Todd’s Serial Blog

When it comes to western serials, I usually like ones that have an interesting twist.  Plain old cowboys and Indians is never enough.  I enjoy those odd additions, like the gender reversal in Zorro’s Black Whip (1944) or the outlandish science fiction plot of Phantom Empire (1935). Republic’s third serial release, The Vigilantes Are Coming (1936), fits nicely into this category with it’s combination of a masked hero seeking revenge mixed with a cowboys versus cossacks storyline.

The story opens in California in the year 1844.  U.S. Army Captain Fremont (Ray “Crash” Corrigan) is leading an exploring expedition into the  newly acquired Northwest territory and employs Don Loring (Robert Livingston) to scout for him.  While Loring is away, Jason Burr (Fred Kohler) discovers  there is gold on the Loring land.  Making contact with Russian emissary Count Raspinoff (Robert Warwick), Burr makes a deal to set up California as a Russian colony with himself as territory Governor.

With the help of his henchmen, Burr kidnaps a mining engineer named Colton (Lloyd Ingraham) to run his secret mine under the threat of harm to his daughter Doris (Kay Hughes), who Burr keeps a prisoner at his fort.  When Don’s father (Henry Hall) and younger brother (John O’Brien) discover the mine, which is being worked by peasant slaves, Burr has Barsam (Yakima Canutt) murder them and then openly takes over the Loring land.

Months later Don returns home with his friends Salvation (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams) and Whipsaw (Raymond Hatton) and discovers his family dead and the territory ruled by outlaws and newly arrived cossack soldiers. Taken in by Father Jose (Willaim Farnum), Don vows revenge and disguises himself with a mask and cape.  Don attacks many of Burr’s men, leaving an eagle feather at the site of each attack, earning him the name The Eagle by the terrified henchmen.

After one such attack, The Eagle is chased by Talbot (John Merton) and Barsam.  Losing them outside Father Jose’s church, The Eagle enters his secret underground hideout.  Getting rid of his costume, Don takes on his other guise, of a milquetoast church organist.  When Talbot searches the church for The Eagle, Don spots his father’s ring on Barsam.

Later when Barsam is out riding alone, The Eagle captures him.  Forcing him into an Eagle costume and tying him to his horse, Don sends him riding toward the fort, where he is gunned down by his own men.  Don, dressed in his organist clothes, then has Salvation and Whipsaw tie him to a burro and send him toward the fort.

Don is captured by Talbot and brought before Burr where he says the Eagle captured him and sent him to the fort with a message.  Don has a note pinned to him from The Eagle declaring he will visit Burr in ten minutes.  Enraged, Burr has Don thrown into his dungeon and then doubles the guard around the fort.

Once in the dungeon, Don takes off his organist outfit, revealing The Eagle costume underneath.  Spotting an unbarred window high up above, The Eagle reaches it with his whip and easily climbs out.  Making his way to Burrs office, The Eagle extracts a small measure of revenge on the man by mercilessly whipping him.

Burrs screams bring his men, who chase The Eagle out into the courtyard.  Displaying an amazing athleticism, the masked hero continually eludes his pursuers and heads for a tall tower.  Trapped on a ledge, The Eagle is shot at by the villains.  Scrambling along the narrow ledge, The Eagle slips and falls off the tower…..

The one thing most serial fans voice about this serial are the horrible cheats with the cliffhanger resolutions. Chapter Five is almost as infamous as the crashed gate resolution in Chapter Seven of Undersea Kingdom (1936), in which the gate was never crashed into.  In Chapter Four of Vigilantes, the hero gets knocked into a rock crusher and is clearly visible getting smashed in the stomach by the crusher and groaning in pain as the scene fades into the to be continued card,  the resolution has him being pulled to safety before the crusher even descends. But that is nothing compared to the cheat in Chapter Eight. The previous chapter had the hero in a saber fight with five Cossacks. he trips on a chair, falls on his back and the final shot is of the Cossacks all thrusting their sabers at him.  The resolution shows he never tripped, fell and was stabbed at; but simply vaulted over a desk to get away from them and escaped through a door.  Boo!!!

Such complaints aside, the serial is very enjoyable with a fast pace and interesting plot twists.  There is some excellent use of locations with many striking visuals that include the impressive church used by the heroes for a base, the tower that makes up the first episode cliffhanger peril, and an eye popping mountain climb made in the final chapter by Corrigan and his soldiers racing to the rescue. The serial has a larger than average cast with the screen filled with Cossacks, cowboy henchmen, slave workers, American cavalry soldiers, and the vigilantes of the title.

The early chapters focus on The Eagle banding farmers and ranchers together to fight Burr’s henchmen and Cossacks.  After a few raids, the plot shifts to The Eagle trying to prevent Burr from learning the identities of the vigilantes with the use of spies, rescuing Colton and Doris from Burr’s fort and preventing gold shipments to make it to Raspinoff.  The final chapters deal with attempts to get word the the US soldiers to prevent the Russian annexing of California, leading to a big blow out battle between the two armies.  Quite a busy twelve chapters.

Robert Livingston, in his first big staring role, is great in the lead role.  He is stern and menacing when playing the masked hero (no laughing daredevil Zorro rip off here), while being humorously simple minded and jittery as the unassuming church organist, only showing his real cheerful and engaging personality, that was shown at the beginning of the serial, when alone with his sidekicks or heroine.  There are two stand out dramatic scenes in Chapter One, his sorrowful and angry vow of revenge on learning about the death of is family packs a real emotional wallop rarely seen in the genre. His other big scene is his first confrontation with Kohler, where Livingston silently starts unfurling his whip.  When Kohler threatens him of what will happen if he gets whipped, Livingston is truly chilling when snapping out a tightly clipped reply, his hate and rage just barely in check, and starts cracking the whip at the other man with a manic intensity.

Carol Hughes, Republic’s first real serial herione star, fares a little better in this outing that she did in the following year’s Dick Tracy (1937).  Though a captive for a majority of the serial she serves a useful purpose of actually being a spy for the heroes, ferreting out information and sending it via a cage of carrier pigeons that are hidden in her room.  It is nice to see her do more than look concerned about the fate of the good guys, though she does plenty of that too.

Guinn “Big Boy” Williams and Raymond Hatton make a great pair of mismatched, bickering sidekicks.  Williams is big and boisterous while Hatton is small and cantankerous (I swear the man was born old and curmudgeonly).  They spend most of their time arguing over who is better, smarter, etc; yet never let it get in the way of helping Livingston in the fight against the villains.  Each are given some amusing stand alone bits, Williams passes himself off as a Mexicn peddler with his hat pulled out of shape around his eyes and a sarape pulled up to his nose and using the worst fake accent imaginable, that actually fools the bad guys and allows him to pass the pigeons to Hughes in Chapter Three.  He uses the ruse again in Chapter Nine to get through a blockade and ends up losing the info he was trying to smuggle out in his rifle to a border guard.  Hatton’s gets to top him in Chapter Five when he and Williams grab a Cossack and Hatton goes undercover as a “Roosian” (love their mis-pronunciations throughout the serial).  The sight of Hatton, with a fake beard cut from their captive, trying to fake his way through a conversation with the head soldier is priceless. These two could have carried the serial by themselves.

William Farnum brings a great deal of dignity to his role as Father Jose, as he does to all of his serial roles, the man could play a gibbering idiot and make him the most dignified idiot to ever appear on screen.  He is full of righteous indignation at every intrusion of Kohler’s henchmen to the church or abuse they heap on an unlucky peasant, and kindly conern over the hero’s thirst for vengeance. I also like the beatific smile he has when Livingston is playing the organ, tapping along on the palm of one hand with his fingers.  It ’s those subtle things that always sell a part to me.

Fred Kohler is well cast as the unscrupulous Burr.  Big and loud, he bullies his captives, berates is men and shoves everyone around him out of the way when he walks.  If there was a dog around he would have kick it.  Kohler’s villain is brutal and sadistic.  When he discovers Hughes’ pigeons he takes unnecessary delight in detailing the trap he will set using them,  and caps the scene with a self satisfied smirk, which is more effective than any amount of manical cackling from most other villains, like Theodore Lorch for example.

Countering Kohler is Robert Warwick as Count Raspinoff.  Equally as diginified as Farnum, he is condescending and sarcastic to everyone, even Kohler, which Kohler takes because he needs the man and Warwick knows it.  While Kohler is a straight ahead villain, Warwick is more duplicitous, acting only when he is guaranteed success, holding off on committing more troops or weapons until the full amount of gold is on hand and there is no chance of the US Army learning about their machinations.  A true politican, he is only villain who gets off scott free, using diplomacy to allow him to take his country’s flag down and walk away after the battle is over, which makes for a more true to life ending than many other serials.

Since there are two forces at use by the villain, there are also two main henchmen instead the usual primary and secondary.  Leading the cowboys is John Merton at his snide and ruthless best, his nonchalant response to Hughes’ protest when he locks Livingston in the church’s bell tower and sets it on fire is as cold blooded as you can get.  Bob Kortman as the head Cossack gives new meaning to the term slow burn.  He gets a little more frustrated and pissed off with each failure to capture The Eagle, but never goes over the top like James Craven would have. Though he does give voice to a menacing chuckle in Chapter Nine when he thinks he has finally succeeded in killing the masked hero.

The serial is a bit rough around the edges and not as slick as the studio’s later product, it is an enjoyable adventure full of derring do and comraderly humor, plus you get to see Yakima Canutt do his patented quick draw gun twirl in closeup, and there is nother cooler than that.

Tags: Reviews by admin
No Comments »

A common complaint that can be hurled at serials is the repetitiveness of most of the canon, especially in terms of plot and cliffhangers.  Which is all too easy to do when watching them today, where you can put one DVD in after another.  But many of us who were not around during the original theater run of these films sometimes forget that unlike today there were no reruns and people in general like the comfort of familiarity in their entertainment.  Where as today we can turn on the TV and catch Timothy Hutton gloatingly reveal how the scam was really set up at the end of Leverage, or Kyra Sedgwich politely trick a suspect into trapping themselves with their own testimony on The Closer, back in the day fans went to the theater every week to see Buck Jones or Linda Stirling go through their familiar paces.  Which brings us  to The Oregon Trail (1939), a pedestrian western serial with an overly familiar plot but it allows fans to see Johnny Mack Brown, Fuzzy Knight and Charles Stevens playing the type of characters we have come to expect and enjoy from them.

The serial opens with Colonel Custer (Roy Barcroft !?!?!) hauling in frontier scout Jeff Scott (Johnny Mack Brown) and his sidekick Deadwood Hawkins (Fuzzy Knight). The Army wanted Jeff to look into a wave of Indian attacks on wagon trains along the Oregon Trail, which they believe is being fermented by an outside influence.  Jeff had agreed only on the condition that the Army can catch him first.  After having led them on a chase they are caught and put in the stockade.  This turns out to be a charade to cover Jeff’s mission.  After faking a jail break, the two friends head for a just departed wagon train lead by John Mason (Edward LeSaint).

Wagon Master Bull Bragg (Jack C. Smith) is actually in the pay of  trading post entrepreneur Sam Morgan (James Blaine), who wants to keep settlers out of the fur rich Oregon territory, to this end he is arming the local Indians and inciting them to attack any wagon trains that enter Oregon. Along the trail Bragg sends the wagons to cross a river at the wrong spot which causes many of the wagons to upend and flounder in the deep, rushing water.

Jeff and Deadwood ride up and spot the trouble.  Their expert horseman ship allows them to save most of the wagons. Unfortunately young Jimmie Clark (Bill Cody, Jr.) loses his father in the disaster and Jeff immediately takes the young boy under his wing. Jeff is also instantly smitten with Mason’s daughter Margaret (Louise Stanley)

Mason is furious with the incompetent Brag and instantly fires him, appointing Jeff Wagon Master and Deadwood as Head Scout.  Bragg leaves with his men.  He sends his “scout” Breed (Charles Stevens),  a half breed renegade, to the nearby Indian village where he promises they will get fifty rifles from Morgan if they attack the wagon train.

The Indian braves swarm at the wagon train, which immediately forms a defensive circle. The powder wagon breaks lose with Margaret inside.  Jeff rides in pursuit with several braves closely behind him.  Jeff manages to snatch up Margaret before the wagon over turns.  He then tries to evade their pursuers, but the braves quickly box his horse in and then herd Jeff and Margaret off a cliff…

As Johnny Mack Brown’s final serial, The Oregon Trail is an amalgam of everything his fans would want in one of his serials, a beleaguered wagon train, hostile Indian tribes, a scheming villain passing himself off as a respectable citizen, an endangered heroine to save, plus a cantankerous sidekick and an eager hero worshiping kid to form a triad of heroes with.  Though not as good as Rustlers of Red Dog (1935) or Wild West Days (1937), it has enough elements in it to make it an enjoyable serial.

Most of the fifteen chapter plot covers the wagon train trying to get to Oregon, with Brown fighting off Indians, while Smith and Stevens sabotage the wagons and the trail to discredit Brown’s abilities so Smith can be reinstated as Wagon Master, and Blaine continually pops up at various forts and towns under the guise of visiting another of his many trading posts.  This allows for plenty of action with Indian attacks, runaway wagons, kidnappings, shootouts and deliberately set prairie fires.  Mixed into all of this are subplots showing Brown shyly romancing Stanley and the father/son bonding between Brown and Cody.  Brown’s comforting of Cody over his father’s death is one of the most touching scenes attempted in the genre.

Though Brown is not afraid to show his emotions when called for, he is mostly his usual laid back and ingratiating cowboy hero, the Eric Clapton of serials.  No matter the danger he will calmly jump astride his horse and head to the rescue with nary a wasted motion.

Knight compliments Brown with his irascible old time trapper sidekick.  constantly grumbling, he has many humorous moments in the serial that lighten the mood and relax tension while the plot sets up the next horrendous peril for the heroes to face.  He has two very funny scenes,  In Chapter Four when Knight runs  into an old trapper pal played by Jim Toney they immediately draw their guns and shoot each other’s hat off, then hug and laugh together.  When the rest of the wagon train runs up to see what is going on, Knight grumbles, “It’s getting so a man can’t shoot at his best friend without drawing a crowd.  No privacy anymore.” His other amusing scene is at the end of the serial and is one of the most unusual final shots ever done.  After the villains have all been defeated, Knight looks over at Brown and Stanley in a typical serial romantic clinch. Knight muses, ‘Looks like I’m going to be the Lone Trapper from now on,” and is then shown riding along the trail alone behind the ending credit.

Bill Cody, Jr. gives a nice performance as Brown’s adopted son.  A good actor he easily expresses his grief over his father’s death, gritty determination in the face danger, and boyish enthusiasm when in Brown’s presence. Cody, like Frankie Darro, was one of the few child actors who never fell back on trying to be annoyingly cute to steal scenes.  He works with the other actors instead of against them and this is probably his best and most moving portrayal in serials.

Stanley seems to be just another serial heroine, someone to be put in jeopardy so she be be continually rescued.  Which happens to her quite a bit, when not being grabbed by marauding Indians, she’s being snatched by Smith and Stevens.  But as the serial progresses she gets to show more and more that she is not someone who screams and faints at the first sign of danger.  Stanley engages in various shootouts with attacking braves and even rides out to save Brown a couple of times, and all without mussing up her ever present bonnet, very impressive.

As far as the villains go, one out of three is as good as your going to get here.  I don’t know what Universal was thinking here teaming up James Blaine with Jack C. Smith.  A smart and cowardly villain using a dumb and cowardly henchman doesn’t really generate much in the way of dramatic tension.  As he would show in Riders of Death Valley (1941), Blaine is better suited for underhanded commerce machinations in a town setting, where they show him openly cheating his Indian customers by trading furs for guns, with the stipulation that the height of the stack of furs must equal the length of one rifle for each rifle they want, then grumbling after they leave that he needs to get longer guns.  But since most of the action takes place along the frontier trail, Blaine eventually leaves town and trades in his frock coat and vest for a more rugged outfit to take a more hands on approach to the destroying of the wagon train, which doesn’t really work as Blaine is so not rugged,though he does wear a nice bushy mustache well.  The only time he shows any real nasty villainy once he has left his store front is in Chapter Thirteen.  Blaine stages his own kidnapping and when the plan fails, he double crosses Smith with the man still in the room.  It is a funny and smart bit and I wish the serial had given Blaine more moments like it, he would have come off better.

Jack C. Smith plays an old West version of the same cowardly, inept henchman he would play in the same year’s The Phantom Creeps (1939).  He is so obvious in his failed attempts to discredit Brown and sabotage the wagon train that I found it hard to believe that LeSaint would actually fire Brown and reinstate Smith in Chapter Three.  Most galling is Smith’s preferred method of confrontation with Brown, he runs away.  Such antics worked fine in The Phantom Creeps, where his main function was to be terrorized by Lugosi, but without that kind of strong personality to dominate him, Smith comes off at odds with the rest of the cast.  Though to be fair he would have worked perfectly in a Horne serial over at Columbia.

Luckily Charles Stevens is on hand to lend the serial some decent menacing villainy.  Though his character is as cowardly as the rest, it is a different style.  He plays his sneaky, two faced character to perfection, easily duping both Blaine and his Indian allies with double crosses to make sure who ever comes out the winner he will be on top, while never even bothering to appear as anything but his scoundrel self to the heroes.  Where Smith and even Blaine almost always choose to run away from danger, Stevens will more than likely sneak around to either shot or stab the hero in the back. Definitely someone to watch out for.

So while not the best of Brown’s serial, it does contain some entertainment value for the serial connesuer, plus you get the added bonus of seeing an early performance of Roy Barcroft playing, of all things, a heroic George Custer riding to the rescue every three or four chapters.  Worth the price of admission righht there.

Tags: Reviews by admin
No Comments »

Nat Levine had a knack for grabbing up former silent stars at just the right time when their star was still high, but not too high to put them out of a price range he could afford. Bob Custer was one such former silent star who was struggling in the sound era and headlined a serial for Mascot, Law of the Wild (1934), under Rex the Wonder Horse and Rin Tin Tin Jr in the credits of course.

Rancher John Selden (Bob Custer) owns a magnificent horse named Rex (Rex, the Wonder Horse).  Local bad ass Lou Salton (Richard Alexander) wants to buy Rex and turn him into a champion race horse.  John won’t sell, Rex is his friend.  Not one to take no for an answer, Salter waylays John out on the trail, shoots his dog Rinty (Rin Tin Tin, Jr) and forces Rex to stomp John into the ground.

John and Rinty survive the attack and slowly recover.  Months later John learns that Salter is racing Rex at the Aldmore Race Track.  John and Rinty head out for Aldmore.  Salton Learns that John didn’t die and is coming for him.  He sends out his henchman Jim Luger (Edmund Cobb) to take care of him.

Luger hides in the brush along the main road into town and shoots John as he rides past, then skedaddles back to the race track.  Coming along the road is local rancher Charles Ingram (Lafe McKee) and his daughter Alice (Lucille Browne) heading to see the races.  They spot Rinty in the middle of the road, barking for help. Stopping they find John, who revives, having only been grazed by the bullet and knocked out. Telling them of Salter stealing his horse and racing him illegally, the Ingrams offer to drive him to the race track.

Back at the races, Rex easily wins the race, grabbing  the attention of  crooked racing promoter Frank Nolan (Richard Cramer) and his partner Raymond (Ernie Adams).  Nolan decides to buy Rex, and if Salter won’t sell, then he will steal the horse.

Salter goes to Rex’s stable where Luger confronts him for his share of the winnings.  Salter refuses to give him anything and fires the man.  Luger pulls out a knife and stabs Salter, then sneaks out of the stable, not knowing that he has been seen by Nolan.

John arrives at the race track and makes it loudly and angrily known that he is looking for Salter.  Finding him dead, the hot tempered cowboy pulls the knife out.  Nolan picks this time to walk and “catch the man in the act”.  Crying murder, Nolan brings a crowd to the stable and the Sheriff (Jack Rockwell) is called.

Nolan accuses John of murdering Salton.  John pleads his innocence, saying he was merely coming to get his horse.  Nolan then pulls out a fake bill of sale he had Raymond make up right after the race and claims that Salter had already sold Rex to him and John must have killed him in an attempt to steal Rex.

Realizing it’s a frame up, John grabs Rex and escapes, with Rinty’s help.  The Sheriff and his deputies give chase, and John heads cross country to evade his pursuers. With the posse catching up, John tries to cross a train trestle when a fast moving train comes round the bend.  Rex stumbles and and falls, tumbling John right into the path of the train…….

The stolen race horse plot was a popular one at Mascot. It was previously used in The Devil Horse (1931) and would be reworked with a polo plot for The Adventures of Rex and Rinty (1935). The first episode is a bit slow moving, especially for a Mascot, with little action, but there is an interesting twist where the person you think is going to be the main villain is killed in the first episode and replaced by a character introduced just minutes before.

The rest of the serial is a fast paced but standard Mascot plot of a falsely accused hero trying to prove his innocence while being pursued by both the police and the villain’s henchmen.  This allows for plenty of action where Bob Custer can demonstrate the horse riding skills that made him a cowboy star, while showing Rex and Rinty rescuing almost everyone in the cast at some point during the Twelve Chapters.  The chapters are filled with chases, fights and innumerable captures and escapes.

There is a major error that occurs during the course of the serial.  The fake bill of sale and a piece of paper with Salton’s real signiture on it showing that the bill of sale has been forged get destroyed in Chapter Four, then inexplicably show back up in Chapter Eleven with no explanation of where they came from.

Having watched this serial I am hard pressed to understand how Bob Custer managed to stay working in sound film for as long as he did. The only reason I can come up with is he has a slight facial resemblance to Tom Mix, because his expression rarely change from a slight frown and he speaks dialog like he is reading his lines for the first time on a card just off camera.  The script doesn’t help him either, as it has him constantly capturing the villain and then telling the man what his plans are.  Custer then acts sort of dazedly surprised that the villain manages to thwart him every time.

Custer’s sidekick is another former silent star, comedian Ben Turpin as ranch hand Henry, who’s entire shtick comprises of his looking at the wrontg thing or person due to his being cross eyed.  In fact the title of Chapter Three is The Cross Eyed Goon, which makes no sense as he was introduced in Chapter One where he wins a bunch of money by mistakenly pointing at Rex’s name when he was looking at the Ingram’s horse while placing the bet (Ha ha ha, what a knee slapper).  Such lame comedy aside, he is a decent sidekick, helping the hero out of several scrapes.

Lucille Browne give a better performance than she did in Last of the Mohicans (1931), where she mainly looked frightened and screamed.  Here she is a feisty character who doesn’t hesitate to grab a gun and use it.  Threats bounce off her like water off a duck, and she makes it believable that she is tough enough to be running the family ranch for her father.

Richard Cramer injects a nice venneer of sophistication to his bruttish character.  He seems equally at home among society people at the race track as well as the scummy looking bunch he employs to do his dirty work.

But the best villain is Edmund Cobb, in his biggest serial role.  Though supposedly under Crammer’s thumb after he reveals he knows Cobb really committed the murder, Cobb never acts like he is a henchman.  He struts and threatens people with the authority of someone who is convinced they are the one really in charge.  I often got the feeling that, though never spoken, Cobb was always planning on killing Cramer and running the operation once the horse was recovered.

Of course the real stars are Rex and Rinty. Rex does his usual thing of running like the devil and giving a few affectionate head rubs to the hero.  Rinty gets a large amount of screen time, outsmarting henchman, going for help and generally getting the less than sharp Custer out of innumerable scrapes.  He rescues Custer so many times the serial borders on being camp.

Though not a great serial, or one of Macot’s best, it does have it’s moments, and is worth a look, even if it’s just to see how truly inept an actor Bob Custer was.

Tags: Reviews by admin
No Comments »