Serial Saturday: SECRET AGENT X-9 (1945)

If you say the name Lloyd Bridges to most people today, they instantly think of the guy who said "looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue" in 1980's Airplane!. But 35 years before that movie redefined his carreer, Bridges headlined this WWII serial as the title character.

Secret Agent X-9 was based on a comic strip created by mystery writer Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) and comic strip artist Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon). It was the last serial Universal based off a comic strip and one of their last serials. It was also the second such serial Universal did based on the strip. It's quite different from it's predecessor, but also as good as it.

Japanese agents discover that formula 722, when mixed with distilled water, becomes a perfect substitute for aviation gasoline. The problem is, the secret to the formula is in America, in the papers of a scientist who was trying to develop it for use as an explosive. The Japanese and Nazi agents determine to steal the formula from America, using a supposedly neutral island known as Shadow Island as their base of operations. Shadow Island is run by Lucky Kamber (Cy Kendall), a self-serving profiteer who collects a protection tax from fugitives on the island. When an American agent is murdered on Shadow Island, Secret Agent X-9 (Bridges) shows up to route out the Axis agents and put a stop to their mad plan. X-9 is aided by a Chinese agent named Ah Fong (Keye Luke) and a beautiful Australian agent (Jan Wiley) posing as a Quisling.

B-Movie and serial fans will find a lot of amusement in seeing who shows up in this. Samuel S Hinds, better remembered today for the Bela Lugosi version of The Raven, plays the mysterious Solo, who sits at the bar Kamber owns playing tiddlywinks constantly, except for when he shoots one would-be killer and draws a gun on another. Of course, as soon as the excitement is over, he goes back to playing tiddlywinks. The serial also has two of Charlie Chan's sons in it, though on opposite sides of the law. As mentioned, Keye Luke (No.1 Son) is Bridge's sidekick. No 3 Son, Benson Fong, plays Japanese scientist Dr. Hakihima. Serial regular Eddie Cobb gets big billing on the poster, but only shows up in a couple of scenes as a bartender. Another frequent serial baddie, I. Stanford Jolley (best remembered as the voice of The Crimson Ghost), plays a short-lived thug.  Other frequent serials players in the serial include John Merton and Stanley Price, who gets the funniest death scene in the serial.

Victoria Horne plays the lead Japanese agent. Naruba. She does this by basically looking like a somnambulist, with her eyes mostly shut and her arms folded and in her dress sleeves for most of the serial. Politically correct-minded people will howl at this portrayal as racist, as well as Bridges referring to the enemy as "Japs" and "Nips" in the serial. But I think a little historical context is in order when watching this, or almost any WWII serial for that matter. The film was released in 1945 and we were still at war with Japan, which meant that they were the enemy. This was also just over three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, I know that it's not fashionable to demonize your enemies anymore, but back then it was. More to the point, it was a release valve for audiences. Secret Agent X-9 and its ilk were meant to be patriotic flag waving films, much the same as Top Gun and Red Dawn were in the 1980s. The worst thing we can do to a serial like this is try to apply our present-minded thinking to it. X-9 had a time and a place and, in some respects, represents a snapshot of America at that time. It's propaganda people, something that still goes on today, just a little differently than back then.

I'm not necessarily excusing the portrayal, I'm just savvy enough to understand where it was coming from and so not get so worked up about it. Besides, there are far worse portrayals of Japanese agents in other serials like 1943's Batman and the Popeye cartoon You're A Sap Mr. Jap. Let's not even bring Bugs Bunny Nips The Nips into this, either.

As for Bridges, he makes a fine serial hero. It's actually a shame this is his only serial since he does so good in it. This serial was done when Bridges was apparently cutting his teeth in acting, doing a lot of B-Westerns. It gives a glimpse of the actor to come, and only 6 years after this would he be playing Gary Cooper's deputy in the classic High Noon. Jan Wiley's Lynn Moore (great last name) gets to stand around and look pretty most of the time, leaving the heavy lifting to Bridges and Luke, but she does well with the sneakier aspects of her character. Three Stooges (and serial) buffs will also recognize Gene Roth as an incompetent Nazi henchman.


Every serial producing studio took a different tact when it came to the form. Republic favored constant action and set destroying fistfights, sometimes to their detriment. Columbia relied on silly, over the top humor. Universal took a more plot oriented approach, however, with a lot of dialogue. Some serials this worked for while others it just slowed down to a crawl. Fortunately, in Secret Agent X-9, it works. All the spy vs. spy and double dealing routines help keep the serial moving. One is never completely sure who's on whose side in this and that's a large part of the fun.

This is Universal's last truly great serial as the last few that squeaked out after it weren't quite up to par. But it's a fun and entertaining early glimpse at an actor that most would later know for comedy, back when he was a straight leading man. For that alone, it's worth watching.

Favorite Friday: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Full disclosure: Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie of all time.

I say that and people look at me like I have two heads. What nobody realizes, however, is that there is a difference between "favorite" and "best". It's not that Raiders is the best movie ever made. There are other movies that are better than it certainly. Or if not better, than more "important" than it in terms of what they have to say. Let's just throw it right out there: Raiders is pop entertainment. Two hours of pure pop entertainment, in fact. It's not a message film like On the Beach or Schindler's List. It's not meant to make you consider the human condition or anything like that. It is, at it's heart, a pure early 80s summer blockbuster, and one of the best at it.

Conceived as an homage to the great serials of the 1930s and 40s, in particular the Republic serials, Raiders has a simple premise. In 1936, the Nazis are looking for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, the fabled chest that allegedly contained the original Ten Commandments (the stone tablets, not the movie). The U.S. Government asks archeologist Indiana Jones to beat the Nazis to the prize. Jones reunites with an ex-lover whose father has an artifact the Nazis need to aid in their search. The Nazis call upon Jones number one rival Belloq to help them. The Ark is found and trades off who owns it several times before the end of the movie. Yep, that's about it.

Don't let the fairly simple description above fool you. I mentioned that Raiders was a throwback to Republic serials and nobody was better at simple premises than Republic serials. Raiders tells a simple, straightforward story but tells it thrillingly. Once the movie starts, it never really takes a breather. I would argue that it is one of the most action packed movies you'll ever see. Keep in mind, this was in the pre-CGI world, with actually stuntmen pulling off such mind blowing stunts as Jones being chased by a very large boulder to Jones chasing after a speeding truck on horseback to Jones being dragged behind said truck and climbing back on. That last mentioned stunt is a clever nod to one of the most famous serial stunts, typically called The Yakima Canutt Stunt, where the hero is sliding under a speeding wagon and climbs back on. Actually, that's the genius alone of the original Indiana Jones trilogy. Like the James Bond movies of the era, all the stunts are for real and all the more amazing for it.

Harrison Ford got the role of Indy when Tom Selleck had to turn it down due to his Magnum, P.I. commitment. I like Selleck and I've seen his audition. He's a fine actor, but Ford nailed Jones and made him into an iconic movie character. Ford IS Indiana Jones, a not entirely likeable good guy--he does have a touch of greed to him--who rises above the occasion to kick some Nazi rear. Karen Allen plays his feisty ex-flame Marion Ravenwood. She's the best of the heroines in the series, instantly recalling the true Serial Queens like Kay Aldridge and Linda Stirling. She may get into trouble, but she puts up a fight and uses her wiles to attempt to escape. The scene where she tries drinking head bad guy Belloq (Paul Freeman) under the table in an attempt to escape from him is alternately hilarious and suspenseful.

This is Spielberg's second movie involving Nazis. He's said that he regrets portraying them the way he does in this, especially after Schindler's List, which was his first time at portraying them as they really were. What Spielberg seems to forget, however, is that their portrayal in this movie is appropriate for the type of movie it is. It's a serial, after all, and anyone who has seen Spy Smasher or Manhunt in the African Jungles knows where the Nazis in this film were modeled off of. On top of that, the three main villains--Belloq, Toht (Ronald Lacey), and Dietrich (Wolf Kahler) are perfect representations of the best of the serial villains. They're a nasty, murderous bunch--in particular Toht, who threatens Marion with a hot poker in one scene and throws her into the Well of Souls in another. Incidentally, Freeman went on to appear (not as Belloq) on the early 90s Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Look, this is a movie that has it all: amazing action scenes, genuine suspense, and just the right amount of humor. It truly is representative of the classics of the serial genre and if it were an actual cliffhanger serial, it would be the greatest one of all. One can tell that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had a genuine affection for serials. If you pay attention, you can even find every chapter break in it. Count them. There's 12 actual chapters in it. Plus, if you're a serial nut (like I am), you can tell which serials which scenes were nods to.

Proof of the greatness of this movie is the sheer number of imitators it spawned. This happened frequently back in the late 70s and early 80s. Jaws gave rise to any number of shark movies (and still does for that matter). Star Wars inspired movies like Battle Beyond the Stars and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. Halloween begat Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, and so on. Alien gave use movies like The Thing. And Raiders inspired movies like Treasure of the Four Crowns (truly awful) and Romancing the Stone (actually fairly decent). The problem with the Raiders imitators is that they just looked at the treasure hunter aspect or the serial aspect and missed the whole fun aspect. When Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out (another serial inspired film), I went to it eagerly. After watching it, however, I turned to a friend of mine and said "it just didn't have the wow factor Raiders did".

I'm quite certain that if you wanted to judge the best Spielberg movie, some artsy critic would point to something like Saving Private Ryan or Lincoln, both of which are excellent movies indeed. However, I'm not an artsy critic. I'm a film buff and while I recognize the superiority of those two movies, I'll go back to Raiders again and again and again and never get bored with it. I first saw Raiders at age 11 on the big screen in March of 1982. It captured my imagination then and 32 years later, it still captures my imagination. After all, isn't that what a favorite movie does?

THE KARATE KID (2010)

 When I first saw the trailer for the 2010 version of The Karate Kid, I felt instantly hostile to it. I was a teenager when the original version came out in 1984 and I saw the original in the movies. Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) was great, Elisabeth Shue too gorgeous for words, and Wax On/Wax Off a near defining movie moment. So the idea that anybody would have the balls to remake a movie that I had such nostalgia for was sheer lunacy. I determined to never watch it, never give it a chance.

A few friends of mine suggested that it was a decent version, however, and as I'm doing a three part series on remakes, sequels, and reboots on this blog anyhow, I decided to watch it to see where in the spectrum on remakes it may fall. You may now hand me a plate of crow, as this version was not only better than expected, but it was plain out a good movie.

The premise had Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and his mother (Taraji P Henson) leave Detroit when her job transfers her to Beijing. Dre tries making a few friends and even talks to a pretty girl named Meiying (Wenwen Han), which brings him to the attention of a group of bullies. The leader, Cheng (Zenwie Wang), kicks the snot out of him in the playground and begins bullying him every day after. The building's maintenance man, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), breaks up one particularly brutal attack, causing the bullies to beat themselves up in a fairly amusing sequence.

Han goes to the Cheng's dojo to try to get the bullies to leave Dre alone. He ends up entering Dre in a tournament and agrees to train Dre in the ways of Kung Fu. The training, involving Dre taking his jacket off, putting it on a hook, taking it off the hook and putting it back on, confuses Dre until it is revealed that all those moves were actually part of the training. The day of the tournament arrives. Cheng's Sifu wants Dre broken. Dre wants to face his fears, win or lose.

This version hits almost every beat of the original. The locations are different and the ages are different, but the story takes much the same track. Ralph Macchio's Daniel was a teenager while Dre is only 12. For some, this is the biggest knock against the movie. I've read a lot of people post that 12 year olds being bullied are no big deal while a high school senior has to defend his manhood. That's complete nonsense. Without knocking the original, I'll put up this much disclosure: I was 12 years old when my family moved and I was bullied by snots just like the ones picking on Dre in my new environment. So guess what? I get this movie. I get it exactly.

The thing that surprises me the most is how much I got into it. I knew where they were going during the tournament, but it still held some suspense. There's even a few nice nods to the original, such as Chan trying to catch a fly with some chopsticks.

As for the cast, they all do a fine job. Quite a few people have grumbled that this was simply a vanity project for Will Smith in casting his son Jaden in it, but the kid does a good job. He's believable for the most part and avoids the stereotype of a whiny kid. As for Chan, he's Jackie Chan and that's all that needs to be said there. You can't take your eyes off him from the moment he shows up. And Wang is so nasty, you can't wait for him to get his.

This movie won't take the place of the original--very few remakes do. Then again, the original was, at the end of the day, your typical underdog sports movie slightly elevated by Pat Morita's memorable Miyagi character. Take him (and Elisabeth Shue in a swimsuit) away and what did you have? Morita made the original movie and Chan makes this one. There is room for two movies called The Karate Kid in this world after all. Who knew?

Zero Hour! (1957)

Having recently rewatched Airplane!, it occurred to me that I still had not seen the movie that directly inspired it, 1957's Zero Hour! starring Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell. Zero Hour! was based on a story by Arthur Hailey, who later gave us the novel Airport. It's also a movie that's practically impossible to watch with a straight face today.

Zero Hour! concerns Ted Striker(Andrews), who leads a World War II bombing raid into disaster, costing the lives of six men. No mention is made if one of them happened to be named George Zipp, but we'll assume so. He moves back to Canada and in 1956 is on the verge of getting a new job, his 13th in ten years. When he gets home, he finds that his wife (Darnell) is leaving on a plane for Vancouver with his little boy, planning to leave him forever. He buys a last second ticket for the flight (you could do that in those days) and gets onboard, hoping to convince his wife to change her mind. Disaster falls when everyone who eats fish--including the crew and Striker's young son--gets a bad case of food poisoning. Doctor Baird (Geoffrey Toone) informs Striker that he's their only hope. Vancouver Airport head Harry Burdick (Charles Quinlivan) brings in Captain Martin Trevealan (Sterling Hayden) to try to talk Striker down. Trevealan and Striker flew together during the war and have some animosity towards one another. Can Striker get the plane safely down and save all the passengers? Or will he crack up under pressure and crash the plane into the mountains? The people are getting sicker, the fogger is getting thicker, and Leon is getting larger.

I always heard that Airplane! cribbed a lot from this movie. Just how much was cribbed wasn't made clear until I actually watched it. You may have heard that ZAZ took scenes, situations, and dialogue from Zero Hour! for Airplane!, but what you may not know is just how dead on.

Elaine's line about not being able to love someone you don't respect? Check.
The doctor's line about not only finding someone who can fly this plane but who didn't have fish for dinner? Check.
Striker's line about "I may bend your precious airplane but I'll get her down"? check
"You'll have to talk him right down to the ground"? Check

And so on and so forth. I freely admit that I had to stop the movie for a couple of minutes from laughing so hard when I heard the "looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking" line here. I'm talking word for word here.

Mind you, Zero Hour! is not intended to be a comedy. If you can actually put Airplane! out of your head, it's a tight little thriller. The cast is good and everyone does their parts professionally, even sincerely. Andrews and Darnell were always good actors and they do their jobs well here. It's not that this is a bad movie at all. It's a decent--I would even say pretty good--movie at that.

The problem is, anyone who has seen Airplane! any number of times is bound to finish the jokes as soon as they start hearing the lines. When Burdick says, "Hey, Johnny, hope about some coffee", you can't help but say to yourself "No thanks" even if Johnny doesn't say it in this movie. When Darnell is working the radio and describing the flying conditions to Hayden, you almost expect Andrews to say "It's a damn good thing he doesn't know how much I hate his guts" and her to repeat it. When the plane captain's wife shows up in the tower at the end of the movie, you expect her to start groping Hayden as he's trying to talk Andrews down.

I almost feel guilty about laughing at this movie. But I guess in 2014, it just can't be helped. If you've never seen Airplane!--and there are such people I am told--you'll probably appreciate this more as the thriller it's intended to be. If you have seen Airplane!, you'll still want to see this just to see where the idea came from. Like I said, it's a good movie and well worth watching at least once.

Yes, I am serious about that. And don't call me Shirley.

Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe

Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe is a bit of an oddball. It started life as a proposed TV series from Republic, spun off from their Rocket Man serials, and the first 3 episodes were filmed. The networks turned it down, so nine more episodes were filmed and it was released to theaters in 1953. Then it showed up as a TV series with different music in 1955. So what is it? Is it a serial? Is it a TV show? Is it a semi-connected series of shorts? The world may never know.

The simple answer seems to be that Cody is a serial. It runs the traditional 12 chapters that the majority of Republic serials run. But, every episode is the same length, roughly 30 minutes (the TV version runs 26 minutes an episode). Anyone who knows anything about Republic serials of this timeframe know that the longest episode--the first--ran 20 minutes and all the rest ran 13 minutes 40 seconds. So the Cody episodes are a lot longer than any typical Republic serial. You theoretically have to watch them in order, but there's no cliffhangers. Every episode is a complete stand alone story. In fact, only the last two episodes are really connected. So it's a serial that isn't a serial. Some have defended it as being a serial due to the fact that early silent serials like The Perils of Pauline didn't have cliffhangers, either. But Perils of Pauline was made before serials actually took on the cliffhanger sensibilities. I guess we could call it a miniseries and call it quits at that. Otherwise, we'll be on this entire blog trying to decide what this is.

To make matters more confusing, Cody is intended as a prequel to the 1952 serial Radar Men From the Moon. That serial starred George Wallace as Cody with Aline Towne as his girl Joan Gilbert and William Bakewell as his sidekick Ted Richards. Episode one of Commando Cody has Joan (Towne again) and Ted (William Schallert) getting their jobs working for Cody (Judd Holdren). But Ted drops out of the show after the third episode to be replaced by Dick Preston (Richard Crane). So if Ted quit after episode three, how does he show up in this show's sequel? We might as well skip that question, too.

The overall plot of the series is that an insane alien dictator known as The Ruler (Gregory Gaye) wants to conquer the Earth. He uses some Earth minions and a variety of plans, most of which are calculated to use the maximum amount of stock footage of disasters, to attempt this. Cody and his team hop in their rocket every episode and fairly easily defeat the plan until they get sick of playing this game and capture and ultimately kill him on the planet Mercury.

I admit that I always kind of liked early 50s Sci-Fi, especially when it involved space travel. There was a certain level of imagination to it, mostly due to a complete lack of knowledge of what was out there. A lot of early 50s Sci-Fi that involves space travel got some things hilariously wrong, but were still fun. This particular show, like Radar Men From the Moon before it, gets things wrong left and right. But you have to give them points for imagination and trying. For instance, no matter where you are in space--the moon, for instance--the sky is blue. Or more specifically, there is sky and atmosphere. And clouds. And Mercury is not only inhabited, it has plants and trees. But that's okay. This is from the time when Abbott and Costello discovered that Venus was inhabited by nothing but beautiful women and Victor Jory, Sonny Tufts, and Marie Windsor discovered that the moon had Catwomen on it. It's actually a shame those two things didn't come true. I'd be the first to go if they did and I hate flying.

Okay, so the writers at Republic had no idea about outer space. But is it good? Well, not in the way you would call something good. It is, however, fun. It's certainly better than any of the serials Republic was doing at the same time. It has a bit more zip to it than they do. Not much, but just enough. They also managed to give the episodes great titles like Robot Monster of Mars and Captives of the Zero Hour, even if the episodes themselves didn't full live up to the titles.

Holdren does well as Cody, though he's forced to wear a Domino mask all the time, to keep his identity a secret from everyone--even his co-workers. This is another inconsistency with Radar Men, by the way. Towne doesn't get to do much but look pretty, but at this point, she was probably used to that since that's what most of her serial roles consisted of. The two sidekicks are pretty interchangeable. Not bad, but interchangeable. As for Gregory Gaye, he had previously played another alien bent on destroying the Earth in the serial Flying Disc Man From Mars. He wasn't a particularly intimidating villain there and he isn't here. Fortunately, Lyle Talbot--the first actor to play Commissioner Gordon as well as Lex Luthor onscreen (as well as the only actor to play both)-- pops up in six episodes as one of his Earth agents. Unfortunately, Talbot isn't given much to do and his story goes unresolved as he just disappears from the show in the last two episodes. Gaye was also given his own Pretty Background Scenery, as played by Gloria Pall. She doesn't get to say much--most episodes she just stands there and looks pretty.

Holdren and Towne were supposed to play the characters again in another serial, Zombies of the Stratosphere, best remembered today as the serial Leonard Nimoy made (and doesn't talk about). However, at the 11th hour, Republic changed their minds and changed the names of all the principal characters, even though Holdren is again wearing the Rocket Man outfit and Jetpack. But that's okay. After all, Tris Coffin, the first Rocket Man, played a different character than Cody in King of the Rocketmen in 1949.

Despite the dodgy science and the plot holes you could get Cody's rocket ship through, Commando Cody remains a pleasant and fun little outing, from a time when we didn't really know what was out there, but could dream big about it.

Sequels, Remakes, & Reboots Part I: Reboots

One of the more common complaints about modern Hollywood is the so-called death of imagination and ideas. Proof positive of this is the sheer number of remakes, sequels, and reboots that come out every year. While this may seem irritating, the fact is that none of the three are particularly new ideas to Hollywood. In fact, all three have essentially been done for decades.


Reboots seem to be one of the biggest bugaboos for people nowadays. This seems to come from that fact that certain series end up getting rebooted within a few years of the last sequel to the first franchise. Reboots became fashionable when Christopher Nolan did Batman Begins as a completely fresh start to the Batman franchise. Since then we've been or will be treated to reboots of James Bond, Robocop, Godzilla, Spider-Man, X-Men, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, The Terminator, Superman, Star Trek, The Pink Panther, and quite a few more. That's an awful lot of reboots and would certainly support the idea of Hollywood being out of ideas. People tend to think of reboots as being a new trend due to Batman Begins, but actually it's not.


Let's take Godzilla for example. While the film coming out this May is indeed a reboot of the series, it's not the first time Godzilla has gone to this well. Godzilla, as a character, has been rebooted no less than three times previously. The first reboot was released in America as Godzilla 1985, but in Japan it was simply Godzilla (or Gojira if you prefer). It ignored the existence of every sequel to the 1954 original there was. That series went on to 1996 with Godzilla Vs. Destroyah, which seemed to bring an end to the franchise when the big guy melted. 1998 gave us the infamous American reboot, again simply called Godzilla, a film nobody--not even die hard Godzilla fans--wants to acknowledge exists. Then came Godzilla 2000, which again ignored the previous series and which again came to an end with Godzilla Final Wars.  What makes each series a reboot is the fact that Godzilla is always fighting a new version of old monsters. For instance, the MechaGodzilla in the second series--the one from the 1980s and 1990s--is completely different from the MechaGodzilla of the first series. That MechaGodzilla was created by aliens, while the newer one is a weapon the Japanese army devised to defeat Big G. Both series have their own version of Godzilla's kid.


I'm not arguing that reboots are a good or bad thing, mind you. I'm just saying that they're nothing new. One can argue that Universal rebooted the Sherlock Holmes series in 1942 when they took it over from Fox. While they kept the same basic cast, they put it in an entirely different time period than the Fox films. The reason they seem such a hot topic now is because there seem to be so many of them. At this point virtually every 70s & 80s horror franchise has been rebooted and now the comic book movies are doing the same.


The thing is not every reboot is bad or a bad idea.  Batman definitively needed the reboot, if only to give us proper representations of the villains. While the Joker and Catwoman haven't faired too awfully in past movies, what was done to Two Face and Bane in the 1990s was pretty criminal in itself. We needed The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises to show us better versions of those two villains. Batman Begins itself was a far better and more proper version of the origin story, too. The fact that Tim Burton had to make the Joker the killer of Batman's parents in his 1989 movie was always a mistake. The use of Joe Chill in Batman Begins fit a lot better.


It can also be argued that Superman didn't a reboot, too, if only to wipe out Superkid. It's not that Superman Returns was an especially bad movie, it's that Superman's son was a poor idea. Woefully, Man of Steel didn't live up to it's promise and you can pretty much argue which of the two Superman movies was worse.


The jury is still out on the Bond reboot. It's been handled fairly cleverly in some aspects and Daniel Craig makes for a good James Bond, but the series didn't really need to do a reboot. The argument put forth is that Die Another Day was so horrible, they needed to go back to basics and the only way to do that seemed to be a reboot. I find that logic faulty as Bond has gone way over the top in decades past and then done back to basics the next film without wiping out the entire series that came before. For Your Eyes Only is a pretty grounded film, released after the excesses of Moonraker, and they didn't chuck the whole series to do it. Where the Bond series could end up going wrong with this reboot idea is if they start remaking earlier entries. Hopefully they don't make that deadly mistake.


Which brings me to the most unnecessary reboot of the recent ones: The Amazing Spider-Man. Again, the logic seemed to be that Spider-Man 3 was so awful the only thing to do was chuck the series and start all over again. Please. Spider-Man 3 may not be as good as the first two, but it's not that awful. What was done with Sandman and Venom is no worse--I'll even argue far better-- than what was done with Bane and Two Face in the 1990s Batman films. Raimi gave us a good origin story and excellent versions of two of Spider-Man's primo villains, The Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. Point in fact, Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is one of the all time great movie villains. We don't need a new version of the character. The problem with the reboot is that not only does it have to do a repeat of a story we saw just a decade earlier, it's probably going to reuse villains we already saw done well. Indeed, the Green Goblin is already being set up for this series.  The new series finally gave us The Lizard onscreen, but the first series was already setting us up for the character. The likelihood is that we would have gotten him had the first series continued anyway. So tell me again why they had to restart the series


But so it goes. Like I said, reboots have been done for decades now and there's more on the way. Some, like Godzilla, look interesting. Some will no doubt end up being necessary like The Fantastic Four. Some will just plain make people shake their heads. But, like it or not, with so many successful reboots like Batman Begins and Casino Royale, it's a trend that's likely going to stay for quite a while.

Serial Saturday: Haunted Harbor (1944)

It can be argued that very few if any genuine horror serials were done in the sound era. Supernatural elements were more prevalent during silent serials. But by the mid to late 1920s, serials were considered more for children and I suppose the serial makers, who were occasionally under fire for the violence in the genre, didn't want to attract any more attention to themselves by scaring the dickens out of children. As such, despite the great title, Haunted Harbor went for a straight sea and island adventure over horror.


Captain Jim Marsden (Kane Richmond) is in debt to a man named Vorhees, who is planning to take his ship. Seems Marsden's prior ship, The Dolphin, was lost at see with a million dollars in gold on board and Vorhees holds him responsible. When Marsden goes to confront Vorhees, he finds him murdered. The police arrest Marsden for the crime and are planning to hang him for it. His friends Yank (Clancy Cooper) and Tommy (Marshall Reed) break him out and escape with the help of a friend named Galbraith. All Galbraith wants in return is for them to investigate the bizarre happenings at Haunted Harbor. On the way to the island where Haunted Harbor is, Marsden and company rescue Patricia Harding (Kay Aldridge) and her father (Forrest Taylor).

Vorhees was really murdered by his partner Carter (Roy Barcroft), who is also responsible for the so-called hauntings. Carter was also behind the sinking of the Dolphin and is stealing the gold, melting it down for himself. He pretends to be Kane, operator of a mining post. To keep people away from the wreck, he's invented a sea monster to scare people off. If the legend of the sea monster doesn't do it, he gets henchmen Gregg (Kenne Duncan) and Snell (Bud Geary) to off them. For 15 chapters, Gregg and Snell do their best to get rid of Marsden, but he's more than a match for them. Marsden, meantime, is determined to find Carter and discover the mystery of Haunted Harbor.

Haunted Harbor was shot just before Republic's serials went into their slow and depressing decline. As such, it's one of their last truly great serials. It has one of the best casts of any Republic serial--indeed arguably of any serial period. Most serials have a weak link in the casting of the main parts, but not here. Richmond, who may be best remembered today for playing Lamont Cranston in three Shadow movies in the 1940s, had been the lead in what some considered the greatest serial ever, 1942's Spy Smasher. Richmond was a likeable hero in his serials, easily as good as the more famous Clayton Moore or Buster Crabbe. He ended up doing 7 serials in fact, from the infamous The Lost City to the fun but trippy Brick Bradford.

Kay Aldridge was Republic's first advertised Serial Queen and had played previously in Perils of Nyoka--which is probably the serial with the best cast ever--and Daredevils of the West. One of the nice things about Aldridge is that while she was frequently imperiled in her serials, she also held her own. She rescues Richmond or saves herself just as often as he saves her in this. Her successor Serial Queen, Linda Stirling, started off much the same way, but was quickly relegated to pure damsel in distress to pure pretty background scenery by the end of her run. For that reason, I always liked Aldridge's three serials better.

While this would be Barcroft's first starring role as a serial villain, he would go on to be THE serial villain for all time, only rivaled by Charles Middleton. As far as the henchmen are concerned, both Duncan and Geary had done and would go on to do this sort of thing in plenty of serials. They're backed up for about half the serial by another serial baddie vet, George J. Lewis. All four would manage to go on to threaten Stirling, too.

All this is directed by legendary serial director Spencer Gordon Bennett. Bennett directed serials from the 1920s right up to the bitter end in 1956. While not all of his serials can be called classics, his work for Republic bounded with energy. He very neatly stepped in when Republic's famed serial director William Witney joined the war effort in 1943. Haunted Harbor is Bennett firing on all cylinders.

The fights in the serial are typical of Bennett during this period, with whole sets being reduced to so much rubble in their wake. The store Richmond ostensibly works at in the serial gets trashed two or three times at least. On top of that, the cliffhangers are genuine classics. This is one of the last Republic serials to feature original cliffhangers every chapter, which makes it doubly exciting to watch. Two of the best are the hurricane in chapter one, threatening to bring a rock wall down on Aldridge's boat, and a particularly nasty one in chapter nine with Aldridge tied to a post with a huge air drill aimed right at her.

If there's a knock against the serial, it's the goofy looking sea monster, as seen above. The Lydecker Brothers, Republic's SFX wizards, were usually great at creating surprisingly realistic looking effects. But one can't look at the "sea serpent" and keep a straight face. It in no way looks real. More to the point, it does nothing but come up out of the water, making noise and blowing smoke out it's nostrils, and then goes back into the water. There's no actually moving parts. One is left wondering how gullible those island natives were to fall for something that looks like a bad parade float. One also wonders how Aldridge and Richmond kept from cracking up when they saw it.

Sadly, Haunted Harbor spelled the beginning of the end for Republic serials and for serials in general. This was the last Republic serial Richmond would do and the last serial for Aldridge. Within two years, William Witney would return to do one last serial before abandoning the form forever. Bennett would leave Republic in 1947 and go over to Columbia. And Republic serials would fall victim to the uninspired direction of Fred C. Brannon and such uninspired leads as Walter Reed and Harry Lauter. That said, Haunted Harbor remains my favorite serial for it's terrific cast and nonstop action.