Flying Disc Man From Mars

 

Mars Attacks... Somewhat

Flying Disc Man From Mars
Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Republic 1950
Imprint Tales Of Adventure Volume 4 box

Long term readers of this blog will no doubt know of my passion for old theatrical serials, with special emphasis on the talkies of the 1930s to the 1950s. So it really gives me no pleasure to say that this 1950 effort, Flying Disc Man From Mars, is easily the worst serial I’ve seen coming from Republic (and probably the worst serial I’ve seen, period). 

The story involves airplane pilot for hire/security boss Kent Fowler (played by Walter Reed) and his crew are working on and off for an ex-Nazi scientist (his history unknown to them), played  by James Craven. However, a single martian in his flying saucer, Mota (played by Gregory Gaye) lands on Earth and enlists the help of said scientist and hired goons, in order to take control of the Earth with some kind of plot involving the attainment, loss and then attainment again of various quantities of stolen plutonium. Of course, Kent tries to stop this and it’s over halfway through the serial before he even realises the scientist hiring him is the evil boss. 

And it’s terrible. 

Lois Collier, who plays Kent’s secretary, has pretty much nothing to do here and I was surprised since there have been a fair few strong female characters in those early serials, through the decades. But she’s just wasted. The whole serial consists of chasing or luring the bad guys, getting into a fight with a cliff hanger… and then doing exactly the same thing the next week. Which, to be fair, is all serials, but the lack of different locations, for starters, makes this one seem especially boring. 

Which annoys me because Republic were famous for their fist fights where everything in a room gets frantically broken and used as a weapon. This one, although there are plenty of them, seems somehow more sedate by Republic standards. And I hate to say the action in a Republic serial is dull but… that’s just what it is here. And the sci-fi element is nothing if not toned down. Mot wears his costume in a few scenes (recycled from another Republic serial) and his saucer is also recycled from another serial too. The dead give away on this is… why would a Martian flying saucer have a Japanese rising sun flag emblem on its tail? There’s not even a dodgy looking robot to dull the pain here. 

And as for those all important cliff hanger endings… I’m sad to say that pretty much everyone is a cheat in this serial. One week you will see the hero blown up in a car crash, exploded in a plane crash or caught in a bridge collapse etc. And then the next week they’ll replay it with newly inserted footage of him jumping from the car or parachuting from the plane. And so on. 

And, yeah, short review but I’ve not much else to say other than, Flying Disc Man From Mars does not really live up to the promise of its title as excitingly as you might hope for. I’m probably never going to watch this again, nor the cut down feature conversion which Imprint have also made available. However, I do still wish to express my gratitude to Imprint for fully restoring these serials for a home release, finally. This one may be dull but the transfer makes it look like it was shot only last week… so keep up the good work, guys and gals. You are appreciated.