1940s

One of the best serials ever made, Spy Smasher has managed to find favor even among non-serial aficionados. Like his fellow masked avenger, Batman, Spy Smasher possessed no super-human powers but was a mere mortal of flesh and blood.

In brief, Spy Smasher, alias Alan Armstrong (Kane Richmond, and his twin brother Jack (also Richmond) pursue a nefarious German agent known only as The Mask (Hans Schumm). Witney and screenwriters Ronald Davidson, Norman S. Hall, Joseph Poland, William Lively and Joseph O’Donnell imbued their hero with a dark uniform very similar to the one he wore in the comics, but added a fancy belt decorated with a large “V” for “Victory” and the morse code symbol for the letter, three dots and a dash. The coup de grace, so to speak, was Mort Glickman’s signature score adapted from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.Read More »

A mad scientist turns a man into an electrically-controlled monster to do his bidding.Read More »

Plot wrote:
The story of a lonely young boy growing up in Harlem. Using a semi-documentary technique, the film-makers realistically capture the hostile environment which leads the boy to delinquency. The youth is sent to Wiltwyck School for rehabilitation, where a psychiatrist and counselor try to break through the wall of silence which the boy uses to hide his fear and bitterness.Read More »

The Spider Returns (1941) is a Columbia movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. It was the fourteenth of the 57 serials released by Columbia and a sequel to its 1938 serial The Spider’s Web. The first episode runs 32 minutes; the rest are about 17 minutes each.

Synopsis :
Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth was formerly the masked vigilante, The Spider. Wentworth brings The Spider out of retirement to help his friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulps), fight a dangerous maniac. This new enemy is The Gargoyle, a mysterious crimelord who threatens America with sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck national defense.
(From Wikipedia)Read More »

A man returns from World War II to find his desperate wife had resorted to one night of prostitution to pay for their son’s hospital bills.Read More »

IMDB:
A police detective goes undercover and joins a gang of Nazi agents using explosive gases and artificial lightning to sabotage the war effort, whom he battles in disguise as The Black Commando.Read More »

Plot summary for
Manhunt of Mystery Island
A young couple journeys to Mystery Island to rescue the girl’s father, who is being held prisoner by the evil Captain Mephisto, a pirate from 200 years ago who uses his Transformation Machine to travel forward in time and disguise himself as one of the four owners of Mystery Island. Written by AnonymousRead More »

Quote:
Reviewing the serial it is still one of Republic’s best efforts, made at the peak of their creativity. Jim Harmon and Donald Glut have referred to “Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc.” as “The Best of Dick Tracy” since a lot of the action and cliffhanger footage is made up from the three previous serials. In essence, Republic took what they considered the most exciting scenes from earlier serials, and strung them together with a strong storyline. Unlike most of the post war serials that were constructed out of earlier serials, this one is not hampered by all of the reused footage.Read More »

Quote:
It made me think of the Third Man, just the structure of how the story unfolds, like as if Rollo Martins was a married couple on their honeymoon stumbling onto the tail end of No Pockets in a Shroud.

I actually picked this up because I always love John Ireland’s villain in Railroaded. and he definitely didn’t disappoint as the he-man hero husband in this one. In fact everyone did a great job – keep a look-out for the sinister, serpentine woman & her hell-spawn spouting poison in the street, a grand single-scene supporting performance. Well I liked it anyway, I doubt she got any awards, but true artists never do! Actors like that lady prefer to live in the shadows…Read More »