It’s with a little sadness that I start this review. It is the fifth and final Bela Lugosi serial to be highlighted for Halloween. More than any other actor, when you think of Lugosi, you think of horror movies, both Karloff and Chaney distinguished themselves as character actors later in their careers, but Bela was always the horror star. And while making serials may not have boosted is career, his work was certainly appreciated by serial fans, too bad he didn’t make more. Well, enough lamenting, lets get on with the intrigue.
A European importing company wants to get rid of their competition from local merchants in the Chinatown sections of major cities. They order their West Coast representative Sonya Rokoff (Luana Walters), who is half Chinese and half Russian, to drive tourists out of the areas. Starting in San Francisco, she hires Eurasian scientist Victor Poten (Bela Lugosi) to handle the job with the promise that she will help fund his own scientific work. Hiring a criminal gang to do the grunt work, he has them disguise themselves as Asians and start riots in Chinatown.
This disrupts the community so much that Police Captain Walters (Forest Taylor) sets up a meeting with the community leaders, led by Dr. Wu (Henry F. Tung). Walters informs the group that if the unrest continues the mayor will be forced to close Chinatown to the tourist trade, which could drive the merchants out of business.
Enterprising reporter Joan Whiting (Joan Barclay) attempts to sneak into the meeting but is tossed out by Walters. Poten, who has been observing the meeting through one of his television spy devices, dispatches Grogan (Charles King) to follow her. She heads for the well known writer Martin Andrews (Herman Brix) who writes mysteries set in Chinatown.
Grogan sneaks into the house to overhear their conversation. Joan tries to interest Martin into looking into the Chinatown riots using his extensive knowledge of the area. Martin informs her that he doesn’t really have any knowledge, all the accurate info in his books comes from his servant and friend Willie Fu (Maurice Liu). Willie says he has learned that the problems in Chinatown are not random acts but are being led by someone, who that person is he hasn’t learned yet.
When Willie goes to the kitchen to fix some tea, he is jumped by Grogan. Hearing the fight, Martin and Joan investigate and see Grogan drive off with Willie a prisoner. Grogan takes Willie to one of Poten’s hideouts and leaves him in a room with a large human shaped statue, then informs Poten about it. The statue is actually a mechanized automaton. Poten turns it on from his control room and watches through a hidden panel. When Willie gets to close to the Automaton, it grabs him and swivels, dropping the man into a pit behind it’s pedestal.
Martin and Joan manage to trail Grogan to the house and slip inside. Alarms alert Poten who sends Grogan to deal with the intruders. Coming to the room with the Automaton, Martin is jumped by Grogan. The two fight and Martin easily knocks out his opponent. While Joan ties up Grogan, Martin starts to investigate the room. Suddenly he is grabbed by the Automaton, which swivels to drop him into that pit……..
The synopsis of the first chapter is just the tip of the iceberg plot wise. Later on Poten reveals his real plan to Sonya after a few murders of important citizens have been committed. He wants to destroy both the Asian and Caucasian races for having rejected him due to his mixed heritage, and uses Martin’s new book as the blue print for his destructive campaign, thereby framing Martin for his own crimes. When Sonya tries to stop him, she finds she’s really been his prisoner since the day she hired him. The notion of hiring someone who you don’t really understand and then finding out you can’t stop them is interestingly enough an underlying theme in The Dark Knight (2008), just goes to show that some themes are universal.
A subplot emerges where Sonya seduces Grogan over to her side and he tries to get rid of Poten, which leads to an eventual unfortunate end to Grogan. There is also an implication that once Poten destroys the two races he hates, he wants to start a new race of people with Sonya. There is also another love triangle mixed in along with the Sonya/ Poten/ Grogan subplot. Martin and Joan spend a great deal of screen time bickering like a screwball comedy couple, while Sonya is almost openly attracted to Martin causing her to double cross Poten several times to warn the writer of impending death traps. Ironically, Poten seems aware of these from almost from the beginning and continually takes great delight in taunting her with his plans to kill Martin.
The complicated plot and slow pace of the serial gives it an old fashion feel, much like the Weiss Brothers’ Stage Screen serials. While there are some fights and chases, most of the action revolves around the villain setting up elaborate death traps to do in his victims with, and the aforementioned double crosses emerging from the villain’s henchman.
One of the more amusing deathtraps involve the villain planting a poison needle in the hero’s phone to fire into his ear when he answers the phone. Finding he can’t get access into the hero’s home, the villain simply picks another victim, Dr. Wu, and plants the needle in his office phone. Apparently the identy of the victim is less important to Poten than the actual deed of committing murder with the intended device.
The cliffhangers are all pretty good, there are several simple but impressive explosions, small ones that usually only destroy a doorway
to get the hero. The serial features one really good cliffhanger and one absolutely ludicrous one.
In Chapter Seven Poten and his gang are on a boat to Los Angeles to start terrorizing that city’s Chinatown. Knowing that Grogan plans to kill him with a wire garrote, Poten sneaks into Martin’s cabin, hypnotizes him, changes clothes with the helpless hero and then sends him out to be strangled in his stead. Excellent cliffhanger, simple to execute and just different enough to stand out from the car going off the dock that was used several times in the serial.
The ludicrous one is infamous on the serial message boards. In Chapter Five, Poten notices that the fish bowls that hang from the roof of Martin’s front porch reflect a great deal of heat from the sun. When his men knock Martin unconscious, he has the man laid under the fishbowl in front of the reflected beam of sunlight so that it is focused on his forehead. The film makers really try to make this idea work, Poten burns his hand by accident when he passes the bowl, later after the fight, he looks at the bowl, then his hand, smiles fiendishly, and orders the “innocent” fish moved to another fishbowl before moving Martin into the path of the beam. The whole scene doesn’t work and is laughable (though not as insanely ridiculous as some of producer Katzman’s later Columbia serials, like Captain Video (1951) for example).
The one thing most viewers remember from the entire serial is the Automaton. Basically just a tall guy wearing a mask, it is a well done bit of horror that never fails to startle a first time viewer with it’s sudden attack on the Willie Fu. Sadly the Automaton is only used twice, once in the first chapter then again in Chapter Three to get rid of a member of the Chinatown leaders. Too bad, as it is one of the best parts of the serial. Ironically while Willie is revealed to just be trapped in the pit as a prisoner, the victim from Chapter Three is never seen of heard from again.
The real reason to see this serial is for the acting, especially from the villains. Lugosi is oddly sympathetic in his role as the tortured villain. Early on you see him either ignored or pushed around by both Chinatown citizens and the police when he goes out to set up his schemes. You really come to understand his hatred. He has interesting exchange with Walters in Chapter Six when she realizes how out of control he is, and Lugosi refers to himself as her Frankenstein Monster. The irony of the reference to the famous role he turned down five years earlier is not lost on the actor and is evident in the contemptuous sneer he uses when uttering the word Frankenstein.
Luana Walters gives her best serial performance as the complex Sonya. She starts out being rather smug in the beginning, treating Lugosi as hired help. Within in a few chapters that smugness disappears as she starts to realize things are starting to get out of hand. By Chapter Six she has become anxious and frightened by the realization of what she’s created. After escaping from the villain toward the final episodes she fluctuates between determination to make amends for her earlier misdeeds and the knowing certainty that Lugosi will extract revenge for her betrayal.
Charles King also give one his best performances. He starts out as a rather simple minded thug, stoically accepting Lugosi’s verbal bitch slapping as his due. After Walter’s starts playing up to him you can see him actually start to get confidence in himself, as well the beginning of a deep felt longing for Walters most evident in his unconscious straightening of his tie and smoothing down his hair before he sees her. This changes after he reveals his feelings in Chapter Seven and Walters viciously berates him for it. The combination of hurt and murderous rage he displays is scary. King drops in prominence after Chapter Seven when Lugosi hypnotizes him and he spends the rest of the serial as Lugosi’s robotic assassin, blindly following all orders with an eerie blank expression on his face.
Olympic star Herman Brix gives an acceptable performance, though still early in his career before he became the great character actor Bruce Bennett, Brix has great charisma, but little personality. He looks dapper in his checked coat, puffing on his pipe (to make him look stereotypically writerish), but tends to be stiff in dialog scenes, with the exception of the cute bickering scenes with Barclay where he seems to truly be exasperated with her. Action wise he is great, being an athlete, his fights and chase scenes are performed with a fluid grace making the close ups of him inter cut with his stunt double seamless.
Joan Barclay has a tough job, having to play a rather naive reporter who apparently has flashes of intelligent insight. She tackles the role with a lot of energetic gusto and is able to keep her character from becoming annoying to the audience. She may blunder into dangerous situations when she should know better, but does it bravely, while looking visibly scared. Serial fans always appreciate that kind of moxie. She also seems to relish the arguments with Brix as she smilingly enters each one with a confidence she rarely displays elsewhere.
Forest Taylor is enjoyably gruff as the no nonsense Captain
Walters. Always barking out orders to his men and instantly scowling whenever Brix and Barclay show up, peppering his dialog with a visible annoyance for these “amateur” sleuths who are interfering with his investigation. He reminds me a lot of Captain Dobie from Starsky and Hutch. Maurice Liu on the other hand is not as good as his co-stars. Displaying an obvious unfamiliarity with English, his dialog is all delivered in a stilted and precise manner, sounding like he learned his lines phonetically. He tackles the part with an over abundance of enthusiasm and his straight ahead performance becomes endearing after a few chapters.
While this is not the best of Lugosi’s five serials, that falls to SOS Coast Guard (1937) and The Phantom Creeps (1939), it is still a good, creepy fun serial, that has some really good moments in it.
Tags: Reviews by admin
No Comments »
