King Of The Rocket Men

Jet Pack To Where 
You Once Belonged

King Of The Rocket Men
USA 1949 Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Republic Pictures 
Imprint Films Blu Ray Zone B

It was the very early 1980s when I personally made the acquaintance of Jeff King (of the Rocket Men). Since the mid-1970s, school kids had been fed with the same four fantastic Universal serials running in the mornings of alternate school holidays... and we loved it. The big four were Flash Gordon (reviewed here), Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here), Buck Rogers (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). But the BBC must have realised at some point that they needed to buy some fresh serials so they introduced the first of, I think I’m right in saying only three others they ever broadcast and... that was King Of The Rocket Men, starting off week nights in the old 5.40pm slot used by those other serials on their debuts (not to mention another load of great B-movie features over the years, such as the Charlie Chan, The Saint and The Falcon movies). 

Now, King Of The Rocket Men was made by the old ‘shoot ‘em up Western’ studio Republic Pictures and, yeah, even as kids I could see that they had nowhere near the same kind of budgets as their Universal counterparts. But that didn’t matter, the Republic serials had Howard and Theodore Lydecker handling their special effects, most of which were pretty good and they had a great team of stuntmen on their very energetic fight scenes, which were numerous. I’ve said it a number of times and I’ll re-iterate it here, if the bad guys and the good guys walked into a room in a Republic picture, anything that wasn’t nailed down would be used as a projectile at some point in the next two minutes.

Suffice it to say, I loved King Of The Rocket Men. As I said, the title character was Jeff King (played by the great Tristram Coffin), inventor and member of the Science Associates, who would don a rocket suit to fight off the machinations of the evil Dr. Vulcan, who would put the world in peril for a fast buck. And, while he did this, King would also have to try and find out which one of the Science Associates members actually was Dr. Vulcan (a common plot in these serials, where the villain is revealed in the penultimate or even the last episode). 

And of course, in order for the title of the serial to make sense, there’s an episode when King’s ‘secretly not dead after all’ colleague, who invented the suit and also a weapon called The Decimator (which causes much trouble during the course of the 12 chapters, due to the writers presumably not knowing the actual meaning of the term decimate) dons the rocket suit himself in order to throw suspicion off of King and rescue him from the bad guys’ clutches. Yep, it’s the old “How can Clark Kent and Superman be in the same place at the same time?” ploy but, heck, it worked for me and, if my fifth or sixth revisit to the serial now, courtesy of a beautful new Blu Ray boxed set of serials from Imprint Films in Australia, is somewhat jaded, I still found myself able to recapture some of the magic and excitement of watching this thing when I was 12 or 13 years old. 

I loved the music... and still do (can we have a CD please?) and the serial scurries along at a relatively fast pace, very much using the old ‘change the footage from last weeks cliffhanger to show how the hero is able to escape’ modus operandi that a lot of the companies used. The flying effects by the Lydecker Brothers are exactly the same as those employed to make the title character fly, at the drop of a Shazam!, in Republic’s The Adventures Of Captain Marvel serial (reviewed here), consisting of a hidden trampoline take off to flight, followed by a rigged, ‘stiff as a board on hidden wires’ dummy for the long shots. It’s silly but great stuff and it’s arguable whether it’s any better or lesser than Columbia’s trick in their two Superman serials... of just having the character turn into a cartoon version of himself after take off. 

Honestly, it may be nostalgia talking but I really loved following along with Tristram Coffin and various, assorted colleagues such as Mae Clark, a curiously age appropriate female lead (and Lois Lane-like reporter) who would have been perfect as the female love interest, if such a thing was ever brought up within the confines of the fast moving plot (it wasn’t). Imprint’s new transfer looks the best I’ve ever seen it on a home video format and, unlike other transfers I’ve seen, doesn’t feature the materialising words (A re-release) on the opening credits of each episode... so this must have been from a different master source than the ones they used to show on BBC2 back in the day. 

King Of The Rocket Men was also influential. Not only was the flying footage re-used in three other serials using the same costume - Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies Of The Stratosphere and Commando Cody: Sky Marshall Of The Universe (reviewed by me here) - all of which are included in the Imprint boxed edition, which also includes Flying Disc Man From Mars, The Invisible Monster and The Mysterious Dr. Satan... but it was also the inspiration for Dave Steven’s loving, comic book homage The Rocketeer, which was itself turned into a very badly adapted but no less entertaining movie of the same name. 

And that’s me done on King Of The Rocket Men, I think. If you are coming to this as an adult and this is your first watch... I would urge you to suspend disbelief and water down any cynicism while watching. All of you who are a child at heart, though, surely can’t fail to have a good time with this one. 

Shanghai Chest

Chesty Coffin

Shanghai Chest
1948 USA
Directed by William Beaudine
Monogram - Warner Brothers DVD Region 1

Okay, it’s Charlie Chan time again. This is the third of the Roland Winters “end phase” of the Charlie Chan films, which were so popular that they’d racked up over forty films by this point. This is also the third one I’ve seen him in and I think, either he’s giving a slightly better performance than usual and has relaxed into the role by this point or... it may be that I’ve just finally gotten used to him.

The plot in this one isn’t bad though and the general writing and pacing of it really brings out the best of the performers, one of whom I was pleased to see, is Tristram Coffin, one of my favourite B-movie, serial and TV guys... perhaps best known for his portrayal of the title character in the Republic serial King Of The Rocket Men. Even Victor Sen Yung and Mantan Moreland, as Number Two son and chauffeur Birmingham Brown respectively, are back on form. Their comedy shenanigans are at their usual pace but they seem to be slightly better suited to slotting into the general story of this one and, though they are certainly used as padding at one point to increase the running time of the movie, they certainly don’t feel like they are being used in this way.

The plot is intricate in that it involves a murderer who is a) covering the tracks of his real motive by serially murdering from a list of potential victims in alphabetical order and b) is leaving the fingerprints of a dead and executed victim of the justice system behind at the scenes of the crimes to make it look like “revenge from the grave”. It all works pretty well and because of the confusion with the dead man’s fingerprints, we even get a nice scene with Charlie Chan experimenting with various chemicals, latex gloves and fingerprints (with Birmingham’s assistance) to demonstrate the possibility that a dead persons fingerprints can, indeed, be transferred onto various places with the aid of science.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the plot used here before, more than once, possibly even on a Chan movie, but I can’t remember just where. It doesn’t really matter though. This isn’t going to appeal to a lot of people but those who are fans of the Roland Winters Charlie Chan films should appreciate this one as being one of his better ones. The aphorisms still aren’t up to scratch but Winters performance seems a lot more confident and a little faster in the role.

There’s a slightly stronger racist element at play too, but it falls into the “quaint and that’s the way it was back then” category for me... although I can see why people would get upset about it. I’m talking about a scene where Sen Yung sends Mantan Moreland into the windows of a house on a dark night instead of going himself because Mantan will be “harder to see in the dark”. Not a great moment of political correctness, to be sure, but Moreland seems to have had no problem accepting his regular wage from the exploitation of his Brimingham Brown role (a role which he plays extremely well in most, if not all, of his Charlie Chan outings) and I doubt anyone was much worried about it at the time. I’m aware I’m watching this from a different historical context so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, to be honest.

The one thing which lets down the mystery side of things here is the fact that we always see the killer as a shadowy figure and never see his face until he is revealed at the end. However, since the murderer is fairly tall and stocky, and since the cast is fairly limited, it doesn’t take too long for the viewer to figure out who the real culprit is, on this one. There’s really only one person of that stature on the set... so that’s a bit of a shame. What is interesting, though, is that the film features a scene where the killer uses a stubby, six shooter revolver with a silencer screwed on the end. I don’t know when the silencer was first used on film but I bet this is one of the earlier appearances of it on screen (and if anyone does know... please drop me a line).

One strange thing is that there seems to be a few throwaway scenes with characters that feel like they are meant to lead to something bigger as links to clues but which are then dropped after they’ve been set up. A shady character in an insurance agency who gives Chan the runaround, for instance, makes a sinister phone call right after he leaves the building and then this is not mentioned again throughout the film. I think the script was possibly rewritten as it was being filmed and certain scenes became casualties of a hasty rewrite along the way. Not the best way to make a movie but that’s my guess and, after all, it was churned out by Monogram.

Another curio is that Charlie Chan is not from Shanghai and there is no “chest” in the film... which makes the title of the movie, being Shanghai Chest and all, possibly a greater mystery than the one which Chan and his colleagues are so intent on solving during the film’s short running time. But enough said on that one, I suspect. Cleverer minds than mine can work out the reasons why this is so.

These last attempts to capture Chan’s waning popularity by Monogram are nowhere near a match for the Warner Oland and Sydney Toler films, but Chan enthusiasts should enjoy this one and it’s certainly a lot better than Docks Of New Orleans (reviewed here). Give it a try sometime if you’re feeling particularly Chanthusiastic.

Creature with the Atom Brain

Atom-splitting Headache!

Creature with the Atom Brain US 1955

Directed by Edward L. Cahn

Sony Region 1

This is another film in a four DVD set of films produced by Sam Katzman (along with The Giant Claw, Zombies of Mora Tau and The Werewolf) and, I hate to say it, but I was much more impressed by this hunk of hokum than I was expecting to be. I’ve seen a lot worse movies than this which were unintentionally funny, and they’re always good for a laugh but this one actually has a fair amount going for it, although it may be not as funny as some other movies by this producer. It certainly holds its ground on sheer entertainment value, though, with some of the more respected giants of B-movie monster movies such as Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space.

The plotting is, as you would expect, absolutely ludicrous... but this goes without saying for the majority, if not all, of the monster movies made around this time... and once again, man’s harnessing of the atom is the spark that causes all of the trouble to the heroes main protagonist, Dr. Chet Walker, played here by Richard Denning, one of the top liners of the aforementioned Creature From The Black Lagoon. This one tells the story of returning mobster Frank Buchanan, who is out to get revenge on the people who testified against him years earlier, landing him some serious jail time. In order to take his revenge he has his “pal” Dr. Wilhelm Steigg, whose research he has funded with his dirty mob money, make super-strong radio controlled zombies from the dead bodies of freshly deceased people.

And of course, since the plot is to do with the utilisation of the mighty atom in the fifties, this involves both him and the doctor putting on oodles of heavy protective clothing and crawling through a small polythene tunnel to their “workspace” where they feed their creatures (dead reanimated humans) and perform highly sophisticated screw-top brain surgery on them so they can speak to them through their radio transmitter and bark their deadly instructions to said corpses while being able to receive television signals from their eyeballs... obviously, since they need to be able to see what they’re doing.

Two things about that then, before you ask. Yes, they perform said sophisticated brain surgery wearing all their heavy protective clothing, including thick hoods/masks and gloves (try wielding a scalpel in a pair of those, it isn’t easy) and yes, as commented by granite-jawed hero Chet Walker when he is explaining his suspicions to a group of characters especially written to eat exposition like candy, the optic nerves transmit back to the controllers only what the dead eyes of their freakish experiments can see.

Why then, I ask myself, is it that the footage being transmitted back to the evil mobster and not quite so evil but compliant enough scientist filled with reverse shots and profile shots and shots with not so nimble-footed cameramen being reflected back in rear view mirrors? I only ask because this is obviously the same bizarre phenomenon of physics that has been influencing an uncanny force on various Republic serials over the years... and I’d really like to know the science behind it if possible. The footage “transmitted” back from these dead people seems to be extremely well edited in light of the recent circumstances of the unfortunate “transmitter” creature.

Anyway, I was all excited for a while because it seemed that Richard Denning would be aided by none other than King of the Rocket Men himself, Trisram Coffin... looking suitably suave with an interesting hair style incorporating white streaks which can sometimes change appearance from scene to scene. Alas, my excitement was short lived as Mr. Coffin winds up being the second of the victims of the Creature with the Atom Brain or, if I wanted to push a point of terminology both in terms of singular vs plural (since these dead people are only good for a short while before you have to move onto the next one) then I’d have to be pedantic and say that Mr. Coffin’s unfortunate demise was brought about by “One of the Atom Powered Zombies with the Radio Controlled Brains”... there, that’s much more accurate and almost half a better title to boot in some respects... "zombies" tend to get more press than mere "creatures."

This film has a lively plot and keeps things running at a fair pace. The silliness of the storyline will soon be forgotten as you marvel at, or are repulsed by, the repressed character of Joyce Walker aka "Mrs" Doctor Chet Walker as she does everything she’s told and lovingly condescended to by her he-man Doctor of a husband and his needy police friends. She also fails to lovingly and properly watch out for “daughter of Mrs and Doctor Chet Walker” when a police friend of the family is killed without anyones knowledge, brain-stitched and controlled remotely to “blend in” at the Walker residence to find out what our heroes plan is. Since the zombies have no real personality and can only dully speak the words their masters transmit to their so-called atom brains, it really is neglectful how Mrs. Walker manages to half-heartedly interact with this zombie while simultaneously being too busy in the kitchen to notice the dead, monotone shell of a man that used to be her friend... her condescending “this is man’s talk” friend. And yes, the film is harsh in it’s expectations to convince us that this is normal everyday behaviour in 1950s sleepytown America... my one big worry with all that and the thing that keeps me from watching that with the pinch of salt I’d rather take, is that I’ve got a worrying suspicion that attitude might have been rife behind closed doors in 50s America... rather than just something to be found on the silver screen.

And that’s about it for this review I’m afraid. I don’t have much else to say about it other than it’s a fairly entertaining romp which I will almost certainly come back to before the current decade is over. If your tastes run to 50s B-movies which would not look out of place on the shelf with the likes of The Mole People or The Monolith Monsters, then you could do a lot worse (I know, I’ve seen them and they can be really boring) than checking out Creature With The Atom Brain.

NUTS4R2’s Astonishing Trivia Treats: Apparently this was one of the first films to use squibs to simulate gunshot wounds... although I have to say I honestly didn’t notice them when they went off!