Todd’s Serial Blog

I have never been one to believe in hype, and have usually found that some serials that are highly praised are not as great as I had been led to believe (like Flash Gordon), while some that are slammed mercilessly turn out to be better than expected (like Panther Girl of the Kongo).  I had hoped to be able to say that Young Eagles fits into this category, but alas, it is as bad as everyone has said, I actually found myself surfing the web during some chapters (a first for me).

The serial begins with a grop of scouts out camping who are called by the park service to help search for two lost little girls.  Chubby scout Bobby Ford (Bobby Cox) locates them trapped on a ledge and uses his scout training to build a pulley line to get down to them and then raise them up to safety.  As he is pulling himself back up, the tree the line is hooked around uproots and Bobby almost falls.

Bobby is honored along with another scout, Jim Adams (Jim Vance) for acts of valor. As a reward both scouts will be flown to South America and partake in an expedition with famed archeologist Dr Haviland. When packing for the trip, Bobby dumps half of his clothes behind a bush in his back yard and repacks his back pack with candy bars (Oh the hilarity!)  While the two boys are meeting the pilot  MacLean (Carter Dixon) Bobby’s sister sneaks their pet dog Johnson(Himself) aboard their plane.

MacLean takes off and heads for South America but runs into a major storm that blows them off course, as MacLean tries to compensate, too much time is lost and they run out of gas.  The heroic pilot tries to glide the plane in but ends up crashing in a river.  The pilot’s leg is injured, posibly broken. Bobby and Jim get him to shore, build a splint for his leg, then gather all of the supplies from the plane, where they discover Johnson in the baggage comparment.

As Johnson is swiming to shore a crocodile notices him and swims in for the kill.  Bobby spots this and jumps in the river with a tree branch and beats the murderous reptile off his four legged pal.  MacLean pulls out a pistol and shoots the croc when it turns it’s attention to Bobby.  After setting up camp, Bobby and Jim think it would be a good idea to build a raft and head down river to see if they can locate a village.  MacLean thinks they should stay in camp till he is better and the he will get them out of the jungle.

The boys agree, then build a raft and head down river anyway.  During their trip Jim spots a wild pig in the jungle and wades ashore with a hatchet to kill the pig for food.  Meanwhile Bobby anchors the raft and cobbles a makeshift fishing tackle to catch crayfish.  While tracking the pig Jim comes upon a jaguar who decides to kill the young scout for food (How ironic!) and chases him.  Jim tries to run away but trips and loses his hatchet, leaving him helpless as the jungle cat closes in for the kill.  Bobby also has his own problems as every croc in the river comes upon the raft and decides he and Johnson would make tasty morsels, and upend the raft, sending the tubby scout and his best bud into the water with them……………………

A first impression would make a viewer think that after the drawn out first chapter that doesn’t really get going until the last five minutes that from this point on things will ramp up and the chapters will be chock full of jungle action.  And they would be wrong.  A lot of footage is made up of the two boys tramping through foilage, making fat jokes about Bobby, pointing out some action off screen so that animal footage can then be shown or some animal antics featuring Johnson investigating an exotic animal.  These scenes are interspersed with shots of the pilot wandering aimlessly through the jungle suffering from a brain fever.

In between this the stars get in a series of adventures, avoiding being sacraficed by savage natives, discovering a treasure in a hidden temple, and in the later chapters dealing with jungle criminals after the treasure, all of which give them ample opportunity to demonstrate different boy scout skills.  While this sounds exciting, it isn’t.  The slow pace drags everything out and kills any momentum.  When the scouts are going to be sacracficed in Chapter Two, most of the of the chapter’s running time is devoted to an eloborate sacrificial dance inter cut with sarcastic comments from the scouts, before Jim is finally tossed into a pit to close out the episode.

Things look like they are going to perk up in the final four chapters when the boys meet first a con man played by Philo McCullough and then in Chapter Ten they catch they attention of a ruthless jungle raider played by Merrill McCormick, both who are interested in the treasure they found back in Chapter Four.  But this ends up being nothing more than the con man temporarily trapping them on a small ilsand in the middle of the river and then the bandit leader capturing them and throwing them in a room while plans are discussed.

A major complaint I have about the serial are the endless fat jokes made at Bobby’s expense.  If he isn’t constantly going on about food, Jim is making sarcastic wisecracks about his always being hungry.  The irony is that Bobby is the one who usually has to save Jim from predicaments, even burning down an entire village in Chapter Seven to save the kid from anther native sacrafice.  So why all the animaosity about his weight?  He’s the most competent character in the serial.

The acting is a real problem.  Cox and Vance are not trained actors and it shows, worse is that the script seems to be under written and a lot  of their dialogue feels like it is made up of lame ad libs.  If this dialogue was actually scripted, Yikes!  Dixon spends most of his footage walking aimlessly and muttering so it is hard to get a grip on his acting.  His best scene is in Chapter Twelve when he is over his fever and confronts McCullough in a cantina when the con man inadvertantly shows one of the missing scouts’ belongings, and threatens the con man to spill what he knows.

McCullough is entertaining as jungle con man Nicholas Condylos, he is a likeable rouge, as all good con men are, who steals from the boys and abandons them to the jungle bandits, but redeems himself in the end by helping the police locate the bandits’ hideout and rescue the two scouts.

But the real villain of the piece is Merrill McCormick as Jose Pinardo, the most feared man in the jungle.  Though not seen until the end of Chapter Ten, the scruffy looking bandit is a nasty peice of work, quite willing to kill the two boys to get the treasure.  He is a remorseless and implacable villain who’s presence dominates the final episodes, even though he actually does very little. Introducing him earlier might have helped overcome the serial’s meandering plotline.

So there really isn’t much to recommend this serial, not even the footage of a snake catching a fish, which I thought was stock footage until Cox and Vance enter the shot and make the snake release the fish (a truly odd sequence).  There are really only two reasons to see this serial. One, you just have to see every serial ever made, regardless of quality.  Two, you have a website that reviews serials.

Tags: Reviews //