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Watching Any Good Serials?
Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,273 Views)
outerlimit
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Didn't Captain Video have the" Opticon Scilometer" (or something that sounded like that) that makes one think it should be in LensCrafters..............
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Monsieur X
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Yup, he had the Optic Inschilometer, along with about a billion other unpronounceable devices that didn't do anything that couldn't be accomplished with something a little bit simpler. It's just about the silliest serial I've ever seen, but it's kinda fun for that.
"I would never want to belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member" -- Groucho Marx
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Laughing Gravy
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We discussed The Lost Planet at length ri-i-i-ight HERE.
"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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Grampy
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Just finished Captain Africa-one steaming pile of mess. Next up The Sea Hound.
Still Alive and Well
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JazzGuyy
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Grampy
Jan 17 2013, 04:07 PM
Just finished Captain Africa-one steaming pile of mess. Next up The Sea Hound.
I true glutton for punishment. :P :P
TANSTAAFL!
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Grampy
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Captain Africa definitely counts as the worst serial I've ever seen-with a good chance at worst film ever for me. :'(
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riddlerider
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Grampy
Jan 17 2013, 05:25 PM
Captain Africa definitely counts as the worst serial I've ever seen-with a good chance at worst film ever for me. :'(
THE SEA HOUND is pretty weak too, but on the heels of CAPTAIN AFRICA it'll seem like CITIZEN KANE, so your timing is good.
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Laughing Gravy
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The wait is over! We carefully studied each of the unwatched chapterplays in our collection, looking for our next viewing experience. Most of the serials used such adjectives as "Thrilling!" and "Exciting!" and "Action-Packed!" to describe themselves, but we were looking for something a little more, oh, superb and superlative and hyperbolic. So we went with "All Talking!" and came up with the 1930 serial Mystery Trooper, written by Flora E. Douglas, who sounds like somebody's grandmother. I'm sure that at some point in this thing, we'll be admonished to go wash behind our ears and put on a clean shirt.

Mystery Trooper, ch. 1: The Trap of Terror

Two miners discover the mother lode! Well, at least a chunk of rock about the size of a steel aggie; they pronounce it worth twenty thousand dollars; "It'll make us as RICH as ROCKEFELLER!" on of 'em exclaims. Before they can even drop the nugget into the sack, though, they commence to feudin' over who gets 50.1% of the mine and who has to settle for 49.9%, and the next thing ya know, they've started a-wrasslin' and a-shovin' and they knock the lit lantern down, and inasmuch as they'd thoughtfully hung the dang thing right over all the dynamite they were using for clearing tunnels, well, they get all a-blowed up. I had actually left my seat, thinking the serial was over, but no, we were only about 30 seconds into chapter one. My error.

So now we cut to a completely different film, it seems, not for the last time in this episode. One of the miners, before he died, bequeathed half of the map of the claim to the nephew of the other one, since he was all sorry that they'd feuded and blown themselves up and all. The other half of the map is lost, it seems, but the nephew, a ruggedly handsome chap by the name of Jack Logan, considers using the scarce information he has and the half a map to go looking for the treasure. "IT sounds like a wild goose chase to me. But I'll DO it!" he says, attempting to sound dashing and brave but only sounding, what's the word? Oh, right. "Stupid."
There was a furtive-looking fellow in a fedora listening at the door; he seems to be some sort of a gangster or maybe a ward boss or a community organizer, because he calls his associates and has Logan sent an anonymous letter telling him that they have the other half of the map, and he should come to a Mexican cantina in town, enjoy the lovely flamingo dancers, have a shot of tequila or two, and meet a lovely young lady to arrange some sort of a deal. He does all of that, and the lovely young lady (who is INDEED lovely, quite the looker, and dressed in a sexy, skimpy li'l pre-Code serial outfit, too, let me tell YOU) and her goonish friend rob him and strip him of the map, but our boy Jack is too fast for him, and - knocking the gun away in a quick move that always works in serials but would cause a bullet-shaped piece of your liver to end up in the wall behind you in REAL life - Jack gets away with the map and his life, and YOU decide which is the more valuable.

Next, we're off to yet another movie. In this one, youthful siblings Helen and Billy live on a ranch by themselves, and they're aided by a wild horse named White Cloud, a very old Indian shaman named Chief Red Eagle, and the Great Spirit of Manitou. Oh, and by a mysterious masked figure in a Ranger hat who shows up every once in a while to toss a bag of gold nuggets through their cabin window for no reason anyone can figure. After spending some quality time over here, we move over to Jean Gregg's Trading Emporium, where a guy named Mack has been handed a note advising him to follow Jack to Ghost City and find out where th' heck that map is. "You know why," the note reads, and since he KNOWS why, I can't figure out why Mack SAID "You know why." In fact, I also can't figure out why we have three guys in chapter one named Jack, Mack, and Monk; for some reason, this bothered me all out of proportion to the actual offense. "I'll get a man to take you to Ghost City right away," Gregg says, to which Mack responds, "Okay, but make it snappy!" which also bothered me. I'm beginning to suspect that the general idea of this "All Talking" serial was to give the patrons their money's worth by ensuring each and every character in the chapterplay says at least 15 lines of dialog on every page of the script.

And now, if you think THIS has been silly, hang on. The Mystery Trooper (the Ranger with the hood over his face) sits down and plays a great big organ, just like the Phantom of the Opera. One of the villains says, "It's driving me creepy."

You can't make up stuff like this.

Anyway, Jack has been captured by the Trooper stops playing the organ long enough to free him, and the worst-staged fight in the history of screen fighting follows, and Jack is knocked down a well or a mine shaft or a fruit cellar or something.

Next, ch. 2: Path of Peril!

Flaming Frontiers, Penultimate chapter: Dynamite

By this point, we don't really need to recap all the action, I shouldn't think; more, we just need to get ourselves in the Flaming Frontiers state of mind.

So by now, we have all guessed that Tex fell off his horse again, but he wasn't REALLY shot, no, not REALLY. We know Tex is going to rescue whats-her-name again, and Tex's brother Tom is going to be captured again, and so on. What we DON'T know is that Breed is going to try to snooker his boss; he secretes Tom away and demands a great deal of money (I didn't write down how mmuch and I don't recall now; fifteen dollars maybe, although he'd probably settle for ten, to look at him) from Charles Middleton for Tom's whereabouts. Middleton readily agrees and even gives Breed some money on account, on account he then sends his best men to follow Breed, find out where Tom is, bring Tom back, and bring back Breed's cold, black heart in a box while they're at it.

Naturally, they bungle the job and blow up the mine and Tom is buried alive, although "alive" doesn't seem to be a problem he's going to have very long. And SAY, two mine explosions in one sitting seems like a bit of overkill, if I may be earnest with you.


Next, final chapter: A Duel to the Death!
"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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panzer the great & terrible
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Just one question: what the HECK is a flamingo dancer?
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Laughing Gravy
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It's a Flamenco Dancer when it's late and I'm tired.
"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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panzer the great & terrible
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OK, but I really want a flamingo dancer in my life.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Sgt Saturn
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panzer the great & terrible
Jan 18 2013, 07:17 AM
OK, but I really want a flamingo dancer in my life.
Alas, Costner's sequel to Waterworld, Dances With Flamingos was never made for some reason or another....
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riddlerider
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MYSTERY TROOPER trivia: In the mid or late 1930s this serial was reissued by Guaranteed Pictures as TRAIL OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED. Under that title it was one of the first chapter plays — perhaps the very first chapter play — to air on television. It's known to have been broadcast as early as 1949, and perhaps aired earlier than that.

Flora E. Douglas wasn't really a writer; she only wrote a few screenplays. She was, however, the only female producer of Poverty Row B-Westerns and serials during the early talkie years. IIRC, she was married to a director of low-grade product: Harry S. Webb, Alvin J. Neitz (aka Alan James), or one of their ilk. Her career, such as it was, had already ended by the mid-Thirties.

I first saw MYSTERY TROOPER in the early Seventies at one of the Western Film Festivals. As I was still in my Republic-is-everything phase, I hated it. But I gave it another try years later upon getting a VHS bootleg. I liked it somewhat better and even briefly owned a mint 16mm print with the reissue title. It's got the feel of a late silent Mascot or Weiss Brothers serial.
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mort bakaprevski
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I don't know about the rest of the country, but the Weiss & Mascot serials were broadcast in SoCal in 1949. I know because (blush) I saw them. A good friend of mind, who had a TV at least a year before we got ours, said he'd seen 'em all before so they may have been on as early as 1948.
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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riddlerider
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mort bakaprevski
Jan 20 2013, 08:22 AM
I don't know about the rest of the country, but the Weiss & Mascot serials were broadcast in SoCal in 1949. I know because (blush) I saw them. A good friend of mind, who had a TV at least a year before we got ours, said he'd seen 'em all before so they may have been on as early as 1948.
That wouldn't surprise me. Those early years of commercial TV remain incredibly difficult to document with iron-clad specificity. During that period, in some markets, local newspaper program listings were as sketchy as, "4 pm: Movie." And a few distributors — maybe more than a few — were coy about their product lists because they were pirating movies still protected by copyright. We've already discussed how brazen some of the piracy was. And I suspect some independent stations in smaller markets made deals with local 16mm rental libraries to get prints they could air. We may never know everything that happened during the "wild west" era of early commercial TV.
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