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Watching Any Good Serials?
Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,420 Views)
Mantan
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Laughing Gravy
Jun 28 2006, 09:40 AM
Just finishing Flying G-Men (tons of fun) and Perils of the Royal Mounted (blogged weekly right here, of course). The only Horne talkie serial I haven't seen is The Spider Returns, and I hope somebody'll dig up a good copy of that one of these days.


I gambled on a copy I found for sale on eBay and was satisfied. Haven't been as lucky with other dealers lately.
I finished THE SPIDER RETURNS last week and enjoyed every minute of it. I liked it as much as THE SPIDER'S WEB. This would easily fit in my top 25 serials of all time list.

Laughed out loud several times. God bless James Horne.

By the way -Forrest Taylor is as great in this as he was in DEADWOOD DICK.
Drippingly venomous sarcasm delivered in as menacing a snarl as possible. And he never makes a physical appearance. Guy's so good he doesn't need to be seen to be enjoyed.
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Laughing Gravy
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I'm currently watching three serials. Red Barry is being blogged right here on our message boards; after only 2 chapters, it's too soon to tell what I think of it. The Hurricane Express is being done chapter by chapter over at inthebalcony.com/matinee; it's an incomprehensible mess, which is not to say that it's not without some entertainment value. The weak sister of the trio is Don Daredevil Rides Again: to call it lackluster would be kind. Until the latest episode, chapter seven, that is! For five minutes, Gene Roth shows up as a drunken prospector, and for five glorious minutes, the serial was as fun as its forebear, Zorro's Black Whip. Alas, Gene didn't last long, and I fear neither has my interest in this serial.
"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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Barcroft
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I'm just finishing the Serial Squadron's "Fighting Marines" (a beautiful copy), then I start watching one of Jungle Sam Katzman's gems from Columbia "Who's Guilty". This is one that I have never seen so I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Barcroft
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JazzGuyy
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I just started Mystery Squadron with Bob Steele and "Big Boy" Williams. It's a 1933 Mascot and the first chapter was pretty good but this thing is hard to watch because it has one of the worst transfers I have ever seen on an Alpha DVD and when you say worst for Alpha that is really bad. This thing is so soft looking and lacking in contrast...well... This looks like a serial I would like to see some other company put out. Are there any other versions of this one.

The serial does have some pretty good stunt flying (probably a lot is stock footage) and a mystery villain with a great name: The Black Ace. It also has a fairly young J. Carroll Naish who is playing a bad guy again, but without his customary mustache (probably hadn't added it yet).
TANSTAAFL!
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marlin lee
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The Mystery Squadron is one of the serials The Serial Squadron has listed as "on deck".
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Grampy
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Recently finished The Great Adventures of Capt Kidd and found it decent entertainment. Different locale and story helps. A nice twist in the later chapters makes for an exciting final 3 episodes. George Wallace as a mustached, long haired villain bears a remarkable resemblance to Gene Hackman!

Just finished Jesse James Rides Again-Clayton Moore, Roy Barcroft, Linda Stirling, Tris Coffin. An unbeatable cast in an exciting shoot-em-up. Highly recommended.


Starting tonight-Congo Bill
Still Alive and Well
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panzer the great & terrible
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I'm watching THE INVISIBLE MONSTER. The utterly preposterous threat of an army of invisible people shepherded by another army of searchlight operators makes for MST-type fun, and it's well edited. Fred Brannon takes sole credit here, and it has all the hallmarks of his "style" with mostly medium shots and listless fights. Still, it's entertaining, primarily because it's so silly.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Pa Stark
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Gravy, on your July 21st post, it looked like you said you are covering THE HURRICANE EXPRESS elsewhere here, but I couldn't find it.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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rodney
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I'm two chapters in to Batman.
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Laughing Gravy
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Pa, go to our www.inthebalcony.com/matinee, one of our main sites (there's THREE of 'em now, so we can run the gamut from lousy all the way up to not-quite-so-lousy) and click on any of our Matinees in the Balcony, all of which include a chapter of The Hurricane Express. (Start with Bomba the Jungle Boy if you want to see the first chapter!)
"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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4 chapters into Congo Bill. The saving grace is the presence of Jack Ingram, I. Stanford Jolley, & Charlie King on the villain side. Although Cleo Moore has not had any actual lines as the white jungle goddess, each episode has a gratuitous shot of her in a scanty jungle outfit. Other than that-not so good.

Congo Bill as far as I can tell has no last name. He introduces himself to everybody as "Congo Bill".

The chapter 3 hanger is strange. Congo Bill goes to a small stamping mill in the local African town when he hears someone coming. He hides behind the large gear wheels that drive whatever machine is in the building. (They don't show the actual machine, just gears.) Of course Congo Bill puts his arm between the teeth of the gears. Not knowing Bill is in the building, one of the 2 henchies pulls the lever that starts the gears moving. When asked why by his companion, the only reason he can come up with is "I wanted it to look busy." Congo Bill is in danger of being crushed by the gears! At this point, it entered my mind that Bill's perilous situation was not a retult of hiss courage or the villain's plotting. Bill was trapped by the fact that he and the henchman were a couple of idiots. The thrilling outcome of this perilous situation is that the other henchman gives his partner a dirty look and turns off the machine just 10 seconds after it's turned on.

The jungle so far is portrayed by the hills of California. No dense foliage or anything. Some natives are black, some are white and some are somewhere in between.

In chapter 4, Congo Bill finally leads a safari into the wild. I think it's the wild-- the roads are unpaved. He's in a Woody driving slowly on a gravel road while native bearers walk behind. They are shortly followed by a couple of baddies driving quickly to catch up. It's been a long time since I've driven on a gravel road. Do tires squeal on gravel?

To hide valuable documents from the baddies, Congo Bill puts them in a spot that is so secret, so clever, that it takes Charlie King almost a quarter of a minute to find them.

I enjoy Clyde Beatty's 2 serials, but, as an actor, Clyde is a great lion tamer. Nevertheless, Clyde far outshines Don McGuire as a serial hero.

I keep wishing Columbia had held off on a Congo Bill serial until the point when the comic character gained the power to switch brains with the golden gorilla. Then the writers could have kept McGuire in a cage while Ray Corrigan in his apesuit carried on with the action.
This is going to be a tough one to finish. Cleo's longer appearances better be worth it.
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Sgt Saturn
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Quote:
 
It's been a long time since I've driven on a gravel road. Do tires squeal on gravel?


Not in the Real World (tm). In the movies (and on TV) tires squeal on all surfaces -- even sand! :rolleyes:
The Ol' Sarge
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Laughing Gravy
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Well, I've found two more things I've really, really enjoyed about Don Daredevil Rides Again (the first thing, for those who missed it and have waited patiently for the recap chapter, was Gene Roth's brief but memorable turn as a drunken prospector).

(2) The fight in -- I think -- chapter 9 is so good that I doubt director Fred Brannon shot it. It's one of those old-fashioned Republic brawls where everything gets tossed around, including the stunt men. I'm gonna assume that Spencer Bennet was brought in to replace an ailing Brannon one day, or to help catch up when filming fell behind. That would explain all the stuff being thrown directly at the camera, too.

(3) The cliffhanger this week is one of the greats of all time... Ken Curtis takes his shirt off. Yep, that's it. He removes his left sleeve and then begins to remove his right sleeve and we see the CONTINUED NEXT WEEK sign. Now, granted, it makes sense in the terms of the plot, but it's still one daffy cliffhanger.

Received The Adventures of Smilin' Jack yesterday from Grapevine Video; looks much, much better than the Alpha release, for about the same price!
"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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Jerry Blake
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"(2) The fight in -- I think -- chapter 9 is so good that I doubt director Fred Brannon shot it. It's one of those old-fashioned Republic brawls where everything gets tossed around, including the stunt men. I'm gonna assume that Spencer Bennet was brought in to replace an ailing Brannon one day, or to help catch up when filming fell behind. That would explain all the stuff being thrown directly at the camera, too."

I'm going to assume you're kidding, Gravy, since old Spence was stuck in Katzman-land at Columbia by the time DON DAREDEVIL was made. In most post-1950 Brannon serials there's one or two fights that are a lot more slam-bang than most of the other slugfests (the Chapter 11 battle in FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS, for example), and I think these are there because Brannon had wrapped the rest of the serial ahead of production deadline and Franklin Adreon than let him go ahead and have a little fun with the remaining action scenes. I still think it was just budgetary and time restraints that held old Freddie back. His work with Thomas Carr in JESSE JAMES RIDES AGAIN, under a more creative producer, is a lot more spectacular, for example.
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Laughing Gravy
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I dunno, Jerry, he didn't have any budgetary or time constraints that other serials directors didn't have. And Jesse James Rides Again had Clayton Moore and Linda Stirling, serial veterans both, who probably helped him keep things moving. He was saddled with Ken Curtis (in his first serial) as Don Daredevil. But of course Tommy Carr as a co-director was the biggest difference in the Jesse James serial.

And yes, I was kidding about Spencer Bennet's participation, more or less.
"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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