Welcome to another edition of the Wednesday Night Classic Serial down in The Dungeon!! Tonight's feature is
"Radar Men From The Moon" starring the iconic Commando Cody! The music was composed by the prolific Stanley Wilson who somehow managed to have some 143 composing credits, and another 240 music department credits in a mere 27 years! Stanley was no slouch when it came to serials, he composed the music for many, many of them over the years, including "Federal Agents Vs.Underworld, Inc," "King Of The Rocket Men," "Radar Patrol Vs. Sky King," "Flying Disc Man From Mars," "Government Agents Vs. Phantom Legion," and "Zombies Of The Stratosphere!!!"
By 1952, the serials were starting to peter out, and it would be no time at all before they would only be seen on TV or maybe at your local theater's Saturday matinee that featured such entertainment as Zippy the Clown, Mitch Mitchell and "Unlock A Lock," along with a handful of cartoons, a couple of silent shorts, maybe some "Three Stooges" or "Laurel and Hardy" featurettes, and some minor feature film! Mom would drop off the kids to do some shopping, and come back three hours later to take them out for a burger and some ice cream sundaes!
But Republic was hanging in there, and still desperately introducing new characters like Commando Cody!
Serials were one of the greatest marketing scams of all times, tease the kids with 15 minutes, and leave them hanging! How could you possibly miss the next episode? Back then, they showed them once, and if you missed it, you were left out in the cold for God only knows how long!
It's 1952 for Christ's sake! What's going to possibly me more exciting than a Moon Rocket? Nothing, that's what! Space was still a good old fashioned mystery!!
Oh, No!!! It's the end of the world!!
Pretty cool looking ray gun, but those guys don't look much like Martians or Moon people, because they are rat turncoats, hired by the Moon guys to do their dirty work!
Time for George Wallace to go into action as Commando Cody! George Wallace ended up acting on TV for 6 decades, and was quite possibly on every TV show ever made, but his finest hour was as crew member Bosun in one of our ultra favourite films, "Forbidden Planet!" This George Wallace should no way be mixed up with the segregationist Governor of Alabama, nor the awesome black comedian George Wallace!
"Which way did he go George, Which way did he go?"
Really, not all that bad of flying effects for 1952!
Pretty damn good fight scene too! I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if somebody actually got hurt during this scene!
Okay, time to go to the Moon! The cop escort is driving an extra cool black and white shoebox!
Wow, those rocket seats look an awful lot like office chairs!!
Back in 1952, this is how you figured out how to get to the moon!!
The Moon's a pretty cool place, kinda reminds me of Iraq!
Commando Cody decides to check it out!
Even Moon elevators are cool, like they had some 1940's avant-garde art deco artiste designing all their shit!
Can't say much about the Moon's fashion designer though, scaly hoodie and vaporizing ray gun were already kind of passe' by 1952!
So this went on for 12 episodes, that's three months of forking out a quarter each and every week, and that's a lot of lawns to mow, but it was worth every penny of it, beyond a shadow of a doubt!!
No comments:
Post a Comment