Entries Tagged as 'News'

Change Up For the New Year

YouTube is a great place, I have been watching tons of old movies like Law of the Jungle with Mantan Moreland, The Crooked Circle with Zasu Pitts, The Last Alarm with Warren Hull, The Phantom Express with J. Farrell MacDonald, etc, etc.  But one of the greatest things I have located is the entire run of Cliffhangers!, a show I was fanatical about back in the day (1979).

Cliffhangers! was a midseason replacement show that featured three continuing stories that all ended in a cliffhanger every week and you had to watch the next epsiode to see what  happened.  An interesting concept to bring back the excitement and fun of the old serials for modern audiences (thank you George Lucas for inspiring the idea with Star Wars), but it had several problems.  The biggest was that all three episodes were started in mid adventure, one started with Chapter 2, one with Chapter 3 and one was already on Chapter 6 in the premiere episode.  Another problem and one that led to it’s demise was the expense of doing three complete film productions to fill only one hour of programming, which made it almost impossible for the network to just break even with the show. Low ratings caused the show to be cancelled before the last epsiode was broadcast, so American audiences never knew how two of the stories ended (the final episode was broadcast overseas, dammit!), although two of them were later edited into TV movies and popped up now and then on late night TV.

Jump ahead over thirty years and I am surfing around YouTube, watching serial trailers, when I came upon a Cliffhangers! segment, some searching uncovered the entire run of the show divvied up into individual segments that followed the order the episodes were run (thank you very much SailorsDreamHouse) and spent an entire weekend catching up on all of the episodes I had missed the first time around. (Yes, I know, I have no life.) And I noticed an interesting similarity with the final episodes, all three ended with the main villain getting away. Some research showed that the original idea had been if the show was a success, the segments would have been spun off into full length shows (ironically today all three could have succeeded on their own as fantastic shows with continuing story arcs are almost the norm.)

So of course I decided to feature the show for the first three months of the new year. In the original run the order of the individual segements would rotate so a different adventure would start off the show each week.  I have decided to go with the order of how I remember the first episode I caught running.  so January will highlight The Curse of Dracula, where the great grandson of Van Helsing tracks down the vampire king in modern day LA.  February will be The Secret Empire, a western in which an 1800’s lawman uncovers a futuristic underground city (any similarity to The Phantom Empire is purely “coincidental”, but since the Gene Autry serial is in the pubic domain, the point is probably moot anyway.  Finally March will get into Stop Susan Williams, a Perils of Pauline style mystery where a journalist uncovers a vast conspiracy while investigating her brother’s murder.

So, I’ll see you back here in a couple of weeks.

Kindle Reading for the Serial Fan

Got a Kindle a while back and have become very addicted to it, buying dollar copies of Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s Destroyer series, dollar copies of The Spider pulp novels, Max Allan Collins and Lawrence Block mysteries when they go on sale for three buck, and lots of free classics from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Sax Rohmer and Alexandre Dumas.

I like to surf around a lot and have found some choice books for the serial fan who is into reading.  McFarland has been slowly converting their library over to electronic downloads and William C Cline’s In the Nick of Time is now available for ten bucks.  Hopefully his follow up Serials-ly Speaking will be converted soon as well.

If you are interested in superheroes, Jake Rossen and Mark Millar’s Superman vs Hollywood is available for ten bucks.  Though not exclusively about serials it does chronicle the ups and downs that have followed the character’s film adaptations starting with the Fleischer cartoons.  The book goes on to Kirk Allyn’s serials, George Reeves’ TV show, Christopher Reeve’s film series, Dean Cain’s TV version,and ending with the long and somewhat crazy pre-production efforts that eventually brought out Superman Returns (which makes up the main bulk of the book).

On a side note, those who liked that one may also be interested in Michael Uslan’s The Boy Who Loved Batman.  An autobiography that chronicles the author’s love of comic books, especially Batman, and how this led to him creating the first accredited college course on comic books.  The notoriety of which allowed him to gain the rights to make a Batman movie, allowing him to be one of the producers on every Batman film made since 1989. Along the way he discusses the film history of the character, with emphasis on how much he has never liked the Adam West version, but Lewis Wilson’s and Robert Lowery’s serials do get a mention in passing.  Same price as the previous books I mentioned.

For those serial lovers who are more interested in silent films, or into fiction instead of books about film, you are in for a treat.  The Kindle has three, count’ em, three books available, for free, that would be right up your alley. The entire run of Arthur B Reeve’s Craig Kennedy series of short story collections and novels can be downloaded on Kindle, including his adaptations of the Pearl White serials he worked on, The Exploits of Elaine and The Romance of Elaine.  If you’re not into going to the trouble of downloading them individually, for two bucks you can get the entire thirteen book set in one collection (personally I would rather take the time to get them for free, but I’m cheap).  The third free book is even better, Arthur B Reeve’s and John W Grey’s adaptation of the The Mastery Mystery, the famous serial that starred Harry Houdini in his film debut.

I could go on, talking about books that were adapted to serials, like Son of Tarzan but I think I’ve put forth enough food for thought for the moment.

New Superman Article Being Published

Hey just wanted to let everyone know I’m having an article on the Superman serials, Celluloid Superman: The Columbia Serials, published at Movie Fanfare on Monday.  Like the article at Matinee at the Bijou it will be based around the original articles I did here at Serial Experience.  The link to the article is below.

http://www.moviefanfare.com/fanfare-guests/superman-the-columbia-serials
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