Buck Rogers

Buck To The Future

Buck Rogers
Directed by Ford Beebe & Saul A. Goodkind
USA 1940 Image DVD Region 1

Between Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here) in 1938 and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here) in 1940, Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe played another famous comic strip hero on the big screen... in addition to Flash, Tarzan (who was, of course, a pulp hero first) and Red Barry. This theatrical serial was Buck Rogers but, curiously, it wasn’t actually based on either the strip or novel itself (although the opening credits of every episode proclaimed it to be so) and instead the character was just grafted onto a different story and given a slightly different origin. In fact, it’s said to possibly be based on an illegally published, unofficial Flash Gordon story from 1936, in which he travels to Saturn.

Either way, it’s still a cool serial and, although it’s probably a little more pedestrian than the Flash Gordon ones in terms of a variety of locales and characters, it does suit the serial format quite well and in this one Buck is not alone in his situation. When his airship crashes in some snowy mountains and the hybernation gas invented by Professor Wade is turned on in the cabin, in case search parties can’t find them, his young friend Buddy Wade (the professor’s son) is also along for the trip into the 25th Century and they are both woken from their airship slumbers by the rebellion facing off against tyrant Killer Kane, hoodlum ruler of the Earth, five hundred years later. Unlike the newspaper strip, Buddy is not Buddy Dearing, a native of the 25th century and Wilmas's younger brother.

So joining Crabbe is Jackie Moran as Buddy Wade, Constance Moore as Wilma Deering, serial king C. Montague Shaw as Professor Huer (who we last saw as the clay king in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars), Philson Ahn as Prince Talon of the planet Saturn (where a good majority of the Saturnians, apart from the mutant slave race the Zuggs - with their rubber face applications - seem to be of Asian extraction... yeah, I’m not going to touch that one) and Anthony Warde as Killer Kane (who isn’t in it as much as a lead villain ought to be, it has to be said). There’s also Henry Brandon as prominent bad guy Captain Laska, who many may best remember ‘Asianed up’ for the title role in the 1940 serial Drums Of Fu Manchu, in ‘red face’ as Scar in the 1956 John Wayne classic The Searchers and as the old cop in John Carpenter’s original 1976 movie Assault On Precinct 13.

So the action takes place in just three locations which, in serial fashion, the hero and his companions travel to and from in various episodes... so the Hidden City of the rebellion (which is located in a secret mountain that has big doors disguised as the front of the mountain, allowing spaceships to fly in and out), Killer Kane’s technologically advanced city and, of course, the planet Saturn. And there are lots of things going on, some of which make no sense (there are a huge number of plot holes in this one) but, one of the big factors is that Kane has made a zombie-like army of human robots, by putting amnesia helmets on his enemies and making them susceptible to his orders (possibly an influence on the original TV serial version of Doctor Who - The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, by the looks of it).  Most of the set ups are obvious and, despite the expense of serials of this nature, there are a hell of a lot of recycled sets in this. Once obvious thing is that the bullet cars which work as an underground transit system on Saturn are the exact same ones that the Clay Men in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars used.

I mentioned in yesterdays review of Flash Gordon’s Conquers The Universe that George lucas took a lot of ideas from these serials and both the opening episode recap credit calls and the viewscreen focussing with accompanying sound effect are again in evidence here. In fact, as far as that viewing screen from Star Wars - The Phantom Menace goes, he was possibly thinking of this one first because, here, the viewscreens are also circular in design as they are in that later film.

Actually, despite the crankiness of the effects, some of this stuff is certainly well done. It’s hard to detect the wires on some of the things, such as the little microphones that float above the big radio sets when they’re in use or the ones holding up the people when the characters are using the anti-gravity belts (this serial’s gimmick similar to the Martian wing-cloaks in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars). And also, talking of some of those technically advanced gadget effects, Gene Rodenberry must have been a big fan of this serial because there are two things he definitely seems to have taken on board for Star Trek. One is that pesky cloaking device which renders spaceships invisible. This is similar here to the one in Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe except is has to be hand fired from a cannon by an observer in the Hidden City and aimed at the ship. Unlike the ones in that serial, the effects of this one will only last for ten minutes so... yeah, you can just see the cliff hanger ending coming on that one, can’t you?

But another future Star Trek element... and very impressively done here... is the teleportation pads which go from point to point in the Hidden City. We’re told how they disassemble and then reassemble a person’s molecules somewhere else and they use very familiar ‘beam me up’ textures when they’re in action. This was an obvious steal by Roddenberry and they look really good. Another great effect is when two Hidden City people are using ray guns to chop through the ice formed outside the preserved dirigible that Buck and Buddy take their time trip in. A layer of superimposed ray effects are in action as the ice melts... I eventually worked out that it was a raggedy piece of cut perspex lowered through the floor with the rays put over the top but, still, very impressive stuff, especially for 1939.

The serial is full of the required fist fights (with really bad and prominent stuntmen looking nothing like the actors they are ‘doubling’ for) and aerial battles, plus the usual stealth visits behind enemy lines etc. It’s light watching for sure and, though it’s probably not quite as engaging in terms of story as the three Flash Gordon serials, I still got a real kick out watching this and it’s hopefully not be the last time I revisit this one. Like the Flash Gordon serials and others of that ilk (like King Of The Rocket Men and Daredevils Of The Red Circle), this serial was a common fixture on BBC in the school holidays during the late 1970s and through the 1980s. So Buck Rogers will always have a special place in my heart and I’ll never stop watching these things. For my last review of ‘Serial Week’ though, I’ll be watching another Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe serial based on a comic strip and, unlike the other four, it’s one I’ve not seen before. So, you know, I’m keeping my fingers crossed it’s as much of a masterpiece as these others. 

Buster Crabbe Serial Week at NUTS4R2

Flash Gordon (1936)

Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars (1938)

Red Barry (1938)

Buck Rogers (1939)

Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (1940)

Bride Of Frankenstein

Harbinger Of Groom

Bride Of Frankenstein
USA 1935 Directed by James Whale
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Time to revisit one of the great classics finally on Blu Ray.

You know, whenever I watch Bride Of Frankenstein (also known as The Bride Of Frankenstein on most posters but without the 'definite article' on the actual title card of the movie), I always think that this is my favourite of the Universal Frankenstein movies. Then, whenever I watch the next sequel, Son Of Frankenstein, I always think that is. It’s a thin line because they both have a very different atmosphere to them but, for now, I’lll say just on the strength of the blindingly cool score, I’ll have to go with Bride Of Frankenstein as the best of these Universal Monster Classics. Well... until I get around to rewatching and reviewing the next one in the sequence, at any rate.

After a cast list which bills, like the end credits, the titular character of The Bride as being played by ‘?’ (much like Karloff in the original, to preserve the mystery) we get a camera moving in to an establishing shot via a model building where we get a quite wonderful (and heavily pre-cut due to sexual implications of both a verbal and visual nature), prologue featuring Lord Byron, Percy Shelley
and, of course, the character of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote the original novel Frankenstein and who is played here by the ‘button cute’ Elsa Lanchester. It is for this role, relatively near the top of the cast list, that Lanchester is credited for, as opposed to her iconic dual role as the Bride Of Frankenstein. Also, since her first character is only on screen for five minutes at the start and her classic monster character only for about five minutes (without bandages) at the end, I think many audience members probably don’t put two and two together in regards to this fact the first time they see it... especially since the make-up is quite different.

Towards the end of the prologue is a montage of scenes from the first film (where Franz Waxman’s amazing score really drives the edits together as a unified whole and which, if memory serves, might even include alternate or unused snippets from Whale’s previous Frankenstein movie too) and then Mary is coaxed into telling Byron and Shelley the rest of the ‘continuing story’ (despite the fact that a tombstone in the film has a death date many decades after Mary died in real life).

And the rest of the film is half some unused parts from the original Frankenstein novel dressed up in new clothes (the book does, indeed, deal with the creation of a ‘bride’ too), along with the usual Hollywood nonsense, some successful and some not so, which can be completely credited to director James Whale who, at this time in his career at least, had complete control of the film.

It’s an interesting film and uses some great lighting effects too (if you watch the films of Ridley Scott, there’s a certain kind of lighting he uses in a lot of his movies... the name of which escapes me... and certain scenes like the interiors of Baron Frankenstein’s home use the same effect) and there’s also the odd hint of German Expressionism again which grows organically from the sets... not as much as it would become a dominating factor as it does in Son Of Frankenstein, perhaps but... it’s definitely in here.

There’s some wonderful acting in this one. Much to Boris Karloff’s dismay, the monster learns to talk this time around, due to his investigation of the siren call of the violin played by an old, blind hermit (played by O.P. Heggie) who befriends him and teaches him rudimentary speaking skills... as well as teaching him how to smoke (can never quite work out how that’s ‘a thing’ to teach anyone but what do I know?). Karloff is absolutely electric in these scenes though, never once going into comedy mode although, you can tell that certain elements of Fred Gwynne's Herman Munster must have come from studying his performance in this film.

Then there’s the somewhat campy Ernest Thesiger playing the equally campy Doctor Pretorious, helping to push the less than hidden ‘gay subtext’ of the movie, which would quite possibly have gone over many of its audiences’ heads at the time. Alas, he also dominates in the one scene which seems completely out of place in the film, where he shows Frankenstein the collection of miniature people he’s grown in bottles. This is the one scene in the movie I almost can’t bear to look at because it’s so off kilter with the rest of the film (but at least Waxman’s music is appropriate... it’s also out of place with the rest of the score in this scene). In fact, going to skip quickly over the memory of this sequence now, thanks.

One of Whale’s favourite ‘doom laden comedy hystrionics’ actresses, Una O' Connor, who had provided similar laughs in the director’s The Invisible Man (reviewed here) also has lots of screaming to do, along with such dialogue nuggets as, when talking about the probable burning of the Frankenstein monster under the mill (wrecked at the climax of the last film)... “Insides is always the last to be consumed”. She also gets the first of the ‘He’s alive!’ lines when talking about the ‘presumed dead’ character of Henry Frankenstein, who has been removed to his and his fiance’s home, in relation to when he first moves his arm and indicates he’s alive. Of course, this completely contradicts the happy ending added on to the film at the end of the last one against Whale’s wishes but, I guess he was happy to ignore it here. Frankenstein is once again played by Colin Clive (two years before his alcoholism fuelled death at the age of 37) but his fiance is played by the then 17 year old Valerie Hobson, who really gives her all in the role.

And, though he had already been killed by Karloff in the last one, we have wonderful character actor Dwight Frye returning as a very similar character called Glutz. It’s always good to see Frye in any Universal movie, to be honest. Even a young John Carradine turns up briefly as a woodsman, foreshadowing his involvement, perhaps, with The Mummy films and also his turns as Dracula for the studio in two of the Frankenstein sequels.

The film was quite heavily trimmed before general release for scenes of religious inappropriateness and sexuality (such as cutting out various sequences which included close ups of Mary Shelley’s cleavage in the prologue and, originally, in an epilogue which also didn’t make it into the final cut) and... I just wish the footage had survived today. Even now, where the script had been censored, you can see where Whale ‘got away with it’ in certain scenes. There’s a great line by Dr. Pretorius where he tells Henry...

“Leave the charnel house and follow the lead of nature... or of God, if you like your bible stories”.

This second part of the line is said with great sarcasm and it’s pretty apparent what Whale’s stance on religion is. What I’d forgotten until rewatching the documentary which has been ported over from some of the DVD releases onto the new Blu Ray, is that the original line before the censors got a hold of it finished... “... or of God, if you like your fairy tales.” It doesn’t really matter though because Thesgiger’s line reading leaves you in absolutely no doubt of his religious standing.

And then there’s the music by composer Franz Waxman. This is what I was always drawn to with this movie, not because of its brilliance here but because I was familiar with it from the many times it was recycled by Universal into other things, like many of their serials. I first heard this score in the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials and, whenever I would go out into the back garden and play at being one of these two iconic heroes, I would be constantly whistling the score from Bride Of Frankenstein as I played, even though I didn’t know that at the time. It’s very much in the leitmotif style which was becoming increasingly popular in Hollywood and it’s just wonderful. LaLaLand Records managed to resurrect and restore the long thought lost master tapes of the majority of this score last year for a limited edition CD release, which sounds surprisingly great for the age of the recording. You can still, at time of writing, purchase a copy from them in the US here. It’s not only been used in numerous Universal films and serials contemporary to this, it’s also been used in terms of film referencing over the years... perhaps the most blatant being the use of the ‘creation’ music in a parody sequence in Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers. If you’ve never heard it before, well... it’s just wonderful. What I hadnt noticed before is the moment in the opening credits where it says it’s conducted by Bakaleinikoff, who did a number of scores such as those for Val Lewton, whose ‘antidote’ to Universal Horror’ movies for RKO are also very much respected.

And there you have it. Bride Of Frankenstein is one of those rare movies where the sequel actually is superior to the original work... in this case by the same director. And I say that with all due respect to Frankenstein (reviewed by me here) which is a truly great movie too. Definitely this and the two Frankenstein films either side of it are required viewing for all those in love with the art of cinema. And very entertaining they are too. Give them a watch.

The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound And Fury

Killer Serials

The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound And Fury
by Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut
Woburn Press
ISBN: 071300097X

When I find a bargain of a second hand book I’m not usually accustomed to paying a tenner for it. But I could tell from the image of Jean Rogers as Dale Arden peering at me from the spine on the shelf, about a year ago, that this one was something special and “of its time”. And that time, according to this first edition (of probably only one pressing I’m guessing, from its rarity), published in Great Britain by Woburn Books... was 1973. And therein lies both the deep joy and slight weakness, in contemporary terms, of this particular volume.

Next to the £10 marked up price, written in pencil on the first interior page, there is also an ink penned inscription written, presumably, by the previous owner of this adventuresome tome. Christmas 1973, is what it reads and I wonder if, perhaps, this book was sold on as a result of the death of the last reader. Whoever he or she was, I’d have to say to any ghostly, lingering spirit of that person, their Christmas present came to find itself in good hands again. Re-bought by someone who will value and cherish it for what it is. Even its imperfections.

When I was a young un, my mum and dad would take me to the local library in what was then known as Lower Edmonton but is now, more politically correctly called, Edmonton Green. My dad would sometimes take me up to the reference library and sit with me so we could flick through books with pictures in and he could describe to me, with their aid, all of the science fiction and fantasy films of bygone decades that I’d never seen and probably never would, unless one of the television channels decided to show one some time. Don’t forget, this is in the time before home video was even a wink in the consumer’s eye and movies were rarely shown more than once every three years or so (if the channel happened to have the rights to show it at the time). We had a small black and white television set with, in those days, three channels (BBC1, BBC2 and ITV) and that was as good as it got.

Many an hour was spent looking at the pictures in these books of B-movie monsters and robots of whom my dad would tell me stories from his personal experiences of watching them cavort and cut a path of celluloid destruction on the silver screen. Now I have most of these things on DVD I suspect but then, the unobtainable nature and the secret knowledge gained from the wisdom of books with the black and white photographic stills of these things was a very special thing and it was the way me and my father bonded (this is the same library from which my father borrowed a long playing record of the Orson Welles radio broadcast of War Of The Worlds... but that’s another story). I’m pretty sure that one of the books we used to look through was this one I’m reviewing here. It only has two small runs of black and white photos in it near the centre but that would have been enough for my father to show me images from the Flash Gordon, Batman and Superman serials etc. This was the stuff of legends but it was a reference library so these books weren’t really things we could take home with us and read. And once my mum had done with obliterating the Agatha Christie shelves in the downstairs library, it was usually time to go home.

1973 was a good year for me. Or it might have been 1974 actually. Can’t quite recall the year but I was five or six years old... and the BBC did something wonderful (asides from showing the original King Kong late one night which was... oh wait... that really is another story). Anyway, the BBC had a special afternoon on, probably BBC2 actually, of something they were showing to see if it would be popular. They were showing the original 1936 serial of Flash Gordon squashed together with the episode tops and tails taken out and split into two big parts, sandwiching a Hoppalong Cassidy movie in the middle. This turned out to be my equivalent of heaven and my father and I watched every drop. I was instantly a Flash Gordon fan.

The serials must have proved popular for the BBC I guess, or at least were cheaply obtained, because for the next ten years or so after that, they started showing the actual serial episode versions of this and other good serials at regular time slots. At first they would be shown during the Christmas holidays, then they would move to every weeknight at a 5.40pm time slot (followed by either a Charlie Chan, Saint or Falcon movie) and also during the summer and Easter holidays in the mornings, right after the French TV serial The Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe and before Why Don’t You? I watched them all and, when they were on in the evenings (pre video recorders, remember?) my dad would watch them with me. We would watch Flash Gordon, carry on with him on Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars, watch him victorious in Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, and then watch as Buster Crabbe would change his hair colour for Buck Rogers. Then we would thrill to King Of The Rocket Men, Hawk Of The Wilderness and Daredevils Of The Red Circle. Those were the days.

This book remembers all of these too but, it has to be said, not as vividly. That’s because, as the authors say in the book, a lot of these serials just couldn’t be seen to be reviewed. What could be gleaned mostly came from childhood memories, American television showings, interviews with some of the major players and readings of the original scripts. So that’s one thing... because I live in a time where I have a lot of these serials (commercially available or from other sources) I actually am able to see the things being reviewed, in some cases, when the writers (at the time) might not have had a chance to see some of them at all.

And like I said, the book is of its time.

Because these things weren’t easy to see, a lot of the book, more than a book dealing with the same subject matter would do today, it taken up with almost blow by blow accounts of what happened in a particular serial. Which is interesting and still, in some cases, quite valuable in a way but, even so, the talk about various tropes or quirks of these startling chapter plays is buried under the descriptions of the episodes themselves. Which in 1973 must have been fantastic (I wish I’d had this book as a kid) but nowadays can drag a bit when the serial being described is something you only watched a few years back.

Still, that’s not to detract from just how good a book it is and, more importantly, just how enthusiastic the two writers are (George Lucas must have thought so too because I seem to remember that Donald F. Glut was the guy who wrote the commercially released novelisation of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980... which is pretty much as close to a modern cinema serial you’re going to get). You will want to watch all these serials again, once you read about them, which is a shame because some of them really are still lost to time, never to be seen again. Okay, so maybe I live more in hope now that I live in an era which has managed to restore to us a complete print of Metropolis (reviewed here) but I suspect a lot less effort would be made these days to locate an old Lone Ranger serial as opposed to a masterwork of early German Expressionism. But still... I can live in hope.

The thing is, though, I could disagree quite violently with the authors opinions on some serials... but I don’t know if they’ve actually seen them or not. They make a point about just how bad the two Batman serials were but actually, I’d like to go on record saying that, although I agree with their appraisal of Batman and Robin from 1949, I actually really enjoyed the original Batman serial from 1943. That was a class act (in serial terms) and I don’t care who knows about it. There’s also the fact, and the authors warn you about this up front, to be fair, that the book deals almost exclusively with the talkies and the silent era serials are mostly left unexplored in any great detail.

That being said, its also a book that holds great treasures and is certainly a thing of value and wonder. For instance, among the many footnotes in the book, I came across this little gem...

“Comic relief characters were very much a part of serials of the talkie era. Syd Saylor’s particular trademark was the manipulation of his bow tie due to a large and manoeuvrable Adam’s apple.”

Now come on... that’s something you don’t read in books that often these days, is it? I showed that passage to my dad and he said... “You know... I think I remember him and that act.” It doesn’t get any better than this.

There’s also a little insight into stuff like the way actors in serials were cast due to their resemblance to the various companies’ main stunt men and if one or two of them had a checkered history, it’s touched upon here, if you can sort out the wheat from the chaff. It’s always interesting to know which A-listers died in the war or which matinee idol went to prison for 40 years after murdering someone. All good knowledge to be in possession of... hidden in among the jokes and asides about topical issues like the comments levelled at the then Governor Ronald Reagan. If only they’d known!

At a basic level, though, this is what you need to know if you decide you want to make an investment in purchasing what is now a harder to obtain and considerably more expensive item than what I payed out for it last year, according to Amazon. If you are after a book that covers the stylistic traits of these serials and looks at how they came into being and evolved during their “relatively” short cinematic lifetime, then this book may be less than what you are looking for. Some of this stuff is covered, for sure, but not in any academic detail, it has to be said. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something which, for it’s day, was probably the most knowledgable god-send of a book and is something written with a real enthusiasm and love of the genre, then you could do a lot worse than read this joyous celebration of a slice of cinematic history that a lot of the younger kiddies seem to have forgotten about (or not had the opportunity to see) these days. If you’re a true fan of these old action adventure romps with cliffhanger endings and, quite often, cheated or ludicrous solutions to those cliffhangers at the opening of the next episode, then this book is surely written for you.