Todd’s Serial Blog

DOC SAVAGE: A COLUMBIA SERIAL IN 15 CHAPTERS

Producer: Larry Darmour
Director: James W. Horne
Photography: James S. Brown, Jr.
Script: Basil Dickey
George H. Plympton
Wyndham Gittens
Music: Lee Zahler

Cast:

Doc Savage: Larry “Buster” Crabbe
Pat Savage: Iris Meredith
Tarnack: James Craven
Natalia: Veda Ann Borg
Renny: Roy Barcroft
Ham: Tristram Coffin
Monk: Charles King
Long Tom: Guy Wilkerson
Johnny: William Bakewell
Brown: Ray Teal
Taylor: Al Ferguson
Butch: Jack Ingram
Karl: George Magrill
Wheeler: Dick Botiller
Meeks: Kit Guard
Lyle: Lester Dorr
DA Warwick: Forbes Murray
Inspector Nolan: Robert Fiske
Judge Watkins: Selmer Jackson
Tuka: Al Kikume
Narrator: Knox Manning

Recap: “Doc Savage, fearless Champion of Justice, fights a never ending battle against the criminal underworld! Doc and his Fabulous Five are pursuing master criminal Tarnack, who has stolen some of Doc’s fantastic inventions, and are unaware of the danger that awaits ahead of them on the arctic trail!”

CHAPTER 7: SONIC CRIME WAVE

Natalia come up beside Tarnack and cracks that if everyone is through playing around they might be interested in the weird sleds that are coming up in the distance. Tarnack’s eyes almost pop out of his head as he turns to see Doc and his men on their pursuit vehicles. His immediate fear is quickly replaced by evil cunning as he spots that they will have to round a bend that hangs over a cliff to get to him.

Shouldering the Sonic Vibrator Gun, Tarnack gloats that he has found the perfect test for his new weapon. Moving to a better vantage point, Tarnack aims the gun at the path in front of where Doc and his men will have pass over to get around the mountain and fires the weapon. The sonic vibrations set up by the gun cause the cliff edge to crumble and collapse just and Doc and the Fab Five start to cross it. The six men tumble helplessly into a deep chasm to their apparent doom.

The snow lays in large heaps at the bottom of the chasm. Slowly it starts to move as Doc and his friends laboriously dig themselves free. Brushing snow off themselves, they find everybody is unhurt. Doc and the Fab Five then start the long climb back up to the trail. Once up top they find that Tarnack and his men are long gone. Doc and his men head on down the trail on foot, Monk and Ham arguing with each other the entire way. Coming to Tuka’s village, they are greeted warmly by the tribe and supplied with dogs and sleds to get back to civilization.

Newspaper headlines declare a new crime wave has hit the city. Several banks have been robbed with a strange device that causes the locks on vault doors to crack apart. Tarnack is ecstatic as he reads the reports of his gang’s exploits. Natalia comes in and reports that Doc was seen arriving in town. Tarnack immediately glares at his men and calls them all idiots for allowing him to live. When Brown defensively says that it was Tarnack who was handling the gun, Tarnack roars for him to shut up.

All of the men back away into a corner and cower as Tarnack goes a mini-tirade. While the men all visibly shake in their shows during this, Natalia is obviously unimpressed. As Tarnack finally loses steam she asks him what he’s going to do now as Doc will find a way to put their stolen equipment out of order. Tarnack glowers at her for a moment then suddenly smiles and cryptically says he already has a plan to prevent that.

Doc is convinced that the robberies are being committed by Tarnack using the Sonic Vibrator Gun he stole from the Fortress of Solitude. Long Tom, who helped Doc build it, cobbles together a Sonic Vibrator Detector. The six men settle down and wait for the gang to use their stolen invention again. The Detector goes off a few nights later. Doc and his men use it to track down the gang as they are in the act of robbing a bank.

Doc and the Fab Five surprise Tarnack’s men in the middle of emptying a bank vault. A fight breaks out with Doc and his men getting the better of the scared gangsters. Suddenly Tarnack appears out of the shadows with one of Doc’s dart guns. He expertly shots Doc and his five friends.

The sight of his enemies lying helplessly unconscious causes Tarnack to gloat until he sees that the Sonic Vibrator Gun was damaged in the fight. He starts to berate his men for their stupidity, but then stops when he hears a police siren approaching in the distance. Tarnack gets a crafty look on his face, sets the Sonic Vibrator Gun to overload, then hurriedly leaves with his men and the money. The machine begins emitting a loud whine that builds and builds until it explodes in a huge shower of sparks.

“Does Tarnack now have free reign to loot the city at will? And what is Tarnack doing in this court room? Surely he isn’t planning on taking over City Hall! Find out in HERO ON TRIAL, the Eighth spine tingling episode of DOC SAVAGE, at this theater next week!”

Tags: Fiction //