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Watching Any Good Serials?
Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,278 Views)
AndyFish
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THE SHADOW wins the award for most repetitive cliffhangers-- Whatever city this is in needs to get better inspectors-- roof collapses seem to be the number one killer.
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witneyenglish
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panzer the great & terrible
May 19 2011, 05:07 PM
So-so is kind. It's one of the true Republic dogs.

I'm half-way through it and I think it may be Republic's weakest effort since Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island. I do like hearing musical cues from Dick Tracy's G-Men and Dick Tracy Vs Crime Inc though.
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witneyenglish
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I'm almost done with Daughter of Don Q. This started off slow but picked up. This is the worst print of any of the Republic Home Video serials that I've watched.

I just finished the chapter with Knockout Nellie who looked like she was being played by William Witney's wife.
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riddlerider
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witneyenglish
Jun 20 2011, 03:41 PM
I just finished the chapter with Knockout Nellie who looked like she was being played by William Witney's wife.
That's cause she was. In fact, that was Maxine's last screen role.
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witneyenglish
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About to start watching the Crimson Ghost.
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panzer the great & terrible
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For the first time, wit? If so, lucky you.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Black Tiger
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Crimson Ghost was the last of the really good Republic serials to me. Later serials had some interesting elements (King of the Rocket Men, Radar Men From The Moon), but by and large the overall quality started slipping after CG.
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panzer the great & terrible
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I have to go along with that, even though I cut my teeth on the later Republics.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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witneyenglish
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panzer the great & terrible
Jun 22 2011, 06:57 PM
For the first time, wit? If so, lucky you.
First time. I've never seen it before.
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witneyenglish
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I just received the new Buck Rogers in today's mail.
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AndyFish
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Crimson Ghost is a top ten for me. The lead actors are wooden, sorry Charlie and Linda-- but the Ghost has one of the coolest getups of any screen villain. SPOOKY! and fast paced.
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witneyenglish
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AndyFish
Jun 29 2011, 06:38 AM
Crimson Ghost is a top ten for me. The lead actors are wooden, sorry Charlie and Linda-- but the Ghost has one of the coolest getups of any screen villain. SPOOKY! and fast paced.
My three year old son can't take his eyes off the Crimson Ghost when he is on screen.
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witneyenglish
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I just received Tailspin Tommy. With the exception of the 1945 version of Secret Agent X-9 I now have all the Universal serials that are based on comic strips.
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Laughing Gravy
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The Adventures of Captain Africa, ch. 1: Mystery Man of the Jungle

Incomprehensible mess. Yikes.

I'm sure you're all aware that this was a 1955 Phantom sequel shot dead when it turns out Columbia didn't have and couldn't afford the rights to the Lee Falk comic strip. The result is, based on what I just saw in the first chapter, a couple of minutes of new footage that makes no sense but introduces a lot of stock footage, from The Phantom and The Desert Hawk (that I recognized) and probably other old Columbia serials as well. "Mess" hardly begins to do justice to what I just saw, a weird mix of jungle with leopards and tigers(!) and desert with horses and Arabs and seaport with sailors and big-game hunters and nightclubs with dancers and fighters, none of it making any sense. Twice, in the midst of trouble, Captain Africa - who apparently just paces through the jungle looking for something to do - walks out of the shrubbery, takes action (tosses a spear, shoots a gun), then waves and turns and walks back into the shrubbery. Yes, really. Ben Weldon is Omar, but who that is I don't know. A guy who looks a lot like Frank Buck but can't act is in it, so now that I think of it, I'll bet there's stock from Jungle Menace here, too, huh? Captain Africa wears boots, jodhpurs, a turtleneck, a mask and a leather aviator's helmet. He's referred to as the "black-clad figure" but wears no black whatsoever. I want to say something nice about this, so give me a minute.... Hmmmm.... Oh! I know! I got a laugh when one of the Arabs is jumped so that some guy could steal his robes and spy on the other Arabs; the Arab has on white woolen longjohns under his robe. Yes, in the desert. So see, the serial's not all bad.

A pretty good print from Restored Serials, a little dark, but what the hell. He's a black-clad figure.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Laughing Gravy
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The Master Mystery, ch. 1: The Living Death

Harry Houdini's serial, originally released in 1919, was mangled through the years and much footage is lost (about 90 minutes) but Kino did an admirable job restoring and rearranging what exists (about 4 hours). The first episode runs just over 35 minutes. Two rich guy types who live (together, it seems) in a mansion on a cliff make a killing by buying up patents without ever actually manufacturing anything. A storage room in a secret cave in the cliff houses just all SORTS of interesting stuff, including a great big silly-lookin' mechanical man. The rich guy with the son doesn't trust the rich guy with the daughter, and insists their kids marry so that rich guy #2 won't dare break up their illegal partnership (trusts were considered evil in those days). A mysterious figure named "Q" (who seems to be the big robot in the cave, but I wouldn't swear to it) is passing notes threatening various individuals with the "Madagascar Madness", and sure enough, rich guy #2 gets hit with it, and drools and laughs and generally isn't much good anymore. Houdini, a special agent, is arrested and put in handcuffs, and I can't figure out why he was arrested other than so we can get some footage of him slipping easily into and out of handcuffs. He does that, and all charges are dropped, so I'm sure I'm right. The robot has a gang of human henchmen, which it instructs via hand and arm signals and gestures; I kept waiting for one of the henchman to try and steal second, but you know how silly *I* am. In the end, the robot attacks the drooling guy's daughter in the bathroom(!) while Houdini ends up captive in a strait-jacket, and putting Houdini in a strait-jacket as a "peril" reminds me of all those serial chapters that end with Buster Crabbe being thrown into the water.

Next week, ch. 2: "The Iron Terror!"
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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