Todd’s Serial Blog

I know that in the world of low budget, B movie production many actors cross back and forth between studios and genres.  But I am always a little fascinated by who shows up where, especially with the Charlie Chan series.  Now many actors who worked in serials also appearing Chan films, like Kane Richmond and Robert Lowery, who both acted in Murder over New York (1940), how about that Spy Smasher and Batman were in a movie together.

But that is not what I find really interesting.  What I find fascinating about the Chan series is how many of the stars made appearances in serials.  Right off the top you have Sidney Toler, Charlie himself, who made a serial in between  the series moving from Fox to Monogram, Universal’s The Adventures of Smiling Jack (1943).  Number Two son Victor Sen Yung made a serial, although this was years after he  was in the Chan series, Republic’s Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954).  Number Three son Benson Fong made one serial while he was working in the Mongram series, Universal’s Secret Agent X-9 (1945), as did comedy relief side kick Mantan Moreland in Universal’s Mystery of the Riverboat (1944).

But the big one is Number One son Keye Luke, who was a serial regular at Universal.  Starting in 1939 he made five serials over a seven year period, two put him on screen with other Chan stars; The Green Hornet (1939), The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1940), The Adventures of Smiling Jack (1943), Secret Agent X-9 (1945), and the similarly plotted Lost City of the Jungle (1946).  No other film series, not even The Three Mesquiteers, The Little Tough Guys or The East Side Kids (with the possible exception of William Benedict) saw this much cross over of series stars into serials.

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I should have put this up sooner.  Every week I’ve been posting an episode of my first Greatest Serials Never Made on my pages section.  After about seven weeks the header on the home page began to get over crowded.  So I had the layout reconfigured a little.  The serial chapters are still being posted every Sunday, only now you just scroll down to the listing of pages on the right side of the screen to get to it.  And let me tell you, next week’s epidoe is going to be a humdinger.

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I have to admit, I’m a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to converting my serial tape collection over to DVD, partly it is the cost, and partly it is waiting to see if a better copy is coming out.  I seemed to be more tolerant of crappy VHS versions than I am of DVD.  Which is why I only recently have started to become serious about getting DVD’s.  I just got The Phantom and it looks great, except for Chapter Eleven, which seems to have a greenish tinge to it, but this is the episode that had to be reconstructed with newly dubbed dialogue as there isn’t decent print available anywhere.

My only real complaint is with Max Allan Collins’ commentary track on Chapter One.  Now understand, I’m a commentary track junkie.  I love hearing all the behind the scenes anecdotes and being told to pay attention to the guy in the background on the right.  And I am a fan of Max Allan Collins’ work on Ms. Tree, Nate Heller, his overhaul of Dick Tracy (doing what Dennis O’Neil did for Batman, taking the character back to his roots and cutting away all of the goofy stuff that had accumulated over the years), and especially his spearheading a critical reevaluation on the work of Mickey Spillane (Yeah I’m a Spillane fan, want to make something of it? You looking for a .45 slug up the keister buddy?  Sorry, I think I channeled Mike Hammer there for a second).

But this commentary track is the pits.  I like a commentary track that talks about the production I’m actually watching.  Collins starts off giving a brief history of the strip, which is good, but by the time we’re halfway through the chapter he’s still going down through the list of artists that worked on the strip.  Then almost as if he realizes he needs to talk about the serial he makes mention of Tom Tyler, momentarily forgetting what the actor’s real name was and having to correct himself on the number of serials Tyler made.  You would think a professional writer would have done some research and kept his notes handy to refer to from time to time (maybe he views commentary tracks like a jazz performance and decided to wing it with an improvised performance).  Then he goes into a long explanation of why the Billy Zane movie was an Australian co-production, apparently the character’s popularity in that country rivals Jerry Lewis’ in France. All very interesting but what did that have to do with the serial? Nothing! Finally in the last three  minutes of the episode he actually starts to talk about what we are seeing on screen, making a comment on how main characters have to do stupid things to get to the cliffhanger, which demonstrates he wasn’t actually watching the serial in the first place as the action and dialogue of the villains explained logically why he walked into a quicksand bog.

He does say it is an enjoyable serial, which it is (one of Columbia’s best productions in my opinion), but I came away feeling like he’s not really a fan of the genre, or the character in particular and was asked to do the commentary mainly because he writes comic strips and comic books.  Perhaps they should have waited until they put out their Dick Tracy DVD’s (which are coming out this year) and have him do a commentary track on a character he actually worked on and has some affinity for.

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