Todd’s Serial Blog

Since the past month seems to be a month of remakes; The Wolfman, The Crazies; I thought I would highlight a serial remake.  Like the new versions of classic films I just mentioned, The Perils of Pauline (1933) has not fared well with the critics when compared to the original.

Professor Hargave (James Durkin) and his daughter Pauline (Evelyn Knapp), along with Hargrave’s overly nervous assistant Willie Dodge (Sonny Ray) are in China looking for an ancient ivory disc that contains a formula for making a disintigrating gas.  Also on the trail of the disc is Dr. Bashan (John Davidson) who is planning to use it for world conquest.   Both parties are hampered by the fighting that has broken out with rebels attacking the city.

Bashan’s right hand man, Fang (Frank Lackteen), has spotted Dodge and follows him to the Hargrave’s hotel. Dodge tells the Professor that he has located the temple of Tsai Tsin, where the disc is hidden.  The Professor decides to leave Pauline at the hotel while they go to the temple.  Pauline spots Fang trailing them.  Grabbing a gun, she heads out after her father.

Once on the street she is grabbed by some of Bashan’s men. Hearing her cries is Robert Ward (Robert Allen), a railroad engineer thrown out of work by the the conflict and heading to the nearest Army recruitment office when he passed by the alley Pauline was dragged into.  Jumping into the fray, he beats off the henchmen, grabs Pauline and heads for safety.  They are chased but quickly elude their pursuers.  Pauline thanks Ward for his help and tries to head for the temple without him but Ward insists on going along.

Hargrave and Dodge reach the temple. Bashan is already there, but lets them go inside so that they can find the disc for him, then he plans on taking it away after they come back out. Pauline and Ward arrive and head into the temple.

Everyone is attacked by the temple guards, but Ward and Harrave manage to defeat them while Pauline searches the temple altar and Dodge stands petrified and screaming.  Pauline finds a hidden drawer in the temple but it only contains half a disc.  Meanwhile the Army has started bombing the area and a bomb hits the temple, dropping the roof down  on them…..

I don’t know if you can really call this a remake, considering the only  simularities between this version and the original silent is the title.  The original was a story common to the day, an heiress mark for death by the supposedly kindly executor of her estate who wants her fortune for himself.  This version is updated to a pulp style exotic adventure popular in the early thirties.  Many critics have labeled this a weak serial, mainly due to it’s not being the Pearl White classic.  But I think it’s an unfair assessment.  Taken on it’s own The Perils of Pauline is an enjoyable action film.

The plot is a globe trotting extravaganza that takes the cast from China to the jungles of Borneo, then the deserts of India, before finally finishing in the good old USA as they have to locate the second disc and then get the formula translated.  Along the way they have to contend with angry natives, jungle cats, maurading gorillas, captive sharks, death trap laden temples as well as the ever present Dr. Bashan and Fang.

There is also a nice bit of romance between Pauline and Ward, with lots of flirting which is enhanced by the great chemistry between Knapp and Allen.   This is highlighted by a funny joke in Chapter Ten with Allen saying he has never been one to move very fast, prompting Knapp to quip that he hasn’t been doing too bad so far.

Allen plays a good solid man of action and is well complimented by Knapp’s brave and determined heroine.  Durkin is his usual stern and dependable self, giving off both a fatherly concern for Knapp and a scholarly excitement about the exotic areas they are passing through.

John Davidon and Frank Lackteen make a great villainous team.  Davidson, never looked more satanic then he does here with his huge widow’s peak and reptilian eyes, is equal parts clever and pompous, never missing an opportunity to gloat at the heroes when he has the upper hand. Lackteen effectively portrays the contradiction of being totally ruthless while being a coward, constantly cowering before Davidson when he has to report another failure.  It should come as no surprise that the heroes don’t defeat these two, they do themselves in.

If there is anything disappointing about the serial (outside of the outrageous rascism portrayed by a kindly safarai leader in the jungle section, explaining “You got to be tough with these babies,” when refering to how to treat his native bearers) it is the extremely unfunny antics of Sonny Ray.  His comedy antics makes Lee Ford look like Harold Lloyd.  He bounces between emitting  a high pitched screech and running around frantically during action scenes to constantly offering his resignation at the first sign of danger.  Oh the hilarity!

He is also at the center of one of the most irritating scenes in the serial, Chapter Nine, The Mummy Walks,  which doesn’t feature a mummy.  While the good guys and bad guys are skulking around a museum to swipe an important item needed for the translation, Sonny trips and falls into a tub of white wash, rolls around it, then climbs out and stumbles around with his arms waving frantically.  The bad guys see him, scream “A ghost!” and knock each other down trying to get away (while also inspiring James Horne’s entire serial output six years later).

Sch criticsm aside, this is an enjoyable adventure from Universal’s early sound period, and well worth a look.

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Happy Valentines Day Action Lovers! Like last year I thought I would spotlight a romantic serial, or as romantic as a serial can get. And for all of the hack and slash of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ work, all the books were at their core romances with the hero and heroine going through various hazards and long spells of separation to have the books end in a clinch.

The Son of Tarzan opens with a quick 3 1/2 minute recap that tells how Tarzan (P. Dempsey Tabler) was raised in the jungle by apes, discovered by Jane (Karla Shramm), goes to England with her to claim his title as Lord Greystoke and leaves his hated enemy Ivan Pauovich (Eugene Burr) to the mercies of the jungle.

Settled in England, Tarzan and Jane have a son they name Jack (Gordon Griffith), who Jane does not want to learn of the jungle, even though he seems to have inheirited his father’s love of the jungle and a rather aggressive attitude when playing, like climbing high trees and wrestling his scared tutor into submission on the estate lawn.

Meanwhile, back in the jungle Paulovich finds and befriends Akut (actor unknown), one of Tarzan ape friends, and when he is eventually rescued, he takes Akut with him and tours England with his “trained ape” to make money. Jack sees an ad for a local showing and wants to see the ape. Which Jane immediately forbids and Tarzan reluctantly agrees with her.

Jack sneaks out anyway, but Tarzan spots him and follows. During the show Akut notices Jack’s resemblance to Tarzan and jumps into his box seat, which causes a riot. Tarzan arrives and quells the crowd. Recognizing Akut, but not Paulovich, Tarzan pays the man an exorbitant amount of money to ship Akut back to Africa. Then takes Jack home to be grounded for disobeying his mother.

Paulovich on the other hand has recognized his old enemy and plots his revenge. On the day Akut is to be shipped off, Paulovich approaches Jack at the Greystoke estate and asks if he wants to say goodbye to the ape. Jack readily agrees and accompanies him to Paulovich’s room where Akut is chained up.

Paulovich immediately attacks Jack and ties him up. He opens a trap door that leads directly to the river, where he plans to throw Jack’s body after he killshim. Grabbing the struggling boy, Paulovich starts to choke the life out of him…….

I have always found it interesting that up until Johnny Weismuller became The Movie Tarzan, that most of the adaptations followed Burroughs’ original concept of an articulate, educated British nobleman/ jungle lord  They also stuck close to his plots as well.  Son of Tarzan follows the book fairly accurately, starting a little slow with the young Korack (so dubbed by Akut who couldn’t pronounce Jack) getting to Africa, meeting and rescuing a kidnapped French girl from Arab slave traders (their meeting in Chapter Three is unintentionally hilarious.  While the two ten-year-olds introduce themselves and indulge in small talk, Akut is seen off to the side mercilessly pummeling her Arab guard to death), growing up together and falling in love while battling the slave traders, savage natives and Paulovich.  They are of course separated for extended periods of time before being reunited with each other and Korack’s parents.

Griffith plays the title character for the first four and a half chapters, then the story jumps ahead ten years and the character is taken over by Kamuela C.Searle for the rest of the serial as an adult Korack.  Once he steps forward the action picks up with Korack and Meriem (played by Mae Giraci as a child and Manilla Martan as an adult) getting capture and escaping from any number of enemies, human and animal.  There is also an exciting subplot in which Paulovich lures Jane to Africa and tries to sell her to the slave traders, which causes Tarzan to throw off his three piece suit, strap on a loin cloth and starts kicking jungle butt while not caring about taking names.

Then around Chapter Twelve the serial shifts gears from action to melodrama, with Meriem getting separated form Korack, who all but disappears from the serial while he wanders jungle mourning his loss while she ends up at the African estate of Tarzan and Jane who take her in and she is romanced by an effete English nobleman.  Korack’s reappearance in the last chapter leads to an an exciting conclusion and also contains the infamous accident that is still heavily debated to this day among fans.

In the last chapter, Korack is tied to a stake and about to be burned alive, when an elephant grabs him and the stake, pulling it out of the ground and walking off with it.  Stories differ as to what happened, actor Searle was crushed by the elephant’s grip, Searle was partially trampled on camera, Searle died instantly, Searle survived but eventually died from his injuries (his official cause of death in 1924 was listed as cancer).  No one really knows what really happened, watching the serial you can’t see him get injured during the scene (according Harmon and Glut when the story that Searle had died during filming came out, attendance went up considerably by people interested in glimpsing the macabre incident on celluloid.

The acting is decent for the most part, Searle gives an excellent performance as Korack, the slim muscular actor with wild hair looks the part of a jungle wild man, and his expressive eyes contain a startling soulfulness.  His scenes of mourning in the later chapters is truly heartbreaking.  Griffith, who had played a young Tarzan in Elmo Lincoln’s original version of Tarzan of the apes (1918) does a good job of playing the young Jack as an excitable and energetic son of Tarzan.  His best scene is an amusing one in Chapter Two when he sneaks Akut aboard an ocean liner disguised as his grandmother and plays it perfectly straight.

Tabler as Tarzan is not as good, mostly do to his less than muscular physique. He’s okay playing the English nobleman in his three piece suits and even has an exciting fight with several thugs on the lawn of his English estate in Chapter Four, coming close to exhibiting a jungle savagery when attacked.  But his believabilty in the role is severely damaged when he strips down and reveals a sunken chest and pot belly, which is not what you want to see in a Taran flick.  Thankfully his sans pants scenes are kept to a minimum.

Martan is excellent as the adult Meriem, making her vivacious and energetic.  She has two really good scenes.  One in which she is captured by Paulovich’s men and one of them makes his intentions toward her very clear and her faces registers a combination of fear, disgust and defiance. Her other scene is later in the serial when she is living with the Greystokes, and a monkey steals her socks and shoes when she puts her feet in a nearby pond.  She angrily climbs up the tree and chastises the monkey for his prank.

Schramm does a good job playing a dislikeable character.  To be fair she is playing Jane the way she was in the early books, shrill and weepy, more concerned about her social standing than making sure her son and husband were happy. It wasn’t until the mid-twenties that Jane morphed into a character with more use than just being a damsel in distress, who’s only function was to be rescued by Tarzan.  Her best showing was in the book Tarzan’s Quest in which she takes charge of a group of stranded plane passengers and leads them through the jungle to safety, coming off as a female Tarzan.

As main villain Paulovich, Burr gives a stereotypical sniveling coward performance, but again this is how the character was written in his three appearances in the book series. Much better is Frank Morrell as Sheik Amor Ben Khatour, leader of the slave traders.  He is sleek and sinister, and is a real menace in the serial’s middle chapters, where he chews up the scenery marvelously, making you wish he was the main villain instead of Burr.

While I have never been a fan of silent films, the over the top acting that emerge during the Expressionist movement of the twenties that came out of Germany being one of my main dislikes. I did find myself enjoying this one and found it to be one of the best adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

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Sorry to disappoint anyone who was thinking I would be highlighting the 1931 Universal serial featuring Kenneth Harlan and Andy Devine. No I’m taking a look at the 1968 TV cliffhanger serial that was part of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Uh oh, Chongo!

Out in the South Pacific, just off a couple of uncharted islands, Prof Irwin Hayden (Frank Aleter), his daughter Leslie (Ronne Troup) and his assistant Lincoln “Link” Simmons (Jan Michael Vincent) are searching for the ancient lost city of Tubania. Hayden’s brother had disappeared years earlier on the same quest and the Professor is hoping that he will find what happened to him as well as find the city.

Link and Leslie are searching the ocean floor when they find a treasure chest. Taking it up to their boat they find it is full of gold and jewels. Link goes back down to see if he can find anything else. While he is down below, a ship full of pirates lead by Captain Chu (Rodrigo Arrendondo) and Mu-Tan (Victor Eberg) come upon the boat and board it.

Finding the treasure chest, Mu-Tan realizes that it is from Tubania and that Hayden must know where it is. He takes Hayden and Leslie captive. Just then Link comes back to the surface, slipping aboard, he engages Mu-Tan in a fight. Mu-Tan cold cocks Link into unconsciousness with a massive hay maker and tosses him overboard.

Hayden and Leslie are taken aboard the pirate ship along with the treasure chest. Once they have pulled far enough way, Mu-Tan loads a shell into a canon and fires it at the Professor’s boat, which explodes in a huge fireball. Link comes to and finds the boat gone. Left with no choice, Link starts to swim for the closest island. Just then a shark swims up and pulls Link under…….

I am very grateful to YouTube, having attempted to watch this serial several times, once in the early 80’s when the show was run in a half hour weekday syndication format and again in the mid 90’s when it was on Cartoon Network late at night (the ten minute long serial episodes were edited into five minute segments). but have been unable to get to the end either time. The lo and behold I found it on YouTube over the Christmas holiday while looking to see if any new serial trailers had been uploaded (I also found the complete run of Curse of Dracula but that’s a review for another month).

The rest of the plot is a pretty decent serial, very reminiscent of the cliffhangers from the forties. Once on the island Link meets and teams up with two castaways Elihu Morgan (Rockne Tarkington) and Chongo (Kim Kahana), who were abandoned on the island by the same pirates that attacked Professor Hayden’s party. They rescue them during a power struggle among the pirates that Mu-Tan wins, and then continue the search for Tabania while trying to avoid not only the pirates, but also several angry tribes who don’t like outsiders, most notably the Skeleton Men and the Ash Men.

Helmed by the great Richard Donner, years before The Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon; the serial veers back and forth between serious action and slapstick. The serious parts concern dealing with alligators, sharks, an earthquake and those ever present cliffs that the heroes keep almost getting knocked off of. The slapstick involves Chongo’s spastic (and unfunny) antics and the fights involved in between the heroes and the pirates, and the heroes and the natives. They always show up full of menace and then engage in fights from a Three Stooges short, full of eye gouging, head bonking, shin kicking free for alls with the added gag of reversing the film to reshow specific bits, and all punctuated with cartoon style sound effects for maximum comedic effect. At one point everyone even engages in a pie fight. James Horne would have been proud.

Ironically the serial also includes some surprisingly serious scenes. After Leslie is rescued from being sacrificed by the Ash Men (and engaging in a pie fight) on a neighboring island, Morgan asks if the Prof has seen enough of the danger they are in and should return to the safety of the their own island. The Prof looks at Leslie and agrees. Later on when they find the city of Tubania, they come upon the body of the Professor’s brother and there is a very heartbreaking moment of silence from everyone.

The serial is also a bit of a ground breaker due to Tarkington’s character, Morgan. You have to remember that this is 1968 and positive African American role models are few and far between on network TV, and here on a little kids show is a African American hero who is tough, smart, compassionate, funny and proud.

I understand from some of the message boards that Danger Island was shown at SerialFest one year to less a than enthusiastic response. Understandable, it is not a film serial made during the heyday of the 20’s to the 40’s, it was made for TV, and there was more than a little feeling of spoofing the genre throughout. But it is competently made with some excellent cliffhangers, and is probably the best of the Saturday morning live action serials made from the late sixties into late eighties. Not for every serial fan, but it is enjoyable on it’s own terms.

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