THE RETURN OF CHANDU
(June 7, 2003)
From 1934, this is a real treat. First, we had the oldtime radio show CHANDU THE MAGICIAN, which aired from 1931 to 1950, a healthy run by any standard. The show was made into a 1932 film with Edmund Lowe in the title role and Bela Lugosi as the sorcerous villain Roxor (spelled backwards, it's well, Roxor). The serial is a different interpretation which has Lugosi star as Chandu himself. This must have been a bit disorienting to moviegoers back then but the casting gives RETURN OF CHANDU much of its atmosphere. The radio and film Chandu was a nice enough guy, likeable and responsible, but a bit bland. Call Bela what you will, he's anything but bland.
The serial has a terrific premise, much more intriguing than the usual tug of war over a new raygun or hidden treasure. The cult of Ubasti is determined to resurrect their high priestess and to do this, they need the human sacrifice of an Egyptian princess. Well, there's this Princess Nadji visiting California. If they can transfer her life force into the preserved body of the priestess, of their priestess, the ancient continent of Lemuria (the birthplace of Black Magic) will rise again from the sea. Yikes! So we have plenty of Ubasti followers (who look kind of like Hindu actors to me) creeping around making attempts at kidnapping, sabotage, murder, backtalk, all the stuff that makes life awful for the characters but great entertainment for us.
Luckily for all of us, Princess Nadji has a friend in Chandu (she rather pointedly makes it clear that he's only a friend). This is Frank Chandler, known around the East as Chandu the Magician. It's strange to see Bela Lugosi playing a hero, and the results are surprisingly effective. Although he seems as unpleasant and oily as always, Lugosi as Chandu makes an imposing champion for the threatened Nadji. It's as if his voodoo master from WHITE ZOMBIE had decided to go straight.
Chandu is not just a stage illusionist, either. He seems to specialize in telepathy and mind control (including those creepy hand gestures and glowing eyes we saw in DRACULA), but he also at one point makes a drugged wine glass shoot upward out of Nadji's hand. When things are really sticky, Chandu makes telepathic contact (to eerie sound effects) with his Yogi teacher far away; the mellow voice of the Yogi gives him guidance which frankly is rather unhelpful and vague, as if the old teacher isn't really paying attention.
Once the action gets to the island of Lemuria in the South Seas (the sole surviving fragment of the ancient continent), the bad vibes of the sorceror's stronghold keep Chandu from using his powers or from contacting his Yogi. Without his magic, Chandu isn't as gung ho as most serial heroes. The fights here are not the wild acrobatic maneuvers of the Republic serials but more realistic grappling and slugging (Lugosi looks pretty apprehensive and even frightened in some of the rough moments). Fortunately, he finds an imprisoned White Priest named Tyba who's a big help. And if you think he might regain his magic just in time for the big showdown, you're right.
One thing I liked about the radio series was that the magician had an actual family. So many heroes of this pulp/serials/radio genre are orphans alone in the world.) Chandler's sister lives in a swank wigwam in California with her children Bob and Betty, and it's great to see them cheerfully call Lugosi "Uncle Frank." Chandu is described by his nephew as having been born in the Orient and having spent most of his life there. This is likely to be a way of explaining Lugosi's noticeable accent, but it also makes you wonder if maybe this sinister magician is someone impersonating the genuine Frank Chander.
There is much to recommend this serial. The huge gate with the sliding bolt from KING KONG makes an appearance here, and there's a big old panther idol that sneers down at the rituals. I'm not wild about the deadly monotony of the theme music, but then these chapters weren't meant to be watched in close sequence. Chandu is a character who might merit another shot at the big time in one medium or another; heroes like Mandrake and Dr. Strange owe a lot to him.
Dir: Ray Taylor
SECRET SERVICE IN DARKEST AFRICA
(Dec 4, 2001)
From 1943, this is a solid, satisfying chapterplay from Republic. To be honest, my tastes run more to the fantastic and larger-than-life but SECRET SERVICE still delivers more than enough surprises and action. It's a sequel to the earlier G-MEN VS THE BLACK DRAGON where Rod Cameron as Rex Bennett, top government agent, tackled Japanese saboteurs (that was the one where a Japanese spy was smuggled into the USA inside a mummy case). Within the same year, Cameron was back as Rex, but the title didn't hint at it. There was no REX BENNETT franchise as we would have today ("G-MEN II: DARKEST AFRICA"--yuck), and probably many kids sitting in the theatres on Saturday afternoons never made the connection.
Despite the title, the story takes place in and around Casablanca, in North Africa, hardly 'Darkest Africa'. The premise is a bit more interesting than the routine tracking down of crooks or spies. A German officer named Baron Von Rommler (hmm..wonder where they got that name?") is impersonating a captured Sheik, working to raise support for the Nazi cause among the Arabs. To be successful he needs one of those sacred artifacts that always lead to chase and confrontations ("I'll take that dagger now, if you don't mind.")
Rod Cameron is tall and athletic enough to be completely convincing as he gets in more fist fights in one serial than most heavyweight boxers survive in a career. (Working with guys like Dale Van Sickel and Tom Steele was also helpful.) He faces one death trap after another, including the classic situation of being tied face up under a swinging razor-edged pendulum Edgar Allan Poe would have appreciated. There is another of Republic's big raygun cannons, this time the 'Munitions Disintegrator', joining THE CRIMSON GHOST's 'Cyclotrode' and KING OF THE ROCKETMEN's "Sonic Decimator' as impressive science-fiction gadgets. Also, as Bennett, Cameron wore a snappy semi-military uniform, complete with boots, billed cap and gunbelt. It always helps to have the hero in a distictive outfit, partly to make identification easier but also for the sheer mystique.
It was a bit dismaying to suddenly be hearing music here that I had always associated with KING OF THE ROCKETMEN and had thought was composed for that serial (where it seemed so appropriate). I'll probably start spotting more and more repeated stunts, crashes and explosions as the stack of re-watched serials gets higher.
Watching this serial and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in close proximity is very enlightening. The more I view old cliffhangers, the more bits and pieces of them I spot in the Indiana Jones trilogy. That's not a criticism, by any means. Movies have been polishing and reviving earlier stunts and gimmicks since they began, as every art form does. Still, in 1980 it must have seemed that the classic cliffhangers were forgotten by all but a handful of film buffs and fans. If the VCR and DVD hadn't made these great pieces of entertainment easily available, part of their spirit would have survived in RAIDERS and its sequels.
THE SHADOW (1940)
(July 25, 2005)
Wow, this serial is a mixed bag. It gives us an interpretation of the Shadow I really liked -Victor Jory was inspired casting, with his prominent nose, authoritative voice and sharp eyes. He looks terrific in the black get-up, too (It's not so much a cloak hanging behind him as judge's robes, more practical for sneaking around). Jory also has a great sinister chuckle, something essential for the character; it seems like genuine sardonic amusement, not forced at all.
A lot of elements from the pulps and the radio turn up in recognizable form... the Cobalt Club, Commissioner Weston and Inspector Joe Cardona, Harry Vincent* (although reduced to just being a chauffeur) and Margot Lane (played by shrieking Veda Ann Borg), here shown as a lab assistant to scientist Lamont Cranston. The Shadow is wanted by the police and underworld alike, he uses disguises to get information and he is determined to track down the super-villain menacing the city.
All very good, although he uses a single revolver rather than a pair of 45s. The Shadow indulges in way too many slugfests rather than just shooting the thugs dead, and he runs around in broad daylight in his drag rather than stealthily sneaking around in dim surroundings like a pulp ninja. But these were requirements of the serials that I could accept as part of the medium. Careful lighting and staging to show the Shadow emerging from gloom, sneaking up unseen behind his enemies and escaping into the, well shadows... all that would take time and rehearsals to do well, and serials were cranked out at an hysterical pace that didn't allow for such luxuries.
But then there is this strong element of slapstick.
THE SHADOW was directed by James W. Horne, perhaps best remembered by mainstream film buffs as for his fine Laurel and Hardy flicks. Here, he sneaks comedy in from time to time, including exaggerated reaction shots and facial expressions. There are a lot of goofy moments here but (surprisingly) I kind of liked them. Maybe I've just had enough grim, deadly serious stuff for a while.
Two thugs are waiting for their chief and one asks, "Say, tell me that story about Little Red Riding Hood again, I like it," and the other one obligingly begins, "Well, once upon a time..." just as their boss enters. Some of the humor is actually appropriate for the mood in the way the early James Bond films were. A car full of thugs crashes into a billboard which says DRIVE SAFELY and Cranston grins appreciatively as he speeds away, for example. (You can see Sean Connery as 007 doing that scene.) Or the little bit where two goons ambush a night watchman and drag him offscreen. They saunter into view a second later, one of them still carrying rope and a gag; the other crook says impatiently, "Tie him up!" and the big goof mutters, "Oh, yeah." I don't find these little bits of comic relief irritating or disrespectful to the Shadow character, and they do liven up the ongoing cycle of chases and fist fights.
Actually, the pulps themselves often had bits of comedy in them (part of Lester Dent's appeal was that he knew when to throw in a little goofiness) and the situations were so extreme and over the top anyway that even the grimmest heroes had a touch of burlesque to them. It's a fine line that could easily be crossed too far, but in the case of this serial, it seems like harmless fun.
THE SHADOW does offer some of the lamest examples of chapter ending solutions I've even seen. None of the solutions show any ingenuity or imagination. Most of the time, a roof collapses on the Shadow, burying him in debris and (at the beginning of the next episode), our hero just gets up and dusts himself off, surviving for no good reason I can see. This happens in maybe half of the fifteen chapters, and the other death-traps are equally unimpressive. Come on, you guys aren't trying!
Also watering down any possible suspense is Columbia's inexplicable practice of showing preview clips after the chapter endings. So audiences not only knew the characters had escaped "certain death" again, they sometimes even saw HOW they survived without even having to wait a week! The essential teaser nature of cliffhangers seems to have escaped Columbia completely. Sheesh.
The bad guy is the Black Tiger. True to cliffhanger tradition, he is one of a group of suspects, in this case six captains of industry. The Black Tiger goes to a lot of trouble before giving orders to his henchmen. First, we see him from behind in a room (heavily filled with chalk dust for some reason) as he stands under some sort of projector and fades from sight. Invisible, he enters the chamber and takes his seat at the big desk before which his thugs are waiting. The villain talks from a big fake tiger's head, with eyes that light up and smoke puffing from its gaping jaws. Duplicates of this tiger head pop out of the walls in the most unlikely places to relay orders or to intimidate victims.
Although he never seems to get any good use out of this power, it's ironic that the villain in THE SHADOW is invisible and not the title character. In fact, it's almost perverse. Adding to the effect is that the Black Tiger speaks in an incredibly fruity Truman Capote voice that gets every possible bit of melodrama out of each sentence... he makes Snidely Whiplash sounds like a monotone.
Then there's Lin Chang (oh dear). The Shadow seems to be making his headquarters in a Chinatown store called the Oriental Bazaar. (When being pursued, he pulls into a large wall panel on the street, which slides up to let him drive in and quickly closes, so the cops or crooks go sailing by unaware.) As owner of the shop, Cranston poses as a shady character named Lin Chang. Wearing a greasy wig, buck teeth and blatant eye make-up, standing half a head taller than anyone else in the cast, Victory Jory as Lin Chang is an appalling sight. His exaggerated "Asian" accent doesn't help. neither does the fact he is often standing next to a genuine Asian actor, the Korean Philip Ahn (well remembered decades later as Master Kan in the TV series KUNG FU). Ahn speaks much better English than "Lin Chang", and I wonder how he felt about doing these scenes (ah well it's a paycheck...)
Lin Chang is a useful identity, giving the Shadow connections in the underworld and also providing a nice alibi when people come looking. Maybe in 1940, audiences just accepted the crude make-up and goofy accent the same way they accepted the characters reacting to grainy stock footage, but Lin Chang left me helpless with shock when I first him. On the other hand, there is one great moment when (after a duped gangster leaves) Lin Chang starts to give out the sinister Shadow laugh.
I have a lot more serials directed by James Horne to watch yet. THE SPIDER'S WEB and THE SHADOW were both greatly enjoyable. As I understand it, the comedy gets broader and sillier in some of his later cliffhangers but I'm willing to give them a fair shot.
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*Amazingly, Vincent is played by Roger Moore. Wow, he must have been even older than he looked in those James Bond fiascoes of the early 1980s.
SOS COAST GUARD (1937)
(Oct 30, 2004)
To be honest, I only picked this serial up because I was already buying a handful of other cliffhangers that day. The title didn't particularly stir my curiosity, and the sketchy cover art of a goateed Bela Lugosi looming over a yacht sailing off a waterfall wasn't promising, either. But it WAS an early Republic serial, it did star Ralph Byrd (who impressed me as Dick Tracy) and what the heck, I was already blowing my spare cash on five DVDs anyway. What a treat this turned out to be. It's a complete delight. By the early 1940s, Republic had settled into a formula that worked very well for them, but for the first few years after they started in 1936, the studio was more inclined to experiment with pacing and plotting.
The chapter endings in SOS COAST GUARD also have more variety than the inevitable cars exploding or going over cliffs of the later years (although there are a few of those here, as well). Raply Byrd comes close to drowning at least three times in this serial, including being weighed down by his big clunky ol' diving helmet, which has filled with water after the air hose was cut.
We're threatened this time out with Boroff (Lugosi, using a name oddly suggestive of his more successful rival in screen infamy; I doubt if Karloff ever played a character named Belosi). This unscrupulous inventor is auctioning off his latest method of destruction to the European nation who will cough up the most cash. His disintegration gas does just what the name implies. Its weird effect of melting rock and metal looks an awful lot like what would happen if someone heated a still photo that hadn't dried yet, but that must be a coincidence.
A couple cannisters of this gas could wipe out a major city, and with another world war just about ready to pop, Boroff has several interested buyers on the hook.
Boroff is served by his porky mute slave Thorg (Richard Alexander - you might remember him as Prince Barin in FLASH GORDON). Thorg has been surgically brainwashed to serve the mad genius, whom he bitterly hates even as he must obey (sounds a dangerously unstable set-up there, Boroff). The scars from his lobotomy stretch upward on his temples like satanic eyebrows, never a good sign. Much of the time, Thorg strips down to trunks and little booties to do his dirty work and while he is indeed big and muscular and dangerous, I am forced to note that this henchman has not been working on his abs as much as he might have. He looks like he hits a few six-packs and pizzas when off duty, and with a life like that, who can blame him?
Luckily, we have Lt Terry Kent of the US Coast Guard on the case. When we first meet him, he's being awarded a medal (not his first, either) for saving the lives of hundreds of people in some unspecified heroic action, so he's just the right officer for the mission. As if protecting his nation's shores and keeping an apocalyptic Mad Science weapon from being sold to Morovania (just between Fredonia and Klopstakia, as I recall) wasn't enough, Terry has a personal grudge to settle. His adoring younger brother was killed by the mastermind. (Since few serial heroes had wives or actual girlfriends to be sacrificed to give them tragic motivation, it was often kid brothers who bit the bullet... see DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE, DICK TRACY, SPY SMASHER).
Ralph Byrd is certainly energetic and determined enough in his pursuit of Boroff, but there is one detail of his performances I particularly like. When it seems as if he's about to be incinerated or crushed or drowned, he actually looks alarmed and even panicky. Compared to the usual stony lack of reaction of many serial heroes in similiar sticky spots, this is a touch that makes Burd's characters seem like real people. Terry Kent and Dick Tracy are brave but they're not oblivious to the dangers they face. (Sean Connery also showed a flash of concern when in danger, something that gave the early James Bond films that slight flash of reality the later entries lacked.)
SOS COAST GUARD starts with charming opening credits. Against the sight of a ship about to be wrecked on the rocks in a storm, we hear a telegraphs go "deet..deet..deet.." and the jagged letters SOS flash on the screen, followed by the title. This serial also has a terrific final chapter. Under cover of a Coast Guard ship firing shells to blast big chunks out of the mountain which holds Boroff's secret lair, Lt Kent leads a squad of maybe twenty rifle-toting sailors in a full out assault. This should be easy enough against a handful of gangsters with pistols, eh? But then, carefully planted cannisters of the disintegration gas go off all around them, and the squad finds itself surrounded by melting terrain and gas drifting toward them from all sides. Many a fingernail was chewed in theater seats on that Saturday morning in 1937 when this was first shown.
Terry's cronies are more helpful than was often the case. Both (slightly pushy) newspaper reporter Jean Norman (Maxine Doyle) and her goofy photographer Snapper McGee (Lee Ford) are of course put in jeopardy their fair share of times, but they also come up with vital clues. In fact, it's Snapper's snapping a snapshot of the elusive Boroff trying to skulk away from a Coast Guard rescue of a ship caught on breakers that first alerts Terry the vile munitions engineer is in the country and loose. They're not just 'hostage bait', and you know, the fact that Jean's brother is a chemist just might come in handy before the closing credits.
THE SPIDER'S WEB (1938)
(April 25, 2005)
Amazingly enough, out of the thirty-four chapterplays I've watched for these reviews, only two or three didn't reward the viewing. (PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO was a stiff, BLACKHAWK boring and FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS just warmed-up leftovers.) Most of these serials have been enjoyable and a lot of fun to sit through. (At some point, I'm bound to hit a dismal streak of dreadful clunkers but luckily not yet.)
THE SPIDER'S WEB is another chapterplay that provided five hours of cheerful excitement. I've been working my way through the pulp series for the last few years, and it's astonishing how faithful this serial was to the original stories. Say what you will about Columbia's production values, they stayed a lot closer to the source material than Republic did (compare Columbia's THE PHANTOM with Republic's CAPTAIN AMERICA, for example).
True to the spirit of the pulp, Wentworth racks up the highest body count of any pulp hero I've ever seen. Usually, there is a lot of harmless blazing away between good guys and bad guys with no harm done until the final chapters. Not with the Spider. Nine times out of ten, he fires once and the henchman crumples dead to the ground. At one point, three thugs are questioning Jackson; Wentworth (not dressed as the Spider) enters behind them with a gun in each hand. He quietly asks, "Were you gentlemen looking for me?" and as they whirl, he plugs them both almost simultaneously. (Ram Singh nails the third.) Wentworth then calls the Commissioner and calmly says, "Three of the Octopus' men just attacked me. No, I'm all right but send the coroner up here, will you?"
Not only does the Spider send dozens of crooks to the great beyond in this serial, not only does Richard Wentworth in his civilian guise seem equally as ready to execute any thugs that get in his way, Ram Singh is just as bloodthirsty as in the pulps. He throws his knife with neat accuracy every chance he gets (this knife-throwing is kind of unusual in a serial good guy). And in another touch of fidelity to the pulps, after the Spider makes a kill, he plants the hideous red spider seal on the cadaver's forehead. (It doesn't look much like the illustrations from the magazine, but still, it is just such a neat touch that I'm glad they included it).
The mandatory fistfights don't have the smooth choreography of the Republic serials of the following decade, but maybe that's a good thing. In SPY SMASHER or PERILS OF NYOKA, the
fights are so acrobatic and skillful that (while they're amazing to watch) they seem sllghtly unreal. In these early Columbia serials, the punching seems more like what you would see in a real brawl, wild swings and grappling that seems unrehearsed. Making up for this, the Spider does a good deal of swinging on his "spider's webline" (still another touch from the pulps). At one point, he launches himself from a third-floor landing onto a moving double-decker bus -- no special effects, just a stuntman with skill and nerve. Wentworth is also quick-thinking. Caught on a landing with cops both above and below him, he promptly shoots the fire extinguisher on the wall, blinding and distracting the boys in blue enough to get away (this isn't even a chapter ending, just an example.)
The cast is just about perfect. Warren Hull has the strong jawline and resonant aristocratic voice required; not only does he do a fine job as Richard Wentworth, he is obviously having a blast as his shady undercover identity, Blinky McQuade. If I watch this serial a few more time and see THE SPIDER RETURNS (now on order), I will probably end up picturing Hull as Wentworth when reading the pulp novels (the same way I always visualize Sean Connery in the Ian Fleming novels or Russ Manning's Tarzan). Everyone else fits their role comfortably. Iris Meredith as Nita Van Sloan doesn't quite get into the action as much as her literary counterpart but the actress is so lovely and has such a sparkle to her that it's forgivable. (And Nita does manage to escape captivity, grab a pistol and take a few shots at the gang.)
The only misfire is Kenneth Duncan as Ram Singh. He's just not intimidating enough. I picture a huge hulking brute with a beard that could scare you by itself, and Duncan is just too mild and restrained. But then, I can see how the role would be a hard one to fill from Columbia's contract players. (I do like the way Wentworth addresses him as "Warrior".)
One problem is the Spider's get-up. Okay, a fedora and cape are regulation and a full-face hood with just eye and mouth openings is understandable... but the darn regalia is covered with a white spider-web design. Hmm. Well, I can live with it, what the heck. The Spider in the pulps used a gruesome vampire-like make-up, complete with fangs, hunchback, stringy black hair and a big honking nose. If this wasn't convenient, he would sometimes just settle for a black mask with a veil over the lower part of the face. (On the covers, he usually was shown with a simple domino mask.) So this more flamboyant costume was goofier than usual, but not completely out of the question.
The main area where the serial doesn't live up to the pulps is (inevitably) that the villain doesn't cause as much carnage. In the typical Spider novel, the mastermind causes the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent citizens and has the nation in utter panic. Poisoned cigarettes, flocks of venomous vampire bats, incendiary death rays, thugs in giant suits of powered armor... that's the usual stuff Wentworth faces. In this seral, he's up against a supervillain who has set his sights a bit lower and is content with trying to gain control of the nation's transportation systems. (On the plus side, he does control a bulky raygun which can stall motors, bad news for pilots.)
The Octopus appears before his council of underlings in an all-white outfit,speaking through a gadget that disguises his voice. In typical cliffhanger style, he turns out to be one of a group of suspects; but, to be honest, I have never found it worthwhile trying to following the vague clues about the mastermind's identity. By the fifteenth chapter, I've mostly forgotten the hints anyway in the barrage of action and just accept whoever turns out to be behind the mask. The Octopus has one cute gimmick that he reveals right in the first chapter. As he sits holding the microphone in his left hand, his right hand apparently is resting on the desk in front of him. Uh-uh, don't believe it. It's a fake and his real right hand is under his robe holding a gun, ready to plug anyone who seems like a threat. Is it giving the writers credit for too much that they named this guy the Octopus since he seems to have more than the normal number of limbs?
One thing about Columbia serials seems counter-productive to me. We have just seen our hero about to be crushed by a falling boulder or burned alive in a flaming car crash, or whatever. The whole idea was to get us anxious to find out what happened next and come back next week. (Okay, logically we knew the hero wouldn't be killed in the fourth chapter but the suspense was always there nevertheless.) Yet at the end of each chapter, clips from the next episode showed the good guys alive and well, and worried about a new threat.... it just doesn't seem like a good idea.
Dir: Ray Taylor and James W. Horne