Another Columbia Teaser
As a follow up to the teasing of serial fans with the inclusion of Chapter 2 from Mysterious Island on their Icons of Horror: Sam Katzman Collection, Columbia has released the Icons of Adventure Collection, which includes two pirate movies, The Pirates of Blood River and The Devil-Ship Pirates, and two movies set in the Orient, The Terror of the Tongs and The Stranglers of Bombay. Included as extras is a Scrappy cartoon, an Andy Clyde short, and most importantly Chapter 1 of The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd. I think this was a much better extra than their previous release. Including the first chapter better allows a non-serial enthusiast to experience a cliffhanger and not feel totally lost, since they are starting at the beginning where every thing is laid out. The setting is certainly different from most cliffhangers, taking place in the 1600’s and dealing with pirates. The action is little disappointing with three sword fights that barely make up a full minute of screen time combined and a less than thrilling escape from a Man of War by the heroes using the simple method of walking on deck and jumping over board, but there are also lots of feature film footage of ships firing cannon balls back and forth which is pretty exciting and leads to pretty good cliffhanger when the ship the heroes are on explodes. It certainly made me want to see more. Once again I am left wondering why Columbia doesn’t just commit and start issuing complete serials on DVD, even in these hard economic times, fans will part with some hard earned bucks for a good copy of a favorite serial.
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