Adventures of Captain Marvel
A Republic Studios 12-part serial from 1941. I was pleasantly surprized. The story is good, if somewhat repetitious when watching all episodes in a row. They were meant to be viewed once a week over a three-month period, after all, so there was a bit of recapping at the beginning of each episode. And when each episode is only 15 minutes long, it makes for a bit too much repeating. Each episode, of course, ends in a cliff hanger. The story starts when Captain Marvel is created, follows him as he battles the Scorpion, and ends when Captain Marvel is no more. The weakest character of them all was Captain Marvel himself. Whenever Billy Batson Shazams into CM, the good Captain always looks a bit “whoa! how did I get here?”
That aside, the characters were way more developed than I expected. The costumes left something to be desired, especially the Scorpion’s which looked like a dark and decorated KKK robe. The special effects, especially CM flying, are very good indeed. I wasn’t expected CM to be no more at the end of the serial. I thought he was more of an ongoing Superman type thing. Billy Batson was a little twerpy. All in all, though, very much worth watching.
Rating: C; would not watch again.
January 25th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
The only serial I’ve seen is the Crimson Ghost which I bought on VHS, well… because.
Man, the fights in that thing are out of hand! People punching each other over desks, through windows. It’s totally insane.
January 25th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
The fights were okay. It’s kind of tough fighting a superhero, though. I mean, it’s not like you can get in more than one punch. There was also a lot of driving to and fro. Quick! Let’s go to your office! Quick! Let’s go to the professor’s lab! Quick! Let’s go the secret hideout!
Worth watching, though.
January 26th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Had a thought this morning. (I know, stop the presses!)
Seeing that you got that serial from Netflix, it’s gotta be on DVD. I’m wondering why they didn’t arrange the chapter stops so that there was an option to “Play All”, which would include the recapping and forecasting between episodes, and a “Segments Only” that would cut those out.
(The DVD for Season One of the TV show “The Ultimate Fighter” did just that, and it cut down on a lot of the redundant crap. I thought that was a nice feature.)
Then I was thinking that the reason this was ommitted might have been just what made Annie Wilkes so gosh-darn mad. After all, HE DIDN’T GET OUT OF THE COCKADOODIE CAR!
January 26th, 2006 at 9:38 am
They did have a “Play All” but it was play all from the opening theme song to the FBI warning for each episode. The recap was a series of photos with captions telling where we are in the story. Like, a picture of Captain Marvel with a caption saying “Captain Marvel rescued Betty from $latest_peril”. I didn’t mind those since I didn’t watch it straight through (it’s 3-1/2 hours long).
The photos were followed by a replay of the cliffhanger. Except there were a couple of times when they use the cheap plot device of changing the cliff hanger. Like, Billy Batson is flying his plane and Whitey is trying to get him on the radio to tell him there’s a bomb in the plane set to go off at 8:01. (Why 8:01?!?).
Cliffhanger version: plane blows up, fade to black.
Replay version: at the last minute Billy Batson sees the radio wires have been cut, splices them together, hears Whitey’s warning, and jumps out of the plane (yelling “Shazam!”), plane blows up.
January 26th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Man, those things really took advantage of the audience, didn’t they? After seeing a few too many of those revisionary endings, I might have gotten mad enough to start hobbling people too.