sister was Ming's daughter... and we had a blond playmate to play Flash's girl... One day, I accidentally broke Oliver's arm... and when my mother and I went to the local shirt laundry to pick up something she'd had washed there, the oriental man loomed over the counter to glare at me and said, 'YOU KNOW OLIVEE?' I nodded fearfully, and he warned, 'No more make believe!' He would have said I had grown up and turned out as expected...."

Return to SERIAL HEROES.