ZOMBIES OF THE STRATOSPHERE (1952)
(Feb 26, 2002)
From 1952, the twilight of the classic cliffhangers, this isn't hopelessly unwatchable but it does seem tired and listless, like an old horse being hitched up to the wagon one time too many. The stock footage has pretty much gained the upper hand now, as much of the action is in the form of clips from earlier serials. The shots from KING OF THE ROCKETMEN and RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON provide flying scenes, and footage from THE MYSTERIOUS DR SATAN stars that tall cylindrical robot with the clamp hands. (This guy was first introduced in UNDERSEA KINGDOM, way back in 1936-- they built appliances to last in those days!) Actually, one of the coolest moments here is when the thing attacks Martin. Rocketman fighting a robot!-- that's real 1950s stuff!
It's a minor point, but I really disliked the clunky radio set Larry Martin fastens to his belt. Big as a cigar box, with a thick cord going up to the helmet, this gizmo really ruins the elegant simplicity of the leather-jacketed flying suit. You'd think a group of technologists that can come up with interplanetary rockets and flying suits could either devise a self-contained radio in the helmet or fasten it up on the backpack, out of the way. I suppose these guys were too busy fighting alien invasions to fret over the aesthetics, though...
The plot is part of a series of Martian invasions, featuring a handful of ETs from the Red Planet landing on our beloved Earth, where they hire human thugs to help with the rough stuff and are foiled by Earthmen heroes. THE PURPLE MONSTER STRIKES and FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS started this and RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON is essentially part of the series (there are hints they were Martians in an outpost on the Moon). This time we have to deal with the beefy Marex and his hirelings, here to carry out an improbable scheme. They intend to use a mega-powerful hydrogen bomb to knock the Earth out of orbit, then use a similar explosion to send Mars forward to take advantage of the orbit formerly occupied by our planet. (Sure, THAT would work fine. The Solar System would more likely have a new asteroid belt stretching from Venus to Jupiter.)
Opposing these impractical masterminds is Larry Martin. Now Larry is for all intents and purposes the same guy that George Wallace introduced in RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON, and although we may know that Republic studio heads ordered a new name instead of a direct sequel, where's the fun in that? So let's do some Baker Street style speculation...
In RADAR MEN, Commando Cody is in possession of the rocket-tube flying suit and bullet-shaped helmet earlier devised by Jeff King and Professor Millard in KING OF THE ROCKETMEN. (Nowhere do they say Cody invented it, he's just using it.) In ZOMBIES, Larry Martin is "an executive" of a government department concerned with "threats to world security" and he's been in charge of "the interplanetary zone" (quite a territory to cover).
At the same time, Republic had been releasing a series of twelve short films to theatres, like serial chapters with complete endings (pretty much indistinguishable from TV episodes, and in fact they were also shown on TV in syndication) featuring Commando Cody. Played by Judd Holdren in a Lone Ranger-style mask and odd uniform, Cody enforced law and order on the Moon and other planets. As in ZOMBIES, Aline Towne assisted him. So it seems pretty clear that "Commando Cody" was a code name, assigned first to the guy in RADAR MEN and then to Larry Martin. The fact that Judd Holdren played both Cody and Martin is further evidence (apparently, he had discarded the mask, perhaps because at some point his identity had been revealed and he went back to using his real name). Come to think of it, Aline Towne was in RADAR MEN as well. Maybe she was actually the liaison between Cody and the government department he reported to.
Strangely, ZOMBIES OF THE STRATOSPHERE is best known today because Leonard Nimoy appears in it in a minor role as Narab, one of Marex's hench-Martians. In the hooded costume and heavy make-up, Nimoy's features are hard to recognize but his distinctive voice is unmistakable. Apparently, Nimoy later played an alien on some TV sci-fi show in the mid-1960s and his fans are curious to see how he looks in this earlier role.
Dir: Fred Bannon - 12 Chapters
ZORRO RIDES AGAIN (1937)
(April 5, 2005)
The opening titles say, "For a century, friendly hands have been clasped across the border in token of enduring peace..." Are you guys sure about that? Wasn't it in 1848 that the US took a huge chunk of Mexico by war to form Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, etc? Well, I guess "For eighty-eight years..." doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
ZORRO RIDES AGAIN is set in that weird twilight zone West often seen in B movies of the time. Outlaws and gunslingers ride horses everywhere, wear vests and Stetsons and carry Colts at their hips as if it's still 1891, but they also deal with planes, radios and modern locomotives. For all I know, the Southwest in 1937 was exactly such an odd mixture of old and new, but it seems doubtful.
The evil mastermind this time is a crooked financier named Marsden (Noah Beery, loving every minute of being evil), and his goal is to gain control of the California-Yucatan Railroad. This would mean the loss of many badly needed jobs for Mexicans, and he's opposed by the railroad owners Joyce and Philip Andrews. Naturally, Marsden doesn't care to get his own hands dirty, so he works through a gang of outlaws led by a beefy thug called El Lobo (the Wolf vs the Fox, kinda cute). This is our old friend Richard Alexander, who we last saw as Prince Barin giving Flash Gordon a hand.
El Lobo's gang is looting and pillaging, blowing things up and shooting people down, sabotaging the railroad every way they can. They're genuinely mean, too. El Lobo personally kills an old man and a kid in cold blood. Manuel Vega (hey! it's Shazam himself, Nigel de Brulier with that wonderful stage voice) in desperation sends for his nephew, the majority stockholder in the railroad. Luckily for everyone, this is dashing young James Vega - the great-grandson of Don Diego de Vega, the ORIGINAL Zorro himself.
The new Zorro makes the most dramatic entrance anyone could want, appearing in a window with pistol drawn and whip in hand just as El Lobo's men are about to snuff the good guys. When James Vega turns up the next day, we soon find he has set himself up in his ancestor's old cavern hideout, which is entered by going down a passage behind a life-size painting of the first Zorro. With loyal Renaldo (Duncan Renaldo, later to be the Cisco Kid himself) as his partner and sidekick, James Vega gets into that dramatic black outfit and starts his long campaign to save the railroad and smash Marsden.
James Vega is a bit more wily than your typical serial hero (well, El Zorro does mean "the Fox" after all). He visits Marsden and agrees to sign over his share of the railroad but the cunning caballero has used disappearing ink! This leaves him with a blank piece of paper bearing the company letterhead and Marsden's authentic signature, which he then uses to order needed supplies for the railroad and charge them to his enemy. Neat maneuver there, kid. While in Marsden's office, Vega also gets a glimpse of the radio set-up the villain uses to communicate with the henchman, and our hero's next step is to purchase his own short-wave so he can listen in on the crook's conversations.
As the title character, John Carroll does a really decent job. When he's Zorro, he puts on a heavy Spanish accent (kind of an obvious trick, but it would lead a lot of people astray). While appearing as James Vega, Carroll lays on the traditional languid, useless playboy characterization that the original Zorro used to mislead everyone. I'm not sure why Vega decides to put on this act, since he doesn't have any family in the area to protect (the Andrews brother and sister pair are already under attack), but maybe he just enjoys it for its own mischievous sake. It always seemed to me that pretending to be cowardly or lazy (and getting everyone to look down on you with contempt) would be a fairly unpleasant experience. But maybe the thrills when he puts on the black mask compensate for it.
And don't get me started about the dismal songs Vega drones as he tortures his guitar. I suppose a brief musical interlude serves the same purpose as comic relief - it gives the story a quick resting place before starting up again - but I would just as soon skip it. When Vega first appears, he rides off into the night belting out a dirge about Zorro living again, riding along, singing a song with a grip on his whip.... bleh.
As Zorro, Vega carries two revolvers. Can anyone explain why it's a good idea to wear your guns with the butts facing out so that you have to twist your wrist to draw? Isn't that awkward? Maybe the holster style was designed so you would reach across your body with your right hand and draw the left-side gun but that seems like an extra inconvenience, too. And although our boy gets plenty of use of his whip, to me Zorro is missing some mystique without his sword. The 1824 hero had single-shot pistols, so there was a logical reason for plenty of swordplay and swashbuckling (see Reed Hadley in 1939's ZORRO's FIGHTING LEGION for a hero who was armed for any situation with guns, whip and sword). But by 1937, none of the Fox's opponent's would be packing foils, so it would appear a bit unsporting for or hero to just run his enemies through when a fistfight was called for (it would be kind of funny in a sick way, though).
Because the serial was set in contemporary times, we get a surprising sequence where Zorro and Renaldo hit the big city. They start skulking around an office building after hours (trying to retrieve valuable papers from Marsden), running on rooftops and being chased by henchmen in suits. Zorro looks very cool and at home in a modern urban setting, much like his spiritual descendants, the Green Hornet or the Spider. I'm glad this part was included, it's a nice change of pace for our hero.
The serial writers showed a bit more ingenuity in resolving their chapter endings. By the postwar years, we would be getting a monotonous series of cars going off cliffs and shacks blowing up, but this early in the game, Republic was still fresh and creative. My favorite cliffhanger ending has Zorro trapped with his foot wedged between the tightly closed railroad tracks as a big old locomotive rushes right at him. Well, it's not a five chapter serial, so you know the hero escapes but the way he manages it got a grin from me.
The action sequences are also way above average, with a lot of Zorro jumping from his horse onto a train or truck, or tackling a n outlaw when they're both on galloping horses. And, of course, there's a good deal of Zorro getting out of sticky spots by snagging his whip around something and swinging out of the way at the last possible second. (Yakima Canutt was actually in the black mask and suit for this rough stuff.)
Dir: William Witney and John English
ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP (1944)
(May 7, 2006)
Lower your expectations. Zorro is not anywhere to be found here, his name is not even mentioned except in the title. All you're going to find is an okay, slightly above average 1940s Western serial. Go into it with that frame of mind, and you'll probably enjoy ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP well enough.
Well, it's 1889 and Idaho is considering statehood. Now, Idaho is a fine state, mostly forests and mountains, producing more than its share of agricultural products other than potatoes. I have nothing against Idaho, you never hear about the Crips and the Bloods carrying out gang wars there or any Idaho kiddy-porn monopoly. It's just that the question of when they decided to join the Union is not the dramatic stuff of legend, so the premise here is not automatically like the tense situations of when would the US enter WW I or whether the first moon landing would be successful, that's all I'm saying.
Opposing the move toward statehood is a gang of bandits, owlhoots, low-life and so forth (led by the manager of the stage line) who want the territory kept undeveloped so they can loot and pillage as they've become used to doing. Standing in their way is the Black Whip, a masked avenger who (not surprisingly) seems quite reminiscent of grand old Zorro himself. If I had been allowed to contribute to the script, I might have thrown in a line about how the secret vigilante was using a bullwhip which had actually belonged to Zorro himself decades earlier, but no such luck.
In Crescent City, the local newspaper owner is Randolph Meredith, and with a clean-cut heroic sort of name like that, it's no surprise to find he's the Black Whip. While chasing the Anti-Statehood Gang, he takes a bullet and makes it back to his secret Whipcave under the ranch house. This is when his sister Barbara (played by serial queen Linda Stirling, not half bad any way you look at her) vows vengeance and takes over the role herself. Luckily, she can shoot a gun out of a man's hand across a room (she does drop quite a few dead in their tracks, though) , leap from a window onto a horse and gallop away with perfect poise.
I can accept an awful lot of improbabilities in my move-watching but this really makes my suspension of disbelief ache. Linda Stirling in that silk outfit, at arm's length in bright Western daylight, just does not look like a man. Even though she doesn't speak, her eyes above the black bandana are delineated with enough mascara and tweaked eyebrows that even the densest gunslinger must have noticed. ("You were in that room with him. Didn't you see anything that could identify him?" the mastermind asks a thug.) Again, it wouldn't have taken much to include a scene showing Barbara sewing some padding into the suit to give her wide shoulders, a thicker waist and maybe blunt some of the curvy speed bumps under the shirt. Then they could have used a male stunt man even more blatantly.
Barbara also takes over the newspaper and continues her late brother's push for statehood, with the help of a grizzled "comic" assistant who has crossed over to genuine alcoholism long ago. He's the sort of geezer who has no problems drinking a bottle of Listerine. Rather more useful in all the fistfights and shootouts is government agent Vic Gordon (played by George J. Lewis; I always like it when a actor usually known for villainous roles takes a crack at heroics, it's a nice change of pace).
A few times, Gordon obligingly gets into the black outfit to impersonate the Whip so that Barbara can be seen elsewhere and keep her secret. I dunno. Maybe Randolph and Barbara could wear the same size clothes (they were brother and sister, after all) but Gordon sure looks taller and brawnier enough to make squeezing into that rig a problem. And if he's riding a horse and running around in her boots, his feet have got to hurt at the end of the day!
So we're in for the usual furniture smashing, flying tackles and roundhouse punches and seemingly certain deathtraps (ranging from avalanches to runaway stagecoaches to being exposed as a girl) for the next twelve chapters. The action is pretty good, this is a Republic serial from the mid-1940s after all, with Tom Steele and Dale Van Sickel but it lacks that certain creative spark that made the really great stunts stick in your memory. One thing to remember is that, if your friend is lying on the ground with someone about to slam a pitchfork through her supple form, simply throw a convenient saddle over her and she'll be quite safe.
I notice that Barbara not only has enough skill with the whip (a difficult weapon to master properly in any case) to snap guns out of people's hands and turn doorknobs. she can lash away at someone and they are not sliced to bleeding shreds but only annoyed and irritated. Pretty good. She really has fun with that thing, tangling up outlaws' legs so they fall, turning out the lights at night. Judging from the movies, I don't know why mountain climbers and firefighters don't automatically carry a bullwhip with them. You just snap it once around any ledge or projection, climb and swing around, and then free it with a simple crack of the wrist. What could be more convenient?
One final note, it's always a pleasant jolt to come across grouchy old John Hamilton in a serial or B picture. I expect him to growl, "We need statehood! Great Caesar's Ghost, can't you see that?"
ZORRO'S FIGHTING LEGION (1939)
(Aug 20, 2004)
One of the best serials I've seen in a long time. Zorro is one of those essential heroes who turn up every few years in one incarnation or another, and this Republic chapterplay gives us a classic interpretation of the masked champion.
It's 1824, and the new Republic of Mexico is threatened by a fink calling himself Don del Doro. Wearing awesome gold armor (which looks suspiciously like papier-mache painted gold, much lighter and more comfortable), this fiend is posing as a native god, arming the Yaqui Indians with rifles for an uprising, plotting to be Emperor and in general being a pain in the trasero.
So, down from the little town of Los Angeles, here rides Don Diego de Vega (Reed Hadley). He brings with him not only the snappy black outfit, hat and mask of El Zorro but also a brace of pistols, a sword AND a whip (this guy doesn't fool around!) No cape, though. He soon has a vigilante posse under his command; although his 'fighting legion' wear masks and short little capes, none of them is allowed a get-up as quite as cool as the black and silver outfit Zorro sports.
The serial has a lot of great action (with stunts by none other than Yakima Canutt himself) and imaginative stunts (some of which Steven Spielberg swiped for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK,most notably the 'being dragged under a moving vehicle and climbing back up on it' gag). The solutions to the episode endings are also more creative than they later became; I especially admire the way Zorro deals with the deathtrap cell where the walls close in. On the other hand, the sword fights are nothing special, just a lot of clashing blades back and forth. In a Zorro adventure, we should reasonably expect one epic duel toward the finale but the limited shooting schedule of a serial probably prohibited the sort of spectacular fencing we saw between Basil Rathbone and Tyrone Power in THE MARK OF ZORRO.
Reed Hadley is fine in the title role. At first, he seems a bit slender for an action hero, but he was agile and quick enough to be believable; and he was obviously having fun camping it up as the delicate Don Diego. He also has a great speaking voice, something that seems to be lacking in films today - where are there distinctive resonant voices like Basil Rathbone, John Carradine or Boris Karloff (well, James Earl Jones is an exception).
Dir: William Whitney and John English, who had two years earlier given us the fine ZORRO RIDES AGAIN.