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Watching Any Good Serials?
Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,268 Views)
Barcroft
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I just finished watching The Masked Marvel for the umpteenth time, one of my faves. Great stunting by Tom Steele and one of my favorite villains Anthony Warde as Mace.
Barcroft
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Pa Stark
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I also really like THE MASKED MARVEL, one of the slickest and fastest paced serials ever. The one serial I think is the equal in those departments is KING OF THE MOUNTIES, probably the most under rated Republic serial.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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Barcroft
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Pa,
I couldn't agree more................................
Barcroft
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Pa Stark
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The two main criticismS of KING OF THE MOUNTIES are that it is too reliant on stock footage from the first Mountie serial, and they overdid it with Lydecker Brothers explosions for the cliffhangers. MOUNTIES was one of three cheater serials Republic made during their "Golden Era," the other two being THE FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS, and DICK TRACY VS. CRIME, INC. As for the cliffhanger complaint, the same could be said for Republic's next serial, G-MEN VS. THE BLACK DRAGON. Again, a lot of exploding buildings and cars, but I have never heard any complaints about this serial.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Any discussion of underrated Republics has to include Hawk of the Wilderness. Fast and well-paced as any, but mostly forgotten, I suspect because of a few scenes with old-fashioned stereotypes. I don't want to beat that dead horse again, but can't we make allowances for that when a movie's seventy years old?
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Barcroft
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Panzer,
I tend to agree with you about Hawk of the Wilderness. This serial seemed to me more story driven and it was nice to see that a couple of the actors were pretty decent thespians. The use of Fred "Snowflake" Toones and his yessir boss mannerisms are not accepted today but I remember in Witney's book that he liked him and any chance he got to use him he did. Chalk up one for Mr. Witney.
Barcroft
Edited by Barcroft, Nov 18 2013, 09:52 AM.
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LaneCarson
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I've just recently returned to an old favorite: The Sea Hound (1947)
Its a wonderful "escapist-adventure" serial which is very close to the Australian radio serial: Captain Silver and the Sea Hound
Whilst the US version of the radio series had a checkered reputation, the Australian produced one was a huge success and ran for many years
Mainly aimed at the under 12s it played at 5pm. Captain Silver was voiced by that fine radio (& eventual TV) actor Leonard Teale, who did double duty by playing Superman in more than 1000 episodes at 6pm
The later time-slot was in keeping with its target audience of young adults & older (unlike the US series, which seemed to be pitched to "boys & girls")
Back to the movie serial, Buster Crabbe makes a good Silver and his no nonsense approach to The Admiral & the duplicitous Rand, is always entertaining
As a nation of swimmers (post war popular of 10 million of which 9 million lived on the coast), we aussies had a great liking for BC (due to his swimming heroics) - all of his post war serials did good business - especially The Sea Hound. BC was far and away the most famous serial actor in Australia and there were quite a few 16mm prints of The Sea Hound that did a nice rotation at suburban cinemas until the late 1950s (TV didn't start here until 1958) - less so for Pirates of the High Seas & King of the Congo - which, although doing good business, didn't quite achieve the popularity of Captain Silver
Silver, Jerry, Tex & Kukai are a fun team
Trev
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Frank Hale
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I have a question about "Terry and the Pirates", which I'm now watching for the first time: What's with VCI's reconstructed soundtrack on Chapter 5?

I'm not surprised that they did it; I assume it's just another lost Columbia sound reel like on The Phantom. But I can't remember anyone mentioning it before. At the Squadron it was always complaints about James W. Horne's lousy direction and William Tracy running in place. Furthermore, I thought the serial had been available for a long time. So I'm wondering if I'm simply late to the party on this, or if there are better prints out there?

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riddlerider
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Frank Hale
Jan 10 2014, 02:25 PM
I have a question about "Terry and the Pirates", which I'm now watching for the first time: What's with VCI's reconstructed soundtrack on Chapter 5?

I'm not surprised that they did it; I assume it's just another lost Columbia sound reel like on The Phantom. But I can't remember anyone mentioning it before. At the Squadron it was always complaints about James W. Horne's lousy direction and William Tracy running in place. Furthermore, I thought the serial had been available for a long time. So I'm wondering if I'm simply late to the party on this, or if there are better prints out there?



There's nothing better that I know of. My recollection is that Terry was mastered from 35mm materials on deposit at the Library of Congress. I'm happy to have it, and the reconstructed sound doesn't bother me. This was one of those "lost" serials nobody in film-collector circles ever expected to see when we talked about them 40 years ago.
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Frank Hale
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Thanks, Ed.

So far I'm finding the serial a lethargy, rather than the travesty I was expecting. Not awful, but half-hearted and silly.
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Laughing Gravy
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Well, WE loved Terry & the Pirates a lot. Columbia serials go over well with my crowd.

Fu Manchu is going over pretty well. too. Along about episodes 11-13 there are a lot of night scenes and the Serial Squadron print gets too dark to see much what's going on, which hasn't helped. It also doesn't help that the serial has gone on too long, Fu keeps vanishing for long stretches, and we're looking forward to it being over.

Any newbies out there, just be aware that I strongly disagree that Masked Marvel or King of the Mounties are good serials. I remember that we liked Hawk of the Wilderness, though, a lot.

I've made the executive decision that our next serial should be a sci-fi one, and since I currently don't have good prints (needed for a 60 in. screen) of Darkest Africa or Lost Planet (my top choices), I have no enthusiasm right now for Captain Video, and Trophy Exwife has kiboshed FG's Trip to Mars, the best I can think of is The Lost City, which hopefully they'll find a hoot. Hopefully. I have only seen it once, and was shocked - SHOCKED! - to discover that, far from the worst serial of the 1930s, it's one of the best.

After that? Maybe Perils of Nyoka, maybe Cap'n America, maybe The Green Archer. We shall see.

"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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Frank Hale
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I don't hate Terry. I'm just not particularly tempted to break the Gravy rule of no-more-than-one chapter-a-week. In fact, I didn’t watch chapter 2 until a month later.

Terry and The Lost City have something in common: excellent screamers!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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There are hundreds of decent movies I haven't seen, so I haven't watched anything really crappy in years, except first run, of course. Maybe I should break out The Vigilantes Are Coming. That should fix it.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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El Shaitan
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Just started the 1943 Batman. Not very pc but fun. Interesting packaging a generic picture of Batman over a modern skyline no stills from the serial and it says it has 15 segments not chapters. It seems that they don't want to admit it's a vintage serial with basic production values.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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My guess, whoever did the marketing had no idea what a serial is, and figured that if he did it right, the people who'd be buying the thing would know even less. As RR has pointed out, the market for serials is severely limited and to make money they have to attract children which, with a black and white movie, isn't easy to do.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jan 13 2014, 11:27 AM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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