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| Watching Any Good Serials? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,365 Views) | |
| panzer the great & terrible | Jun 20 2008, 08:30 AM Post #886 |
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Mouth Breather
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I take 'em all the time. I still buy serials but rarely watch them. Go figure. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| riddlerider | Jun 20 2008, 11:01 AM Post #887 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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No excuses, Gravy! The serial gods must be served! |
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| Don Daredevil | Jun 20 2008, 11:29 AM Post #888 |
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Old Fart
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LOL ... Ya gotta remember that serials were made for the youngsters.At that time the studios didn't give enough credit to the youngsters for remembering what transpired from week to week ... nor enough credit for thier visual retention. Boy, were they surprised ! It's not like these things are A, or even B films ... they fall waaaaay somewhere else down the list.
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| Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer | Jun 20 2008, 12:08 PM Post #889 |
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Sapient Balconeer
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I don't know DD....I think some of the serials I've seen are more entertaining than some B movies I've watched.....definately
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| It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong." | |
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| Don Daredevil | Jun 20 2008, 01:46 PM Post #890 |
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Old Fart
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Oh yeah, I agree, but I was refering mostly to the continuity and cliffhanger "cheats" aspects. The studios back in those days must not of given any forethought about how well us kids could remember from week to week. They just covered up/altered the following weeks chapters any way they could just to insure the Hero/s survival. Didn't they think we would notice ? <_<
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| Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer | Jun 23 2008, 03:39 AM Post #891 |
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Sapient Balconeer
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What was the target age for serials? I think teenagers would've liked them. |
| It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong." | |
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| KanSmiley | Jun 23 2008, 04:17 AM Post #892 |
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Charter Member
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You started going at about the age your mother trusted you to behave yourself in the theatre. I would guess at around the age of 8 or 9. i started at about 8 years old and went to the Saturday Matinees fairly regularly until I was in my early teens. Kan |
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http://www.saturday-matinee-memories.com/ intoxicated, adj.: When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it. | |
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| JazzGuyy | Jun 23 2008, 06:38 AM Post #893 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I would say the prime age for serials was 10-12 year-old boys. All the gee-whiz elements, fistfights, gunfire and explosions and the total lack of any romantic interests would indicate this. Some of the serials of the pre-1935 era seem to be aimed a slightly older audience since there is a lot more sexiness to them. |
| TANSTAAFL! | |
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| Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer | Jun 23 2008, 07:42 AM Post #894 |
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Sapient Balconeer
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I'd like to think I'd have gone to see Undersea Kingdom, The Phantom Creeps and Flash Gordon well into my teens, had I grown up in that era. |
| It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong." | |
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| Don Daredevil | Jun 23 2008, 10:53 AM Post #895 |
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Old Fart
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Same here ... except a year or two younger. My Grandmother at that time used to work at a Theatre and she would take me too work with her on Saturday mornings. Lucky me, huh ?
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jun 23 2008, 03:01 PM Post #896 |
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Mouth Breather
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Serials died when I was thirteen so I don't know if I would have sought them out as a teenager. I sure as hell sought them out in the serial revival when I was in my twenties. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| riddlerider | Jun 23 2008, 04:42 PM Post #897 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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This, truly, is the $64,000 question for anybody who researches serials. Conventional wisdom holds that, by the sound era, serials were geared toward young viewers, especially 10-to-15-year-old boys. In theory, the perfect serial would thrill kids and not annoy parents -- who, in at least some cases, were expected to accompany their children to the theater. In actuality, few sound serials could be taken seriously by adults. It's true that serials featuring such famous characters as Flash Gordon, the Lone Ranger, and Superman played the big downtown houses that catered to "family trade," but in these cases it was always presumed that the chapter plays appeared primarily to the kids and were simply tolerated by the adults who were waiting to see Clark Gable, or Joan Crawford, or whomever. Going back to the silent era, the market for serials was more complicated. In the genre's earliest days, pre-World War I, serials were clearly intended for adult audiences -- especially since most of the early ones were promoted with fictionalizations that appeared in newspapers, which typically were purchased and read by adults rather than children. But the increasing reliance on simple melodramatic formulae attracted kids to the serial early on. In news stories from movie-industry trade journals dating as far back as 1918, you can find references to serials appealing primarily to kids. In fact, the belief that kids would be adversely affected by depictions of crime and violence was behind the industry's 1921 push to self-censor the serials. And yet, exhibitor reports in those same trade journals refer to running chapters at weeknight shows, sometimes making a serial the prime attraction of a weekly show (usually Monday or Tuesday night) that consisted solely of short subjects. These programs drew largely adult audiences. I've read accounts of theatergoers driving into town from miles around, in the middle of a snowstorm, to catch the final chapter of a serial that played only on weeknights. I've explained some of this before; sorry for the repetition. |
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| Laughing Gravy | Jun 23 2008, 07:18 PM Post #898 |
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You needn't apologize; you're never less than fascinating. My father came to live with me late in life, and the first serial he watched with us and the FNF gang was SPY SMASHER, which he thought was hilarious, not least of all because of the repetitousness inherent in the format. As the years passed, though, and he saw more and more serials, he grew to enjoy them very much; I particularly recall him liking King of the Texas Rangers and Daredevils of the Red Circle. I asked him if he saw serials as a kid, and he said yes, during the silent movie days. He couldn't recall any specific titles. But one day he shocked me with, "I can recall seeing a serial with, I think it was Gene Autry, and a bunch of robots. There were guys with buckets on their heads, too." Now, unless he saw this on TV in the 1960s, which I seriously doubt, he saw it in 1935, the year he turned 16. It was of course the middle of the Great Depression, but he told me that he went to movies as often as he can. Which reminds me of another story. Me: "Dad, do you remember what you were doing when you heard Pearl Harbor had been attacked?" "Yes. I had just come out of the movie theatre, and people were running around everywhere yelling that the Japanese had attacked us. It was Sunday afternoon." "I don't suppose you recall what movie you'd seen?" "I'll never forget it. It was Sergeant York." "Oh, with Gary Cooper!" "No, I was with some broad." |
| "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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| OzRadio | Jun 25 2008, 04:57 PM Post #899 |
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Balcony Gang
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As bad as they are, I'm a serial nut. I'm halfway through the Adventures of Smilin Jack and have enjoyed it so far. There's perhaps less action than some but it's certainly less off the wall than many and the story is pretty straight forward. Ryan |
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| igsjr | Jun 25 2008, 05:06 PM Post #900 |
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Nostalgia blogger
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Smilin' Jack is a really first-rate serial, although it's kind of like the Rodney Dangerfield of chapter-plays: it don't get no respect. |
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"Life is in color--but black-and-white is more realistic..." -- Samuel Fuller, director So many DVDs...so little time... | |
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... Ya gotta remember that serials were made for the youngsters.

6:53 AM Jul 11