A beautiful
woman tied to train tracks. A speeding locomotive
snakes through the mountains. The woman screams.
A hero races to her. But will he reach her in
time?
Thanks to the
cutting together of images like these, mixed with
the melodramatic banging of a piano's keys,
stage writers and novelists suddenly had a hard
time competing with movies. Broadway could boast
about gifted choreographers and the ability to
drop scenery from the rafters but a clever juxtaposition
of shots had by 1914 become a powerful storytelling
tool.
Eventually, while mining
material from the world of literature, someone
swiped the serial-story gimmick. The idea worked
for publishers; give a story's beginning
then cheat readers out of the rest until they
drop another nickel for the next publication.
A third chapter would follow, and on and on. If
the reader wanted the exciting climax it would
cost a pocket full of nickels. Films began to
do the same thing.
The Perils
of Pauline |
|
At first, women
were the stars of this instantly popular genre.
The biggest was Pearl White.
At that time it wasn't all about fist-a-cuffs
and firing pistols. The main attraction was danger,
the damsel in distress. With less attention given
to a male hero, audiences were put in the position
of wanting to rush in and save her. The
Perils of Pauline was
Pearl White's greatest success. In it she
dangled from steep cliffs, was captured by cowboys,
pirates and Indians, and trapped in burning houses
and sinking ships. One chapter has her running
desperately from a speeding boulder, not unlike
Indiana Jones in Raiders
of the Lost Ark.
Massive talents
like D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas
Fairbanks raised the level of sophistication audiences
had come to expect from cinematic experiences
in the 1920's. Their ambition combined with
the radically changing times effectively left
the movie serial at the side of the road. There
were westerns, jungle and aviation stories presented
as chapter-plays but nothing captured the imagination
of the public again until Flash
Gordon in 1936.
A Flash
Gordon poster. |
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Buster Crabbe,
Jean Rogers and Charles Middleton were perfectly
cast as Flash, Dale and Ming the Merciless. The
art deco design was beautifully sleek and appropriately
futuristic and the writing, loyal to Alex Raymond's
popular comic strip, was excellent. For many,
good writing is measured by the degree to which
there is emotional and psychological depth. But
good writing also has a lot to do with imagination.
Flash Gordon
was nothing if not imaginative, taking viewers
far beyond the familiar with its outrageous monsters,
aliens and exotic sky cities. Fantasies had been
filmed before but their foundations were mostly
in fairy tales, whereas here the springboard was
a comic strip.
Handfuls of
writers around Hollywood were assigned new tasks.
Rather than chain smoke and scratch their heads
trying to articulate something which would amount
to more than a hill of beans in this crazy world,
they embraced the imagining of wild stunts, diabolical
contraptions and over a dozen shocking cliffhangers
per story. The success of Flash
Gordon inspired numerous
serials with costumed crusaders. Among them were
Zorro,
Spy Smasher,
Buck Rogers,
The Green Hornet,
The Shadow,
The Phantom,
Captain Marvel,
Captain Midnight,
Captain America,
Batman and Robin
and Superman.
But it wasn't
just costumes drawing crowds. Serials had a consistent
style whether the title was Don
Winslow of the Navy,
Tarzan,
Dick Tracy
or Don Daredevil
Rides Again. Each fifteen-minute
chapter was packed with gunfights, fistfights,
car chases and evil menaces with names like The
Scorpion, The Dragon, The Mask, The Lightening
and The Rattler. They were generally inexpensive.
Much of what they needed they borrowed. Sometimes
serials would shoot on sets left over from big
budgeted studio films. The music was often originally
composed for something else. Stock footage was
common in many films of the thirties and forties
but serials often had scenes written around it.
In other words, if someone found a few feet of
film showing a barn blowing up, writers would
have their hero hide in a barn.
Posters of the
King
of the Bullwhip,
Raiders
of Ghost City
and Don
Daredevil Rides Again
serials. |
The quality
of acting in chapter-plays varied. To be fair,
these are not easy roles to play. The characters
are one dimensional, which requires the actor
to shed personality more than other types of roles.
And yet, still the actor has to be compelling
and likable. Viewers still need to see sincerity
in the performance of an actor fighting for the
love of his alien princess while strapped to a
conveyor belt heading fast toward the atom furnace
of doom. Among those who were great at pulling
this off were Buster Crabbe and Kane Richmond.
Physically they were well suited to serials and
also they had the special talent of making larger-than-life
heroes believable. Among the movie stars who worked
in serials were Bela Lugosi, Walter Brennan, Boris
Karloff, Lionel Atwill, Lloyd Bridges and John
Wayne.
Television is
often faulted for putting an end to the age of
serials. But the best of serials had come and
gone long before television landed in every home.
Like a couple decades earlier, the trend simply
reached an end. Those who were really great at
chapter-plays had moved on.
But something happened few would have predicted
at the time; a legacy remained. The first most
obvious descendent of the serial was the Batman
TV show from the 1960's
with its deathtrap endings every other week. After
that, the spirit of the old serials found itself
resurrected again thanks to Steven Spielberg and
George Lucas.
Willie: “You're
going to get killed chasing after your damn
fortune and glory!"
Indy: “Maybe…But
not today."
All art is inspired by other art
and appropriation of ideas is not the result of
a lack of originality. And of course, originality
for the sake of originality is worthless, just
as an exact copy of a work of art never works.*
Drums
of Fu Manchu |
|
A swift glance through the serials
of the thirties and forties leaves one surprised
at how much is found which turned up later in
Star Wars and
Indiana Jones.
This, however, does not call into question the
jaw-dropping brilliance, in conception and execution,
of both franchises. Einstein once said that a
child could understand his theories, but the child
would not understand their importance. There is
something similar at work here in that most aspiring
filmmakers looked to Welles, Ford, Hitchcock,
Fellini and others to rip cinematic ideas from.
George Lucas, even more than Spielberg, found
something interesting in these largely ridiculous
little stories that ran before the main features.
He saw something important in them others had
missed.
Zorro and then cowboy hero Lash
LaRue first cracked Indy's bullwhip. Evil
villain, The Lightening, from Fighting
Devil Dogs** wore Darth Vader's polished
black helmet, black suit and black cape. Raiders
of Ghost City had a lead character named
Idaho Jones. Fantastic treasures possessing supernatural
powers like the Ark of the Covenant can be found
in The New Adventures
of Tarzan, The
Phantom, Captain
Marvel, Queen
of the Jungle, Drums
of Fu Manchu and one serial called Jungle
Raiders seemed to predict the climax of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
with this tag line: "See the weird and wonderful
treasure no man could see…and live!"
The scroll of text, which opened
every Flash Gordon
chapter, also opened every Star
Wars chapter. The ice planet Hoth hung
in the Flash Gordon
galaxy, except called Frigia. Massive amounts
of water chased Flash and friends through a cave
just as a flood later chased Indiana Jones and
Willie Scott through a cave. The runaway mine
car scene from Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom was in Tiger
Woman. There were Nazis, archeologists
or both in Ace Drummond
and the Squadron of Doom, The
Phantom, The Secret
Code, Spy Smasher,
Secret Service in Darkest
Africa, The Perils
of Nyoka and the remade version of The
Perils of Pauline.
Zorro's
Fighting Legion |
|
The most famous stuntman of all
time, Yakima Canutt, contributed to a number of
serials. In Zorro's
Fighting Legion he leapt onto charging horses
pulling a stagecoach. With bad guys shooting at
him from within the coach, he dropped between
the horses and crawled along the bottom of the
coach only to then climb up the back and take
out the surprised bad guys. In Raiders,
the stagecoach was traded for a truck but the
stunt remained the same. Zorro's
Fighting Legion also has a collapsing rope
bridge like in Temple
of Doom.
As there were over two hundred
serials produced, the listing of similar gags
and visual motifs between chapter-plays and the
Lucas' franchises could go on and on. Nevertheless,
one's respect for George Lucas and Steven
Spielberg should not be diminished. Hollywood
has always mined old material and does so now
more than ever. We live in an age of very limited
original ideas produced. But how many of the remakes
are any good? The challenge to new filmmakers
re-interpreting old material to achieve creative
success seems as great as if the project was wholly
original. Borrowed elements from other films don't
seem to make the game any easier. Spy
Smasher, for example, was easily one of
the best serials ever, yet so many of the same
ideas are found in terrible serials.***
It seems all the various influences
a filmmaker has would be invisible puzzle pieces
without some brilliance as to how to make them
all fit. One has to have the ability to see their
influences as clear pieces of a puzzle and exactly
where each piece fits. To know the best shot,
the best actor for the part, the best music to
capture the moment; these are the things a filmmaker
must be capable of seeing or else all the stolen
ideas will be worthless.
Scenes from the
Dick
Tracy, Spy
Smasher &
The Perils
of Nyoka serials.
|
Don't miss the next
thrilling episode of…
The greatest contribution serials
offered to cinema was not costumes and contraptions
but hope. A hero promised to return to fans week
after week, giving them something to wait for,
something to dream about. What ironically started
as a gimmick, a way to lure kids to the same theater
over and over, blossomed into artistic triumph.
Most importantly, not only would the hero return,
but also the hero would defy death in the process.
Death was faced and eluded at every turn. A secret
passage or an unexpected hand offered resurrection.
Audiences sighed with relief. And the next chapter
began.
Fans were left with the impression
that the absolute worst could happen and yet the
fight would go on. The hero would return. Death
was not really death but instead a beginning.
It would seem unlikely to be just coincidence
that movie serials were at their peek of popularity
when millions of children were losing their fathers
to war.
This death-defying element, which served practical
purposes in the serials, became essential in the
stories of George Lucas.
Belloq: “Who
knows? In a thousand years, even you may be
worth something."
Today's hit series 24. |
|
What Steven Spielberg and George
Lucas did was turn the little movie before the
main feature into the main feature. With the tremendous
success of Star Wars
and Indiana Jones,
doors opened for Superman
and Batman movies.
By the time the 1990's rolled around, Hollywood
had confidence in big screen versions of Dick
Tracy, Zorro,
The Shadow, The
Rocketeer and The
Phantom.
Most recently, the second installment
of the Pirates of the
Caribbean series ended with a cliffhanger.
And on television, what could be more exemplary
of the old serials than 24,
with its terrorist villains and weekly time-is-running-out
conclusions?
For many of us, movies are the
dreams that we choose. While some may choose psychological
dramas or historical epics, others find insight,
inspiration and maybe even a little profundity
in costumed super heroes, determined g-men, quick-draw
cowboys, sky fighters, jungle goddesses and of
course adventuring archeologists. For some, the
tangled webs of the psyche are unraveled and comfort
is found watching an indomitable man with a bullwhip
dodging boulders, poison arrows, snakes, spiders,
Hitler's evil agents and most poignantly,
freeing himself after being buried alive and rising
from an ancient and impossible to escape tomb.
|
* |
For an example, see
Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake
of Psycho (1998) with Vince
Vaughn and Anne Heche. |
** |
One of
the stars of Fighting Devil Dogs
was Montagu Love. His name alone conjures
up images of Hollywood's distant
and flickering black and white past.
He is notable for playing parts in most
of the best adventure films of the era:
Gunga
Din, The
Sea Hawk, The Adventures of
Robin Hood, The Prizoner of
Zenda and The Mark of Zorro. |
*** |
Republic Pictures
produced most of the best serials. The
top directors of the genre were John
English and William Witney. These two
(who mostly worked as a team) are credited
with having paved the way for modern
action moviemaking. |
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