The Invisible Man's Revenge

Clear Vengeance

The Invisible Man's Revenge
USA 1944
Directed by Ford Beebe
Universal  Blu Ray Zone A

The Invisible Man’s Revenge is what I would call the last ‘pure’ film in Universal’s original classic take on the characters and concepts from H. G. Wells much abused source novel, The Invisible Man. And it’s also a very strange one at that.

For starters, the titular character is back to being the film’s antagonist again but, considering the other characters in the film, it’s hard to pinpoint who the main protagonist is in this... even the romantic male lead, who to my mind looks almost exactly the same as the feller playing the invisible man in this, kind of gets overpowered at the end and has to be rescued by a dog.

The film headlines Jon Hall, which is a strange one in itself because, two years prior to this, he’d played the main, heroic protagonist of the previous film in the series, Invisible Agent (reviewed here). Here, though, he’s an unmistakable and unapologetic villain. It’s revealed very early on in the film that’ he’s psychotic and escaped a mental hospital after killing two people there. When he arrives in London to see his two friends, Sir Jasper and Irene Herrick, a husband and wife played by Lester Matthews and Gale Sondergaard, he proceeds to attempt to blackmail them for his half of the diamond mine he’d found with them years before. Thing is though, he appears to be absolutely right and, honestly, there are barely any actual ‘good’ characters in this movie except for, perhaps, the daughter of the Herricks, played by Universal monsters semi-regular actress Evelyn Ankers.

Anyway, a curious thing to note that, perhaps due to legal reasons (I have no idea), Hall’s character name is Robert Griffin. Griffin is, of course, the last name of the character in the Wells novel and is a surname which usually crops up in these to cement the relationship between other family members and the current ‘invisible man’. Here though, the character has no connections whatsoever to any of the former Griffins so, yeah, baffling. In fact, it’s only because he stumbles into a stray scientist, played by Universal horror regular John Carradine, that he ends up becoming invisible in the first place... and therefore better equipped to start a reign of terror on his former ‘friends’ and attempt to swindle them out of, well, what is technically rightfully his anyway. It’s all a bit of a mess, to be honest.

Adding to the confusion, at least to my mind, is the fact that we have a purely psychotic character, played to the hilt as such and liable to flip his mood on a dime at any second... but he’s befriended by a down on his luck, comedy relief local, played by the famous Leon Errol. Errol was top lining gazillions of his own comical shorts throughout the 1930s to the 1950s and was a huge comedy star. What he’s doing in this, playing exactly the same kind of bumbling comedy character, is a mystery to me. There’s even a scene where he takes on a bet in a local pub as to being an ace darts player and we get a whole comedy routine where the ‘unseen’ and invisible Griffin is grabbing the darts and guiding them into the bullseye from all kinds of silly trick shot throws. It’s a bizarre and somewhat out of place scene which, nicely done as it is, seems uneasily out of kilter with the black hearted Griffin, who very soon in the film kills Carradine’s scientist and drains him of his blood to regain his visibility, just so he can attract the attention of Anker’s character.

It has to be said, the character here is fairly monstrous... almost as much as Claude Rains portrayal of the original Griffin in The Invisible Man (reviewed here). So, yeah, perhaps the studio felt you needed some strong comic relief to go with it but, as I said, it makes for an uneasy marriage here.

The film is directed by Ford Beebe, who also directed such great Universal theatrical serials as Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here), Buck Rogers (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). There’s nothing really flashy about his direction here, it’s merely competent and pacey, which perhaps is his strength as a director but, not so much that he is particularly noted for rising to ‘star director’ status over the years, it seems to me.

Composers Hans J. Salter, William Lava and Eric Zeisl are on scoring duties and, it’s okay. It does that very interesting thing where, when you see a packing crate arriving on the docks which says London, it lapses into a paraphrase of a patriotic tune associated with the English. I recognised the tune but can’t quite place it’s name but, yeah, this is a device which I’ve heard Elmer Bernstein point out in a documentary... that it’s a huge intellectual leap to make in musical scoring because it re-enforces the scene setting in the minds of the audience at an almost subconscious level.

And there’s really not much more I can offer on The Invisible Man's Revenge. It’s probably the least interesting one in the franchise and the Invisible Man would not return to the screen from Universal until two separate encounters with Abbot and Costello. And, yes, reviews of those two particular films will be forthcoming here at some point soon too.

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)

Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe

 

 

 

The Ming From Another World

Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe
Directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor
USA 1940 Image DVD Region 1

So here we are and into what is... probably my least favourite of the Flash Gordon serials but, you know, it’s still brilliant, goes at a fairly cracking pace and is still miles better than the majority of serials which were being made at around the same time. Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe also seems to be the one serial of the three which has weathered the years relatively well with a print that seems to be in a lot better shape than the other two... so, while it’s still not in brilliant condition, the DVD is pretty clear and fairly sharp (apart from the odd tear here and there) when compared to the other two. I wish someone would save and restore these things before it’s too late... if that time is not already passed and they’re already vinegar. These serials are absolutely invaluable to show future generations the kind of thing people were spending their money on at the cinema... not to mention the fact that they are wildly entertaining.

Once again we have the three actors back reprising their roles who were the only ones to star in all three Flash Gordon serials... so Larry Buster Crabbe as Flash, Frank Shannon as Dr. Zarkov and Charles Middleton as Emperor Ming the Merciless. Joining them all for the first time are Carol Hughes as a brunette but, alas, still almost superfluous Dale Arden, Universal horror lady Anne Gwynne as the traitoress Lady Sonja, Roland Drew as a kind of new, slimmed down Prince Barin (it’s like chalk and cheese compared to the guy playing him in the first two) and Shirley Deane as a blonde Princess Aura (looking lovely but with nowhere near the moxy of her predecessor in the first serial). Plus a fair amount of newcomers including Lee Powell as the adventurous Captain Roka.

Flash’s father has been replaced in this one by actor John Hamilton, who I’m sure many of my readers would recognise from his regular role as Daily Planet editor Perry White in the 1950s TV show The Adventures Of Superman, opposite George Reeves as The Man Of Steel. Another newcomer is Don Rowan as Captain Torch... I mention him last because he’s playing a promoted version of Officer Torch from the first serial (which makes sense since the action of this one does take place on Mongo again) but, well, unless I’d looked him up I would have sworn it was the same guy who played him previously. He looks and sounds pretty much the same to me (maybe if we had a clearer print for the first one I would have rumbled that they'd replaced him).

So Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe is a very interesting serial for a number of reasons.

For starters... well look at the date this was made. A war was happening in Europe and the Americans weren’t in it yet but this one was clearly propaganda loaded. For instance, instead of the Fu Manchu like costuming on Ming The Merciless, he’s costumed more as a military dictator and there’s talk in the very first episode of him keeping concentration camps. Oh, by the way, if you’re wondering how Ming survived being disintegrated at the end of the last serial... wonder away. It’s not addressed and alluded to only briefly with an off hand comment... “So Ming is alive!” or some such. There was no way of writing themselves out of that one, must have been the general consensus, I suspect. Interestingly enough, due to the success of the last one, the writers do write a line into the script for the final episode here implying that there was a slight chance Ming might be able to escape his doom via another route... just in case a fourth serial was called for (alas, the studio policy after this was to lay off the space fiction for a bit so it never happened... at least that’s what I understand of the situation).

Another interesting thing is the two, even more blatant, shout outs to George Lucas’ future Star Wars movies (my kind way of saying how much he ripped off from these kinds of serials). The obvious one being the episode recaps. Each Flash Gordon serial has a different recap style with the first one having just text on a dark background, the second one having comic strip style pictures swiped through on a viewing screen and, in this third one (and in line with what Universal were doing in a fair few of their serials at this point, more on that in my next review), a proper single point perspective title crawl... just like the Star Wars movies. The other thing... and I remember almost jumping out of my seat the first time I saw The Phantom Menace, is the televiewers. The way the images are tuned in and also the exact same sound effects when this happened were used by Lucas in Star Wars Episode 1 so, yeah, I loved that Lucas included this all those years later. Again, these were actually used before this and... okay, tomorrow’s review for the final word on those televiewers.

And it’s not just Star Wars either. If you want to see a cloaking device which made a space ship invisible long before the Romulans and Klingons were doing it in Star Trek... well here we have a new Dr. Zarkov invention which cloaks his rocket in exactly the same way (I will also mention this again tomorrow but, in a slightly different fashion). Other technology includes those same cack-handed ray guns from the second serial but also some handsome looking death ray rifles which seem cumbersome but really look the part.

Now there are less strange inhabitants in this one, again, than in the first serial. We basically just have the Rock People and the Annihilants. The Rock People are literally just a race who dress up in Rock uniforms (to camouflage themselves in their rocky desert region of Mongo) and who speak by the sound department running their dialogue backwards. They look like nothing less than rock textured members of the Ku Klux Klan, truth be told. I don’t know how they got away with this. Interestingly, although a good majority of this serial (including the opening titles) is scored with various passages from the Liszt composition Les Preludes... some of the old needle drops from stuff like The Bride Of Frankenstein are retained and this means that the Rock People appear to exactly the same musical cue that the Clay Men in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here) used to morph out of their cavern walls by.

The other beings are Ming’s remote controlled Annihilants or The Walking Bombs. Its a shame they’re only at the end and start of two episodes because these are one of the most beautiful mechanical robot designs I’ve ever seen committed to film, with their big Christmas decoration-like heads, sped up walking rhythms and bizarrely long fingernails. They look like they stepped right out of a silent German Expressionist movie and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that they did just that. They are just magnificent and I wish someone would do an action figure.

Okay, the structure of the thing is a bit of an oddity for a Flash Gordon story too, although it starts off with the usual thing of the Earth in grave danger. I found it oddly interesting that the lethal Death Dust that Ming is poisoning the Earth with produces an almost unstoppable virus called The Purple Death, which is killing people in their droves... given the time that I’m writing this review, during one of the bleakest pandemics we’ve had in a while on this planet. However, once Flash and his crew go to the frozen wastes of Frigia and mine the only known antidote which can be found there, the mineral Polarite, he actually rockets back to Earth and dumps it, curing the plague by the end of episode four. So Ming’s initial plan is quickly thwarted but, since he wants to conquer the universe, you can be sure he has more deadly weapons up his sleeve for Flash and his friends to worry about.

Most of the action in this one takes place in either the unnamed Mongo City (where Ming resides), the forest Kingdom of Arboria (where Prince Barin rules) and the arctic wastes of Frigia for a few episodes near the start of the serial. What this means is... there are plenty of props and costumes which were obviously recycled from other productions to match those last two locations. When you are in Arboria, the obvious dress code is... leftovers from the most recent Robin Hood production. Seriously, everyone there wears forest clothes and the hats with big feathers in. Similarly, when Zarkov invents a thermal spray and extremely warm clothing so that Flash and the others can survive the formerly impenetrable wastes of Frigia... he basically invents a Santa Claus suit for them to wear. It looks bad but I can only assume they did it to match with the various recycled shots from The White Hell Of Pitz Palu, which litter those scenes.

However, I’m not really complaining much because, frankly, although it’s the shortest of the three serials, it still manages to pack a punch, This might be because there are no bottle neck episodes this time around... what with the many changes in the central cast, I guess it would have been hard to find anything that was a match if they’d gone the usual route on flashbacks.

So, anyway, that’s me done again with the Flash Gordon serials for a while... I loved seeing them all again and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe is no exception. I’ll leave it for you to find out why it has such an aggressive non-sequiter of a title but, it’s a bit of a stretch. I just love these things. However, in between the previous serial and this one, in 1939, Buster Crabbe would once again play a famous science fiction novel and comic strip character in another great serial which has a lot in common with these three... and that one will be the subject of my next review. Coming tomorrow, to this blog!

 

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)

 

Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars

 

 

Feet Of Clay

Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars
Directed by Ford Beebe
and Robert F. Hill
USA 1938 Image DVD Region 1

Okay, so... the second Flash Gordon serial is possibly the least popular (nowadays) of the three theatrically released 'franchise' serials... although it’s still pretty great, to be honest. This second serial is called Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars and I’d always believed the myth about the producers setting their sights on a return to Mongo for this and then changing their minds and going to Mars... was because Orson Welle’s popular and traumatic radio broadcast of War Of The Worlds meant Mars was on everyone’s lips again. However, it turns out that this legendary broadcast was actually about 8 months after this serial was put out so... turns out the change came due to budgetary constraints although, to be fair, I really don’t understand how the re-use of sets on Mars was any cheaper than reusing the same sets for Mongo (where that would have been more logical in a story sense, too).

It’s also much less racy in terms of the costuming here, with the bare chests of the men and bare legs of the women a thing of the past, although, that being said, there are at least three ‘bottleneck’ episodes where lengthy flashbacks from the first serial are replayed. I don’t know why you need them, to be honest, since the plot points they purport to explain do nothing of the kind and these could easily be cut with the serial running for one episode less. As it is, it’s the longest of the three serials, clocking in at a hefty 15 chapters long.  

The main cast in this one are pretty much the same with Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe playing Flash, Frank Shannon as Zarkov (doing a much better and more interesting acting job in the role here than his previous turn... much more relaxed), Richard Alexander as his second and final go around as Prince Barin (who turns up half way through the serial as a kind of added ‘deux ex machina’ character) and Charles Middleton as Ming The Merciless. It does, of course, still have Jean Rogers playing Dale Arden, which is a big plus. Out of the two times she appeared in the role, this was a better written version of the character, at least for the first half of the serial before she spends most of the second half relegated to screaming and cowering once more.

There are also four important new characters in this one. We have Wheeler Oakman as Tarnack, Ming’s right hand man who is basically like a more scheming and, ultimately less loyal, version of Officer Torch from the first serial (Torch is absent from this story but returns in the third serial). Next we have serial stalwart C. Montague Shaw as the King of the Clay People. The clay people are at war with the monarchy of the planet because they were turned into... well... people of clay, doomed to live in the clay caverns and await an ally who can destroy the source of the power which robbed them of their humanity... err... martianity... and revert back to their true selves.

Another major player is reporter Happy Hapgood, played by Donald Kerr. He basically stows away on Flash and the gang’s rocket ship in the hopes of breaking a story and ends up on a round trip to Mars. He’s basically there for comic relief but he also seems to serve the dual function of getting into difficulties and falling over at the wrong minute to get them all in trouble, even more than Dale Arden (which was her principle function in the first serial, of course). I’ve always quite liked the bumbling character but he really does seem like a fifth wheel and I guess the studio thought so too because he’s only in the middle serial.

Lastly but, probably the most important, we have the chapter play’s other main villain who is, for most of the story, the dominant ally of Ming. She is Queen Azura, played by Beatrice Roberts. In the strips she was The Witch Queen Of Mongo but, well, given the location change for this adventure, she’s now Azura, the Martian Queen of Black Magic. And, yes, when they say magic they mean it. Due to the properties of a gem she wears (which can only be nullified by the presence of the Black Sapphire of Kalu), she has full on magical properties. Despite all the scientific shenanigans which the rest of the technological marvels are explained away with in the three Flash Gordon serials, this is full on embracing the co-existence of a magical force for good or evil so... yeah... it may seem like an uneasy alliance of elements but the characters don’t once question the logic of it so, neither does the audience, for the most part (the recent Wonder Woman 1984, reviewed here, has not been as successful for some audience members in pulling off the same trick, for some reason).

Now, there are a heck of a lot less things for Flash and company to explore in this one. In terms of different races, the first serial brought us Barin (and by mention only in his case, the forest people of Arboria), the Hawkmen, the Sharkmen and the Lion Men. This serial is way longer but only has the Clay Men (who live in the rocks of their cave and materialise from the walls when they want to be seen) and a forest based race (who I suspect were probably the Arborians in the first scripts, before the location change meant that they couldn’t really be). Don’t worry, we’ll meet the Arborians properly in the third serial and.. oh wait, I’ll save their dress sense for the next review.

So, yes, less people for Flash and the gang to meet and, for the longer running time, this means there is a hell of a lot of jumping from location to location and doing the usual mini quests in an effort to pad out the time. Okay, so this is standard for a serial anyway but there’s just less variety here. I should probably mention I’ve never read the strips this one is possibly based on far enough to know if this is a good adaptation of some of those or if they just did their own thing here. There are, however, some nice technical inventions, in addition to Kenneth Strickfaden’s electrical marvels, which were used again for the laboratory scenes here...

So the hand held rays guns are a neat design and are held kind of cack-handed, with the wrist having to be held up more or less at a right angle to aim them at a target. It’s a distinctive way of doing things but, it seems to me, a little less practical in terms of the strain of the user having to keep his arm bent up to fire them. There are also the Martian cloaks or ‘bat wings’ which act similarly to parachutes in that, when you stretch your arms out, you can jump out of a stratosled (the new spaceship design for this serial) and glide along the currents of air to land safely on the ground. Another lovely innovation is the light bridge, which is a beam of light extended from the roof of one building to another which allows you to walk across it in safety. Finally there are the little bullet cars which rocket through a kind of secret, underground runway linking the Clay Kingdom and Queen Azura’s palace... which are used only half the time and make no sense of the times the heroes and villains choose to travel to each other via stratosled. Especially since they seem infinitely quicker. These same transports are also, of course, a main feature of the planet Saturn, as fans of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers will remember, where some of these sets and props were re-used.

Okay so, the serial is fine and, although not as good as the first, is certainly superior to many of the serials put out by the other studios. Strangely, the story starts off exactly where the last one finishes, with Flash, Dale and Zarkov returning to Earth at the end of the previous adventure (which I reviewed here). I say strangely because, although they are wearing more or less the same costumes in their rocket ship... after all, where would one be able to get a costume change on the way back to Earth... Dale Arden has gone from blonde to brunette (as the original comic strip character). So, well yeah, don’t know where she got a hairdresser during her return journey, for sure.

The chapter play does all the usual things with lots of action, wobbly sets and daring stunt work (performed by stunt people who, mostly, look nothing like the stars they are doubling). There are some surprisingly good, effective special effects (where things disintegrate by being, I suspect, iron filings moulded into shape and then de-magnetised so they fall apart... this beats most things I’ve seen done to this day) along with the usual ‘of their time’ effects. I still love the ray gun blasts with their loud bangs and ‘not quite synching up’ rays of superimposed light. Although, in one scene towards the end of the serial, Flash dodges a ray gun attack by one of Ming’s guards but the sound and visual effect are noticeably absent... as though there just wasn’t enough time or money to put that last little effect on. So it looks pretty silly, to be honest.

Actually, the last episode has a pretty dark conclusion, with Ming going somewhat power mad and Tarnack turning on him, forcing him into a disintegration chamber and, well, disintegrating him. It’s got a certain finality to it in terms of his character and, I suspect the studio weren’t planning on making a third serial because, well, they bring Ming back with no real explanation as to how he could possibly have survived in the next one. More on that in my review of the third one but at least his miracle reappearance in this one after seeing him consumed by fire in the last is explained here by highlighting his robes are somehow fireproof. This death scene is followed by a hasty conclusion where Flash and the others return to Earth and are celebrated with stock footage and their faces hastily superimposed over the shots of the crowds (in a kind of eerie pre-cursor to the character ‘sign offs’ in last year’s Avengers Endgame... reviewed by me here).

The music in this one, as usual, comes from a variety of sources such as The Invisible Man (reviewed here) and other B-pictures. Most of the stuff used in here is from Franz Waxman’s score to The Bride Of Frankenstein (which I reviewed here) and it’s probably the most dominant music used in this particular serial. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessarily tracked in and I’m sure I heard some variants in a much slower tempo at one point so... I’m guessing that there was a minimal musical budget for this one (don’t forget, the Flash Gordon serials were the expensive jewels in Universal’s serial output crown) but I suspect a lot of it was re-recorded to fit some of the scenes better.

And that’s me done for a while with Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars. This would be the last time we would see Jean Rogers and Richard Alexander playing Dale Arden and Prince Barin respectively. Also the last time we’d see Priscilla Lawson playing Princess Aura (who is seen in the flashback replays from the first serial only). These characters would be filled out with different actors for the third time around... which I’ll review on here tomorrow. Hope you can make it. 

 

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)