DICK TRACY RETURNS (1938)
(July 1, 2005)
This sequel to DICK TRACY has a lot of good things going for it, including a memorable villain and his gang, plenty of action and novel chapter endings. I enjoyed it much more than I expected. Of course, I always like serials to have a touch of the outrageous in them, either the Flying Wing or a sonic disintegrator or a hero with a masked secret identity. So this straightforward tale of a determined FBI agent warring on a family of gangsters didn't seem like something I would like but what a pleasant surprise.
Ralph Byrd is at it again, in his signature role he would be playing in two more serials and feature films the rest of his life. (In fact, the actor died of an untimely heart attack while working on the Dick Tracy TV series in 1952.) I half expected someone to wisecrack to him, "Hey, Dick, anyone ever mention you've got the same name as that Chicago cop that was in the papers for shooting Flattop?" Aside from the name, Byrd's Tracy is an entirely different character.) This time around, he's after the Stark gang. Based loosely on the real-life Ma Barker and her bloodthirsty kids, Pa Stark has raised his five sons to lead a life of crime. They have nicknames like Slasher, Dude, Champ, the Kid and Trigger, and they're about as hardened as you can get since they were born and raised to be bad.
Capping it off, Pa Stark is played by Charles Middleton. Him again! You know we're in for a rough ride with this guy onboard. Whether threatening the Earth as the tyrant Ming or scheming as 39013 in DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE, Middleton is a scowling delight with his sunken face and terrific speaking voice. Byrd and Middleton really steal the show between them; there's a sense of real tension in scenes where they confront each other and the big showdown is completely rewarding.
Getting things off on the wrong foot, the Stark gang murders Tracy's new assistant Ron in a particularly heartless way. (Ron is helpless in an iron lug and Pa Stark sneaks into the hospital room and yanks the plug. Talk about cold, that's cold.) Sheesh, Pa -- Dick Tracy is relentless enough as he is, do you really want to give him a personal grudge against you? The son who did the actual shooting goes to the chair in the very next chapter and the war is on. I like the motif having the gang be all brothers gives the serial. They have personalities and rivalries, and aren't the vague assortment of hired goons who don't make much of an impression. Tracy sets out to whittle the gang down to size and (although he'd be happy to just arrest the whole lot of them), it ends up being a war of attrition as he takes one brother down at a time. (One of the boys gets a smokestack dropped on him, not a normal law-enforcement technique.)
Byrd plays Tracy almost as if he were re-enacting a drama based on an historical figure. Tracy shows worry and alarm when appropriate, but mostly he's a clenched-teeth jaw-jutting bulldog chasing his prey, believable and formidable. There's also a nice emphasis on forensic science (although I don't know if that term was used back then), and Tracy is frequently examining hairs under microscopes and so forth. He's one of the few serial heroes who doesn't just have the next move handed to him, he has to do some thinking and work for results.
Dir: William Witney and John English
DICK TRACY VS. CRIME, INC (1941)
(Jan 27, 2006)
Fine stuff, one of the best serials Republic ever turned out, and all four Dick Tracy chapterplays are excellent. This one features a supervillain with black rubber mask and an invisibility gadget. There's a huge amount of clips from the first three Tracy serials, but they were good stunts and chapter endings to begin with, so I'm happy seeing them again. (Of course, this is with a fair amount of time between watching the earlier serials. Sitting through all four in succession would probably make the repetition a lot more obvious.)
Again, we have to point out that the cliffhanger crimefighter is an FBI agent who just happens to have the same name as that Chicago cop who caught the Brow, Flattop, the Mole and others. No other connection, but it would be funny if someone in the serial had snuck an in-joke in about it. Ralph Byrd is so good in the role. As Tracy, he's determined, dogged and relentless. But, when it looks like he's about to burned to death or have an anvil dropped on his head, Byrd looks genuinely alarmed and even afraid. After he escapes from near certain death, he often seems badly shaken up by the experience. This doesn't make Tracy seem weak at all, just a reasonable human being with a natural response to almost getting killed. He always dusts himself off, takes a deep breath and gets back on the job. Too many serial heroes barely blink after almost being blown to shreds or run over by a train, as if they hardly feel they were in danger at all. (Sean Connery did the same thing in the early Bond films, where his 007 often looked worried in a tight spot and his wisecrack after the violence was over seemed like a realistic way of relieving the tension.)
We've got the classic pulp and serial set-up, where there's a group of men being threatened by an unknown mastermind, who is actually one of them. Civic-minded citizens form the Secret Council to rid the city of crime once and for all (good luck, eh?) but among them is the madman who calls himself the Ghost. This maniac is the brother of the late "Rackets" Reagan, who was executed at Sing Sing and the Council members are the ones who sent him up the river. A little homicidal revenge seems in the cards, and sure enough the Council men start to get picked off. (So that's the reward you get for trying to help your city, what a world!)
The Ghost is one of the more impressive serial villains (and he has competition in the category, what with Ming the Merciless, the Purple Monster, Fu Manchu, Lex Luthor, Dr Satan, the Scorpion and many more). For visual impact, he wears a full head mask of thick black rubber which makes him look like a statue bust (and not exactly comfortable on a California backlot, I bet). His assistant Lucifer (John Davidson, looking shifty as usual even in the opening credit shots) has invented an invisibility device.
When the Ghost wears a large metal disc like a medallion, high-frequency sound waves from a machine turn him completely unseen. So you can expect plenty of doors opening by themselves, curtains being rustled, guns floating in air etc. This invisibility trick is one reason why the mastermind calls himself the Ghost, but he also leaves his dead brother's fingerprints all over to make everyone think "Rackets" has come back from the dead.
There you have it. The Ghost and his assorted gangster in suits and fedoras trying to assassinate the Council, Dick Tracy and his forgettable assistants standing in their way. There aren't as many simple brawls as Republic would later rely on (one or two chapters skip the fistfight altogether), but there is plenty of stunts of a more imaginative nature. The chapter endings and their solutions are more creative than the inevitable cars off cliffs we would see in postwar serials. Also, the plotting is tighter and dialogue sharper than we would later get.
The chapterplay rushes off to a rousing start as the Ghost manages to murder Chandler of the Secret Council in his mansion, despite heavy police guard and Dick Tracy flown up from Washington to help. Then the Ghost sends his henchman to bomb the Amsterdam Fault, triggering an earthquake that sends an enormous tsunami down on Manhattan. (This means impressive footage from the 1930 RKO movie DELUGE; the same disaster later occurred when Dr Vulcan used his Sonic Decimeter in KING OF THE ROCKETMEN. Either way, when a serial starts with the climax of a full-length movie, it's a sign to sit up and pay attention.
The title might make you expect Tracy to be tackling some underworld racket like the real-life "Murder Inc." Nope, no such thing, it's just the Ghost and his bunch of goons. "Rackets" Reagan and his ghostly brother "planned a vast criminal combine, an enterprise which might have been called Crime, Inc." to justify the title. DICK TRACY VS CRIME INC is full of great little throwaway moments which aren't absolutely essential but are nice touches (and some of which had been used as chapter endings themselves in earlier cliffhangers). Tracy enters a room where the Ghost lurks waiting and the villain fires... breaking two large holes in a full-length mirror. He has wasted his shots on a reflection and Tracy wasn't even trying to trick his opponent, it just happened. I also like the chapter ending where Tracy pokes his head through a darkened doorway where we know the Ghost is waiting with a battle axe. Whack! Ah, but you can't kill Dick Tracy that easy, he was hip to the trick and stuck a marble bust (with his hat on it) through the door first.
I notice also that Tracy is one of the better shots of serial heroes. Not much of that swapping a dozen bullets with no result, he has good aim and he nails one thug after another. When Tracy walks into a tear-gas filled room and a gangster raises his gun, our boy drops him dead with a single shot. In my mind, I could see the single thin line from gun to forehead that Chester Gould drew and the caption, "You never shoot first at Dick Tracy."
The big showdown features an interesting special effect. Tracy is being helped by June Chandler (Jan Wiley), the daughter of one of murdered Council men and she just happens to be a brilliant scientist herself. After mostly just standing around looking presentable, her contribution is the infra-red bulb which exposes the Ghost by making everything go negative. (not pessimistic and cynical, I mean negative in that the white and black on the film stock was printed in reverse). In 1941, this must have been a novel sight and it's still pretty cool to watch. Like their counterparts in Chester Gould's comic strip, Tracy's opponents come to a well-earned gruesome and painful punishment. I'm surprised the Ghost could still be identified after he gets flash-fried like that. ("It was retribution, but it wasn't nice to look at," Tracy remarks.)
My list of ten favorite serials now stands at about twenty-three and this one deserves a place near the top. Maybe it would be easier to come up with a list of serials I didn't like. BLACKHAWK, PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO....
Dir: William Witney and John English
DRUMS OF FU MANCHU (1940)
(Nov 20, 2004)
It seems like I think every serial I watch is one of the best I've ever seen, but that's probably because I've been looking for serials that were highly recommended... so they really ARE good. It's not like I'm sitting through a marathon of BRUCE GENTRY, PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO or HOP HARRIGAN without breaks. Anyway, I had read and enjoyed all of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories over the course of a year or two (as well as his Sumuru books), and was really looking forward to watching this chapterplay.
It certainly doesn't disappoint. DRUMS OF FU MANCHU is remarkably faithful to the tone and mood of Rohmer's books. Chapter Five, where the Devil Doctor and his Dacoits assault an isolated mansion in a thunderstorm, while inside Nayland Smith vainly tries to warn an intended victim of the danger, is just like a chapter from the early books brought to the screen. We have an evil, ageless Chinese super-villain invading Western society with his army of vicious assassins, his beautiful heartless daughter and his trademark of bizarre torture methods. He even is accompanied by the Council of Seven of the dreaded Si-Fan, meeting in ceremonial robes around a dragon-emblazoned table.
Fu Manchu is opposed by staunch British Foreign Office agent Nayland Smith and his friend Dr Petrie, as well as a burly younger man delegated to handle the rougher fistfights... in this case, Allan Parker. The Devil Doctor is after some artifacts, a scroll hidden in a Dalai plaque and a shard from an ancient temple, which will give him the sacred scepter he needs to claim authority from Genghis Khan himself and thus launch an all-out holy war in Asia. (Sounds a lot like the book and film versions of MASK OF FU MANCHU, both great in themselves.) So the sides are drawn up, the hot potato is thrown from hand to hand and the fun starts.
One thing I loved about this serial is its visuals. DRUMS looks like a 'B' horror film, very atmospheric and shadowy; since the first half is set in California rather than the foggy streets of London, heavy rainfall and thunderstorms set the proper mood. The Dacoits are all as sinister as you might hope, skulking around in the shadows with their bolos and poison dart blowpipes, flinging an inordinate number of daggers into peoples' backs.
These assassins have all had brain surgery performed on them by Fu Manchu himself to remove their free will and make them absolutely obedient. As a result, they have shaved heads with a large V-shaped lobotomy scar on the brow. Some of them also have vampire fangs for some unexplained reason. (And just to show not all Asians are incarnate devils, Philip Ahn appears as the cultured Dr Chang to provide an important piece to the puzzle and to courageously stand up to Fu Manchu's threats. It's a small touch but well meant.)
Henry Brandon is just fine as Fu Manchu himself. At first, the completely bald head and 45-degree uptilted eyebrows seem odd, but Brandon gives an all-out highstrung performance that won me over. (I still like the demonic interpretation seen in MASK OF FU MANCHU better, but hey, Boris Karloff is a tough act to follow for any actor.) Gloria Franklin is not as glamorous or enticing as Myrna Loy (again, admittedly a tough act to follow) but she is malevolent and cunning as Fah Lo Suee; one thing missing from Rohmer's formula is that she doesn't harbor lustful thoughts about the Western infidels, but then serials were aimed at juvenile audiences.
As for the good guys, ah well. William Royle doesn't seem much like the gaunt, hyperactive Smith of the books (and he seems to have imsplaced his first name Denis, called "Sir Nayland Smith" throughout) but Royle is a staunch, determined pipe-smoking hero is is believable as someone capable of tackling Fu Manchu. For someone getting on in years and packing a few extra pounds, he still doesn't hesitate to trade punches with a Dacoit or to enter a certain trap. Olaff Hytten is bland but okay as Dr Petrie (and considering how badly Dr Watson was being portrayed at the time, we should be glad Petrie kept some dignity).
The surrogate hero who can be counted on for wrassling Dacoits, climbing down rope ladders from planes and leaping off crashing trains is Allan Parker (played by Robert Kellard). For someone who is supposed to be just the son of an archaologist, Allan plays pretty rough. He throws a punch like he means it, and handles a revolver with a confidence that suggests he and his father had been in tight spots on digs many times. Also tangled up in the antics are Tom Chatterton as Professor Randolph and Luana Walters as his daughter Mary, along to aid the damsel factor.
The action scenes are not quite the highly polished choreography that Republic would showcase in a year or so, but they are accordingly more believable. The punches and grappling seem more like real fights than the amazing acrobatics we would soon see in SPY SMASHER or PERILS OF NYOKA. The essence of a serial is in its cliffhanger endings, and the ones here are more imaginative than in later years. Our heres find themselves strapped beneath a swinging razor-sharp pendulum, dropped into a tank with a belligerent octopus, tied down and about to be lobobomized into an obedient slave --- all very cool chapter endings.
DRUMS OF FU MANCHU does drag a bit in the second half, once the action transfers to what is either supposed to be india (or maybe Central Asia, maybe Afghanistan?) It's a tribute to Fu Manchu that he explicitly survives to the end credits. Arm in a sling and somrewhat worse for the wear and of the fifteen chapters, the Devil Doctor humbly appears at the tomb of Genghis Khan and apologizes for his failure. But, he says, there will another day when he succeeds in conquering Asia. "This I pledge", he promises as he bows. Unfortunately, WW II made a Chinese archvillain as unworkable as a Japanese hero like Mr Moto, and so both characters were shelved for the duration.
I made a point to space out the watching of this serial instead of just viewing three or four chapters at a time, and it enhances the experience enormously. I still am neither patient nor organized enough to wait a week between chapters, but I can get a glimpse of the delicious anxiety fans must have felt waiting for the next Saturday back in 1940.