Todd’s Serial Blog

Over the past week I’ve been on a big Ray Dennis Steckler kick (don’t ask me why, back in June I was watching Al Adamson horror films one after the other, that’s just the way I am), watching such classics as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed up Zombies (1964), Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966) and most importantly for this review, The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters (1965).  The Lemon Grove Kids is Steckler’s affectionate homage to The East Side Kids/The Bowery Boys, with the auteur doing a decent job of imitating Huntz Hall’s shtick as the dim witted Gopher.  Of course this just makes me want to watch East Side Kids and Bowery Boys flicks.  Unfortunately the gang never made any serials, but The Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys did, so I decided for this month to highlight the second of three serials the gang made at Universal, Sea Raiders (1941).

This time the gang are a bunch of wharf rats named Billy (Billy Halop), Toby (Huntz Hall), Bilge (Gabriel Dell) and Butch (Bernard Punsley); who goof off around the waterfront, pick on smug news boy Swab (Hally Chester) and try to avoid getting arrested by plain clothes harbor patrol cop Brack Warren (Wiliam Hall), who is also trying to romance Toby’s sister Aggie (Mary Field) (lots of conflict around the dinner table about that one I bet). After another run in with Brack, Billy’s brother Tom (John McGuire) threatens to send him to their uncle who lives in the desert if he gets in trouble one more time, and Aggie chimes in that she will do the same to Toby.

While this is going on there is also much talk of the mysterious Sea Raider who has been sinking cargo ships filled with supplies and munitions bound for our beleaguered allies in Europe.  No one has ever seen him strike but it is always just off the coast of the area where they all live.

After reading Billy the riot act, Tom goes to visit millionaire industrialist Elliot Carlton (Edward Keane) on his yacht, with the plans for the new torpedo boat he has just finished building for Carlton to sell to the military. While Tom is being entertained by Carlton’s charming daughter Leah (Marcia Ralston), Carlton and his first mate Tonjes (Reed Hadley), who has the hots for Leah much to Carlton’s chagrin, excuse themselves to attend to some unfinished business.

The business turns out to be sabotage.  Carlton is in fact the Sea Raider.  He has been sinking ships for a foreign government wanting to keep the countries they are at war with from getting supplies (though unnamed they are obviously Nazis), for which Carlton is being paid big bucks, using a new invention his scientists have perfected, two self propelled magnetic torpedoes hooked together by a chain so that they can attach themselves to both sides of a ship’s prowl, punching two holes in a ship’s hull and guarantee a quick sinking.  Tonjes is in reality the foreign country’s representative overseeing the sabotage efforts.  After releasing the latest torpedo attack, Carlton radios his confederate Captain Olaf (Stanely Blystone), Toby’s uncle, to steal Tom’s torpedo boat while he keeps him occupied on his yacht.  Then he returns to his guest so that he can be a “shocked witness” to the Sea Raiders latest attack.

While Olaf is stealing the torpedo boat, the gang show up at Tony’s (Jerry Mandy) Grocery Store with some lobsters they have caught.  While negociating a price with the store owner, they also indulge in the petty larceny of swiping apples.  Tony takes the lobsters from the guys, accuses them of stealing them and starts yelling for the police, which brings the always hovering Brack on the double and the chase is on.

They escape Brack by the unfortunate lucky break of a traffic accident which causes Brack to give up chasing them to deal with the accident.  Fearing being sent to the desert, the gang decide to hide out till dark and try to board a ship heading to Europe.  Going over to Toby’s uncle’s fishing boat, they hope to stay under cover there, feeling that Brack will have their hideout watched.  Bilge and Butch are sent to get their sailboat while Billy and Toby go speak to Olaf. Olaf, who has the torpedo boat hidden in a secret dock under his boat doesn’t want the kids around where they might stumble onto it and literally throws them off the boat into the harbor.

Unfortunately Toby can’t swim, but Billy is able to keep him afloat till Bilge and Butch show up with the sailboat.  Climbing aboard , they decide to forget about waiting till dark and try getting aboard The Dolphin, which they can see is just now heading out to sea.  As luck would have it, Olaf has also been ordered to sink The Dolphin with the stolen torpedo boat as a test of it’s effectiveness.  As the gang reaches the ship and  climb aboard, the torpedo boat pulls up and blasts several holes in The Dolphin’s hull, causing the engines to explode and the ship starts to sink…..

As with Universal’s previous kid gang serial, there ae two separate plots going on in the early chapters with the Raider’s sabotage efforts taking place opposite the gangs usual highjinks.  After a few chapters of this, both plots converge by Chapter Four, with the kids working with the cops to fight the gang.  but that is short lived as the plots separate again in the middle, with Hadley getting rid of Keane and taking over as the main villain in Chapter Seven, kidnapping the adult heroes and taking them to his secret island headquarters.

Meanwhile the gang, along with Chester, are kidnapped by Blystone, the torpedo boat gets destroyed, and everybody is rescued by a whaling ship.  Then we are treated to one of the oddest sections of the serial where the plot almost stops completely so that the gang can learn to work on a whaling ship, and treat us up to footage from a feature film. Eventually Blyestone manages a mutiny and everyone finally converges on the island base for the last three or four chapters.  Unfortunately the gang is then pushed into the role of sidekick as McGuire and Hall handle the action for the rest of the serial.

A very complicated serial with a larger than average cast; you have the four kid stars, along with a hanger on, four adult heroes and three major villains.  With so many characters on screen it is no surprise that things bog down in dialog heavy scenes and that by the end some characters get pushed aside when wrapping things up.  Unfortunately it is the main stars that are the victims of this, a more satisfying ending, for me anyway, would be for the gang to rescue the adults and defeat the villain, thereby proving themselves as dependable to the people that doubted them.

Though I have to admit that for the most part the film is packed with some great acting.  Hallop, in his continuing onscreen journey toward respectable adult, plays a more polite character than usual.  Having a somewhat stable home life this time, he is more polite than in the past and tries to do things the right way, like asking permission to stay on Blystone’s boat.   It is when his trust is betrayed, the crooked grocer stealing their hard earned lobsters and calling them thieves or Chester’s turning them into the cops for a reward, that causes Hallop to turn and get nasty.  This onscreen justification puts you squarely on his side and there is no guilty feeling at rooting for him this time, and Hallop plays the role perfectly, changing from earnest nice kid to hurt and vindictive with mostly just his eyes and a turned down mouth.  One of his best scenes is when  he taken out to help harpoon a whale and he shows a mixture of excitement and pride at being accepted by the captain and his crew.

Huntz Hall is a completely different case.  Almost the complete opposite of Hallop.  Though he has just as stable a home life as Hallop, he is instead lazy and antagonistic.  Constantly grumbling about how tough he has it and back talking everyone, where Hallop asked for permission to stay on Blystone’s boat, Huntz angrily demands it with a openly contemptuoua sneer. His character is the most unlikeable I have ever seen as a serial hero.  He has a slight redemption by sacrificing himself to save Hallop in a few cliffhanger resolutions, most notably Chapter Ten when he saves Hallop from a bad tempered octopus (!?!?!).  Which leads to a question about Huntz’s hat.  Is his ball cap glued to his head?  It never comes off, whether in a fight, diving off a ship or swimming underwater, the thing doesn’t move an inch.  It is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the movies.

Dell and Punsley are given very little to do in the serial, being relegated to the role of “the rest of the gang”, they merely stay in the background and have few lines other than agreeing to do what ever Hallop sends them off to do.  The only time the garner any real screen time is in Chapter Five when they trail one of the saboteurs and then notify William Hall about it.

Interestingly Hally Chester comes off just as interesting a character study as Hallop.  When he is harassed by the gang in the beginning he hasn’t seemed to have done anything to deserve it and his betrayal of Hallop’s trust is understandable even if you don’t agree with it.  Later, while they are on the island and Hallop saves him from a peril the two start to get over their differences and become friends, much like Jackie Cooper and David Durand did in the earlier Scouts to the Rescue (1939).  But this time thee is a eal zinger in the dialog, when Hallop assures Chester he would have done the same for him if he was in real trouble, Chester condeeds that he might for Hallop but not for Huntz. (Ouch!)

The adult heroes are a mixed bag.  McGuire and Ralston are pretty colorless as the nominal romantic leads.  Neither really show much personality and are easily over shadowed by Hall and Fields.  Hall is hilarious as the dumb, henpecked cop, with a real hard on to arrest the gang.  Constantly talking tough and always having his balloon popped by Fields’ sarcastic oneliners, with the scene always ending with Hall whining, “Now Aggie……”, while Fields gives him a nasty glare until he turns away, then briefly flashing an affectionate smile when he can’t see. One of their best scenes is when Hadey openly threatens the group and Hall jumps him, beating the crap out of him before being dragged away by some henchmen, yelling out a continuing stream of what he will do to Hadley next time.  When Hadley starts to reiterate his threat, Fields pops off, “That didn’t work out so well for you the last time you tried it.”

The villains are a real mixed lot, but all work well with each other. Keane is a pretty effective lead villain in the early chapters, pompus but not quite as menacing as he thinks he is.  He turns out to be a little clueless as to how easily he has been manipulated by Hadley, and gets a real surprise when Hadley turns on him and reveals Keane’s really been a pawn the whole time.  Keane’s change from arrogance to dawning panic is one of his best scenes ever in a serial.

Hadley has the showiest role in the serial.  At the beginning he is a glowering subseviant henchman, taking Keane’s condesceding abuse silently, and then turning into a real force to be reckoned with when he takes over, showing houch much smarter he was than Keane all along, and now openly contemptuous of the other man (as conquerers always are to the people they pay to betray their own country).  There is also a romantic streak in him as he openly longs for Ralston in the early episodes.  When he is rejected for McGuire in the later episodes, he turns really nasty and portrays his villain with a well earned smugness at all the perils he’s subjecting the heroes to. One of the best actors to ever work in the genre, Hadley easily played heroes and villains with loose limb aplomb and it is regretable that Republic and Universal did not use him more often.

AS the main henchman, Blystone is his usual gruff and bullying henchman.  A big man, he uses his size to intimidate both his own men and the gang. But for once he also shows a keen intelligence and persuasive charm.  Locked in the brig on the whaling ship, Blystone easily convinces most of the whaling crew to throw in with him for big money, the lies rolling off his tongue as smooth as if he was Lionel Atwill or Charles Middleton.  It’s a nice touch to add to a muscle heavy.

Though my least favorite of the three Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys serials, it still has it’s moments for the connesiuer to savor.

Tags: Reviews //