Commando Cody - Sky Marshal Of The Universe

Going Commando

Commando Cody -
Sky Marshal Of The Universe
USA 1953
Directed by Harry Keller,
Franklin Adreon & Fred C. Brannon
12 Episodes
Republic/Olive Films DVD Region 1

Wow, this one gets really complicated. I’m sure many of you will remember the old Rocket Man serials. UK viewers especially should remember the first of the three/four serials (depending on your point of view), King Of The Rocket Men, starring Tristram Coffin as Geoff King (if memory serves) as it was a popular fixture of UK television in the late 1970s/early 1980s... when the BBC felt like they couldn’t just show the Flash Gordon serials yet again (reviewed here and here and here) until maybe Christmas. So they had a few back ups (anyone remember Daredevils Of The Red Circle?) but King Of The Rocket Men was probably the most popular sub after Buck Rogers (reviewed here). And rightly so... good fist fights and good special effects for its time by Howard and Theodore Lydecker, who performed the same task for this one I’m going to talk about now, Commando Cody - Sky Marshall Of The Universe. But hold on... as I said, it gets complicated.

So first there was King Of The Rocket Men and then the shots of his jet pack suit flying and various special effects were recycled for Radar Men From The Moon... that one did actually feature the lead character of Commando Cody but played by a different actor. However, the actor was changed (and also masked, I’ll get to that) to Judd Holdren here for what was supposed... and also kinda was... to be a TV show. However, after three episodes were filmed, which introduced Cody’s two scientist sidekicks played by Aline Towne and William Schallert, by way of being a kind of prequel to Radar Men From The Moon, there was some kind of unscheduled and extended break in production and in this time the studio made a third Rocket Man serial with the same actors, Zombies Of The Stratosphere (a young Leonard Nimoy turns up in this one too, if I’m recalling the correct serial).

However (again), Commando Cody was inexplicably renamed Larry Martin for that serial. When the production of the ‘TV show’ recommenced, not all of the actors returned so, for episodes 4-12, Schallert was replaced by Richard Crane. And, like I said, it was supposed to be a TV show in which, every week, Cody and his men tried to stop the destruction or invasion of Earth by the arch fiend from another world, The Ruler (played by Gregory Gaye). However, the producers had learned a thing or two from their other TV show The Lone Ranger. Clayton Moore took his mask off in that one and was known to the kids so, when he walked off that show demanding more money, they couldn’t easily replace him. So for this serial, Cody has a mask covering his eyes (like Robin in the Batman comics) which he even wears when he puts on his more familiar (to fans of the Rocket Man serials) jet pack and leather coat, with the primitive controls and helmet. This way, they reckoned they could just replace him if the show got popular and he decided to hold out for more cash.

And then... the unions got involved somehow. So, before it played on television, the studio was obliged to first show it as a theatrical serial. And it’s a strange mix of content because, unlike a regular serial, it was devised as a TV show so... there’s no cliffhanger at the end of every episode. That being said, when it came to TV soon after, if you were lucky enough in the 1950s to be able to catch it being broadcast in the right order, there is an underlying story arc, regardless of the stand alone nature of it all... but the last episode (which is a kind of continuation of the previous chapter) kinda concludes things. So, yeah, it was conceived as a TV show and then shown like that... but it was released as a serial first and this Olive Films version is, finally, a definitive and uncut restoration of that fourth serial, from what I can tell.

So yeah, fans of the Rocket Man serials wil love it. The mix of primitive, pulp science aided by recycled footage of the Rocket Man doing his thing, ray guns, rocket ship battles and, towards the end of the serial, some genuinely interesting plots... such as The Ruler making a slowly increasing number of copies of the sun appearing around earth every 24 hours as an additional sun, threatening to snuff out all life on the planet as we know it. Yeah, that was a good one. We also have the wonderful opening music for King Of The Rocket Men serving as the main theme here, in addition to a lot of other Republic serial needle drop scoring which fans of these things will remember and love. It even, in one episode where The Leader is using mechanical men to do his bidding, recycles the robot costume of the Volkites from the 1936 serial Undersea Kingdom. Remember that one? Another memorable BBC substitute to their repeats of the Flash Gordon serials, that one starring Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan.

And, yeah, it’s not got the kind of science behind anything that you can take seriously but it is a lot of fun, moves around at a fair lick, has no bottle neck episode at all (surprisingly) and also has that other Republic Serial trademark of hand to hand fist fights where anything in an interior room that isn’t nailed to the floor or an immovable service is used enthusiastically as a weapon in their typically energetic way. So, regardless of whether you think of this one as a genuine theatrical serial or not, Commando Cody - Sky Marshal Of The Universe certainly has all the ingredients to keep fans of the Republic serials (especially) happy for 25 minutes per installment. I certainly had a lot of fun finally catching up with the last of this Rocket Man quartet I’d not seen and, all I can say is that, if you’re as old as I am, it makes a great Christmas present for dads too. Love this one and there needs to be more old serials on the commercial market and more widely known/recognised for sure.