Serial of the Month: King of the Mounties
Like with any genre, there are the great “lost” titles, where for one reason or the other, some films have fallen out of circulation and the prints have been left to deteriorate, and serials have had more than their fair share of titles that have gone missing.
The “lost” serials tend to take on a mythical quality in the eyes of fans, becoming the best the genre ever offered in the hearts of many fans. Some, like The Lone Ranger (1938), live up to the hype, while others, like Daredevils of the West (1943), though enjoyable as well made cliffhangers are unable to live up to the fantay concocted in the minds of many fans.
Such is the case of King of the Mounties (1942), the sequel to King of the Royal Mounted (1940), a serial that exists with missing sound and footage in various chapters. Long believed to be superior to the first serial, a version has been released on DVD with subtitles to cover the missing parts and proves to be a good serial, but not as great as some fans believed.
The serial opens with Canada under attack by a strange flying craft that appears, bombs it’s target and then disappears before any fighters can get to the area. Prof. Brent (George Irving) and his daughter Carol (Peggy Drake) invent a detector that can locate the mystery plane, requiring Canadian skies to be clear of all but one spotter plane so that he can more easily discern it from from the other plane.
His device works as he spots the plane and radios it’s coordinates to Sgt Dave King of the Mounties (Allan Lane). The strange ship, piloted by Japanese Admiral Yamata (Abnier Biberman), who is demonstrating it to two representatives of his country’s Axis allies, Germany’s Marshal Von Horst (William Vaughn) and Italy’s Count Baroni (Nestor Pavia).
King spots the plane and radios in a description of it, calling it a Falcon Plane (a designation that both good and bad guys will therafter use to refer to it for the rest of the serial). King engages the Falcon Plane in a dogfight and is quickly shot down, but manages to bail out in time.
Yamata decides to head for his hideout before pursuit planes can be scrambled to the area. His hideout is inside a partially active volcano that can only be accessed by the vertically maneuverable Falcon Plane. Once inside their hideout, Yamata realizes he cannot use his plane again until the detector is taken care of. He radios his confederate, trading post operator Harper (Douglas Dumbrille) to send someone to Winnipeg and steal the detector.
Harper contacts men in Winnipeg, who inform him that Brent and the detector are being moved to Tombstone Landing, which is where they are operating, since that is where the Falcon Plane keeps disappearing, so they can get more accurate readings. When Harper relays this to Yamataa, plans are changed and it is decided to kidnap Brent and ship him to Japan so his scientific knowledge can be used by the Land of the Rising Sun. Harper dispatches his two best men for the job, Blake (Bradley Page) and Stark (Anthony Warde).
Sgt King is dispatched to meet Brent’s boat at the Caribou docks but is attacked by a sniper. Dropping from his horse, he works his way through the brush until he spots the sniper and shoots him with his trusty service revolver. Continuing on to the Caribou docks, he finds Mounty Ross (Willaim Bakewell) tied up. Releasing him, King is told of the abduction of Prof. Brent in a truck and which way they went.
Cutting cross country on his horse, King overtakes the truck and jumps off a small outcropping to the back of the truck bed, where he engages in a terrific fist fight, knocking several henchmen over the side before Stark tosses King himelf off the truck. Brent drves the truck to Gus’s, a closed down speakeasy, where he leaves a tied up Brent with Gus (Carleton Young) to await a Japanese plane that will pick up the scientist.
King returns to the Caribou docks dejected at losing the men who had grabbed Prof Brent. He questions Ross to see if he can remembr anything to tell where they were taking the professor. Ross remembers a mention of Gus’s. King knows where that is and he and Ross jump into a boat and head for the speakeasy.
The pilot that is flying in to get Brent spots the two Mounties and realize where they are heading. The co-pilot starts to drop bombs on the Mounties. Ross retaliates with a tommy gun, which backs the plane off long enough fo their boat to get to shore. Heading to the speakeasy, Gus spots them and starts shooting from a window, pinning the two Mounties down.
Ross lays down covering fire while King sneaks his way onto the roof of the speakeasy and gets inside, where he jumps Gus. The two men struggle and Brent ends up getting shot. While this is going on the plane flies in low for another pass at Ross, who straffs the plane, hitting the pilot. The plane goes into a dive and crashes into the speakeasy, exploding the building in a huge fireball…….
The serial is famous for it’s novelty of being the only serial to have all three Axis countries represented, usually it is only Germany and Japan either acting independently or as grudging partners, but never all three. And as usual with Hollywood, Italy is given little dignity or respect from the other two Axis powers, with the Italian representative generally pushed aside so that the real powers can get down to work.
The Falcon Plane is of course the Bat Plane from Spy Smasher (1942), redressed with a Rising Sun emblem on it’s tail and the propellers removed. It is a great prop and the highlight of the serial are the scenes of it descending or rising from the villains’s volcano lair (wonder if Cubby Broccoli was a fan of this serial when he was growing up, hmmm). One of the things that amuses me is how spacious the lair is, once the plane is parked in their makeshift hanger, the villains go through a door and enter a masive map and radio room, with doors leading to other rooms in view. Just how thick are the walls of this volcano?
Footage from the first serial are used throughout the serial, including Lane and his stuntman leaping off a tunnel onto a racing train, Lane running through a raging forest fire, and many shots of Lane riding hell bent for leather through pine trees. Ironically footage from this serial would get reused in future Mounty serials, right down to Dangers of the Canadian Mounted (1948) casting Anthony Warde and dressing him in the same costume from this serial.
The acting is all generally good. Allan Lane proves himself once again as one of the best serial leads, projecting a strong personality on screen, where his smiling and easy going character can turn deadly serious at the first hint of danger.
Peggy Drake is underused. Only put in danger a couple of times, she spends most of her screen time running the detector, which gives her a real distinction among serial heroines of coming off as extremely smart. William Bakewell is too old to play a young gung ho sidekick, so instead he plays a serious and competent Mounty, making himself appear to be a co-hero at times.
Like Drake, Douglas Dumbrille is also underused. A great character actor who specialized in slick and suave vilains, here he is little more than a glorified mesenger, spending almost the entire serial in his back office relaying instructions to henchmen or information to his boss. Bradley Page takes over the slick and suave villainy here as the main henchman who mostly engages the heroes, while dressed in a natty back woods suit. He is complimented by Anthony Warde’s more brutal thug, the only man who make a simple word like “Yeah” carry more menace than an actual threat.
The main villains don’t come off quite as good, mostly due to there being too many characters here to give everybody something to do. Abner Biberman comes off the best as the obvious leader of the trio, devising most of the plans and giving the henchmen orders. He is one of the most overconfident villains ever, never letting a setback faze hime for even a second before devising a way around it. William Vaughn gets to offer a few choice comments now and then, but mostly he and Nestor Pavia stand around the volcano lair gazing in awe at Biberman as he details his next scheme.
Reading the opening to this article, you may think I hate this serial. I don’t, it is a good serial, made by Republic during their peak period and directed by thier best director, William Witney. But I don’t think it is one of their best. When compared to Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939) or Perils of Nyoka (1942), it comes off a little weak. Like it’s predecessor, King of the Royal Mounted, it is a good second tier serial like The Painted Stallion (1937) or Haunted Harbor (1944).
