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Chronological Horror Watch Rankings from 2023

Life continues to be busy, and Sci-Fi Saturdays are basically on hold until I have the time and mental bandwidth to engage in unpaid cinema musing. (Especially because I want to write stuff that's actually thoughtful and interesting.)

However, if you follow me on Twitter or BlueSky, then you know I have been commenting on the horror films I have been watching to mark Spooky Season.

I watch and read about horror all year long, but Halloween is an excuse to mainline them. Last year I sk/tweeted my way through a chronological watch of Pre-Code/1930s horror cinema.

Here's how I ranked the 25 films I watched, from worst to best, with my sk/tweet commentary:

25. Murders in the Zoo (Dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1933): The premise is good, but the film is either a delight or dud, depending on how funny you find Charles Ruggles' character, and how much you know about eating patterns of large reptiles.

24. Thirteen Women (Dir. George Archainbaud, 1932): I want to like this Bechdel Test passing tale of a mixed-race woman killing off the white women who bullied her as a child, but the yellow face, Orientalism and racism present disgusts me too much.

23. Murders in the Rue Morgue (Dir. Robert Florey, 1932): Bela Lugosi's screen presence and Karl Freund's cinematography keep this Edgar Allen Poe adaptation from true mediocrity. For a better 1930s movie with a killer ape watch "King Kong."

22. Svengali (Dir. Archie Mayo, 1931): Is this truly a horror movie? Film scholar William K. Everson thought so. Svengali is a hypnotic, abuser of young women, like Dracula. The actual horror is that manipulative abusers are so prevalent in real life.

21. Werewolf of London (Dir. Stuart Walker, 1935): Werewolf of London plays like a variant on The Invisible Man minus James Whale's artistry. The seed of a good concept is in this film, however, and would eventually inspire better werewolf films.

20. The Invisible Ray (Dir. Lambert Hillyer, 1936): Boris Karloff's antisocial scientist pursues Radium "X" research to the point of self destruction, but makes the mess he made of his reputation and relationships everyone else's problem.

19. Dracula's Daughter (Dir. Lambert Hillyer, 1936): For happening moments after Dracula ends, it's odd that the Sewards are never mentioned in Dracula's Daughter. At least Countess Zakeska being outright bisexual diverts from this plothole.

18. Dracula (Dir. Tod Browning, 1931): Is it a good adaptation of the source novel? Not really. Did Tod Browning really leave most of the direction to cinematographer Karl Freund? Probably. Is Bela Lugosi nevertheless charismatic and iconic as Dracula? YES!

17. Freaks (Dir. Tod Browning, 1932): Given how some of the performers were exploited, I feel a bit guilty for how much I enjoy Freaks. I love stories of outsiders creating found family (as well as revenge narratives), so I keep coming back to this unique film.

16. Drácula (Dir. George Medford, 1931): A Spanish language version of Dracula exists because reshooting the main scenes in a different language was easier than dubbing or subtitling films in 1930. The resulting film is overall better than Tod Browning's.

15. White Zombie (Dir. Victor Halperin, 1932): Part of the "Bela Lugosi Has Weird Makeup" and "A Woman Being Hypnotized is A Man's Problem Actually" Pre-Code subgenres. Of greater note, this film says a lot more about colonialism than probably intended.

14. The Black Cat (Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): The Black Cat is a film where aesthetics and shock value are the attraction over story. Bela Lugosi gets to be handsome, Boris Karloff gets to be stylishly sinister, and the two pair well together.

13. The Raven (Dir. Louis Friedlander, 1935): Bela Lugosi's Edgar Allen Poe obsessed neurosurgeon seems to be taking revenge on Boris Karloff for his character's sins against Lugosi's in The Black Cat. Granted, his character is also a sadist.

12. The Most Dangerous Game (Dir. Irving Pichel and Earnest B. Schoedsack, 1932): Shot on many of the same sets as King Kong (1933) and featuring 2 of its stars, The Most Dangerous Game looks like an adventure story and plays out as suspenseful horror.

11. Island of Lost Souls (Dir. Erle C. Kenton, 1932): The compulsion to include love interests in adaptations of literary sci-fi/horror like Island of Lost Souls, adds interesting dimension to their themes, even as they remain narratives centering men.

10. The Mummy (Dir. Karl Freund, 1932) The plot is mostly a rehash of Dracula (1931), but its heroine has more agency. Jack Pierce's makeup and Boris Karloff's performance are equal to, if not better than, their work in Frankenstein.

9. Doctor X (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1932): Shot in expressive two-color Technicolor and featuring pre-Code scream queen Fay Wray, Doctor X packs an amazing amount of horror, sci-fi, comedy, and mystery elements into 76 minutes.

8. The Bride of Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1935): Despite being made after the Production Code went into effect, the body count is higher in this film than Frankenstein. The Bride herself, meanwhile, only appears on screen for less than 5 minutes.

7. Mystery of the Wax Museum (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1933): Michael Curtiz, Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Technicolor teamed up a second time for Mystery of the Wax Museum. But it's fast talking, reporter Glenda Farrell who keeps the plot moving and together.

6. Mad Love (Dir. Karl Freund, 1935): Maybe it's the presence of fellow expatriate Karl Freund behind the camera, but Peter Lorre's performance in Mad Love is nuanced, captivating, and one of his best. The film is otherwise middle of the road for the era.

5. The Old Dark House (Dir. James Whale, 1932): Need a Gothic meditation on the Lost Generation but with black humor and queerness? James Whale is your director! The film is a fairly accurate adaptation of its source novel, Benighted by J.B. Priestley, too.

4. The Invisible Man (Dir. James Whale, 1933): James Whale's horror films, including The Invisible Man, have more character than their contemporaries. Claude Rains' manic, darkly comic performance is as strong as the visual effects.

3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dir. Rouben Mamoulian, 1931): Karl Struss' dynamic, creative cinematography makes this adaptation of the oft filmed Robert Louis Stevenson novella stand out. Unfortunately, Hyde's abuse of Ivy is trigger warning warranting disturbing.

2. Vampyr (Dir. Carl Th. Dreyer, 1932, France/Germany) It's not a Hollywood film, so Vampyr probably shouldn't be on this list, but this trippy, technically sound but aesthetically silent, art film fits the timeline, so I used that as an excuse to watch it.

1. Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1931): Like Dracula, Frankenstein is a loose adaptation of its source novel, but has defined the iconography of its central monster. It's also a damn great film, period. Its influence on horror and sci-fi is justified.

[pandoramsbox]

I can attend concerts, or I can write Sci-Fi Saturday posts, but I don't have the bandwidth for both. That's why there was no post last week, and there will not be one this week. Hoping to return to the regular weekly schedule next week.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: The Man in the White Suit

Week 30:

Film(s): The Man in the White Suit (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951, UK)

Viewing Format: Streaming - Kanopy

Date Watched: 2022-02-18

Rationale for Inclusion:

Given that Ewan McGregor has been playing Obi-Won Kenobi in live-action Star Wars media off and on since 1999, would anyone under 30 years-old be able to place Alec Guinness by me saying, "You know, Obi-Won Kenobi in Star Wars?" To Millennials and older geeks this lack of cultural touchstone would hurt our brains, but the knighted, most accomplished character and dramatic actor himself would be relieved that Star Wars (Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, Dir. George Lucas, 1977, USA) may not be what he is remembered most for in 2024, as it was not his favorite role despite the financial stability it enabled for him. Granted, I don't know what other example of Guinness' filmography I would use for someone under 30 who doesn't attend classic cinema film festivals. Star Wars is still better known than Lawrence of Arabia (Dir. David Lean, 1962, UK) or Kind Hearts and Coronets (Dir. Robert Hamer, 1949, UK) by the mainstream populus of the United States.

I begin on this note because this week's film, The Man in the White Suit (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951, UK), stars Sir Alec Guinness in a comedic role, which while not unusual for him, especially in the 1950s, is not the work for which the mainstream consciousness most remembers him. A chance to witness more of Guinness' incredible range was part of the reason for selecting this film, as was the fact that the last British sci-fi satire that we watched for the survey, Once in a New Moon (Dir. Anthony Kimmins, 1935, UK), has been one of the great discoveries by my partner and I on this cinematic journey thus far. Plus, according to the British Film Institute, The Man in the White Suit is the 58th greatest film to come out of its country.

Reactions:

Being familiar with Guinness' dramatic work, it came as no surprise to me or my partner that the actor turned in a brilliant performance as Sidney Stratton, a research chemist bent on creating an indestructible fiber. The number of lab explosions and subterfuge Stratton undertakes gives his comedic timing ample opportunities to shine.

The emphasis on chemistry led to the inclusion of the "Guggle Glub Gurgle" song to accompany the chemicals burbling, moving and bubbling. My partner and I assumed that it must have been the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who created the music and sound effects for Doctor Who and both the radio and television versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. To our surprise, the experimental and pioneering electronic music and sound production company was not formed until 1958; 7 years after the release of The Man in the White Suit. Instead, the creative composition was created by sampling sounds made by actual equipment, which may make it the most widely heard example of musique concrète.

The slapstick humor transitions more into satire when Stratton successfully completes the first batch of his indestructible, radioactive fiber, and makes it into the suit of the title. The viability of cloth that does not stain or wear out causes a panic amongst everyone from capitalists, to textile workers, to little old ladies who take in others' washing for a bit of money. The economy and culture would be upended by it in a way that was too massive for people to handle. Luckily for the conservative minded, a flaw in the formula causes the cloth to gradually break down over a few weeks. With Stratton's firing, the threat seems to be neutralized. Except, Stratton has a revelation whilst looking at his formula notes, and at the end strides off, presumably to seek out a means of creating a second version of the indestructible cloth.

Stratton continues the tradition of the mad scientist, but instead of upending morals and religion like his predecessors, he upends capitalism and commerce. Given the post-World War II industrial boom many countries experienced, and the Cold War being configured on communist versus capitalist lines, it's an evolution keeping with the times in which the film was created. He is nevertheless just as antisocial and obsessive as his predecessors Henry Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein.

He also carries on the mad scientist tradition of experimenting on himself by wearing a suit made of his indestructible fiber. Stratton is not merely daily driving his cloth, the way new products are tested for their practicality, because the fiber includes radioactive elements. The long term damage of radiation exposure through patent medicines containing radioactive elements and working with radioluminescent paints was known by the 1930s. It is entirely possible that Stratton could have developed a version of the formula where the cloth would not deteriorate, but the person wearing it would do so horrifically. At that point his cloth would not only be a direct economic threat, but a direct threat to public health.

My speculating and interpreting of the invention central to the film aside, The Man with the White Suit is a fun piece of sci-fi and satire, managing to be equal measures funny, smart, and thought provoking. It's widely available on streaming and home media formats, and definitely worth a watch.

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Sci-Fi Saturday: Five

Week 29:

Film(s): Five (Dir. Arch Oboler, 1951, USA)

Viewing Format: Streaming Video (Amazon)

Date Watched: 2022-02-11

Rationale for Inclusion:

Late in the runtime of last week's film, The Thing From Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA), as part of a monologue trying to convince his fellow occupants of the Arctic base not to destroy the carnivorous plant alien that has already drained the blood of multiple scientists and sled dogs, Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) concludes his plea for the importance of the pursuit of knowledge at all costs with, "We split the atom." At which point, one of the airmen, Lt. Eddie Dykes (James Young), cuts in with, "Yes, and that sure made the world happy, didn't it?" The sardonic quip stops Carrington cold.

In 1951, only six years had passed since the United States had deployed atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August of 1945. Whilst news of the destruction and atrocities were initially slow to spread, by the time the film takes place the scientists and airmen in The Thing no doubt knew the horrors inflicted upon Japan. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1949, and the Cold War was very much underway.

With this cultural context in place, it follows that the post-apocalyptic film would make a comeback in the 1950s. Rocketship X-M (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950, USA) featured a post nuclear disaster society on Mars, but this survey has not featured a film where the central narrative is built around people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world since natural disaster film Deluge (Dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, USA). So when I encountered Five (Dir. Arch Oboler, 1951, USA) described as the "first to depict the aftermath of an Earthly atomic bomb catastrophe" whilst perusing Wikipedia's science fiction cinema list, I knew it was an essential film to view.

Five was an independent film written, directed and produced by Arch Oboler, a successful radio dramatist who followed in Orson Welles' footsteps in transitioning to filmmaking. Oboler had directed three films prior to Five, and to keep costs down on the production the cast featured relatively unknown working actors, the crew was recruited from recent University of Southern California graduates, and the primary filming location was a Frank Lloyd Wright designed guest house on Oboler's Malibu ranch.

Reactions:

With its limited cast and locations, Five is dominantly the kind of no frills character study that would become more commonplace during the 1960s. It is simply and competently made with aesthetics that may remind modern day audiences of episodes of anthology television series, like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.

As implied by the title of the film, the small cast of characters includes five people: the pregnant Roseanne Rogers (Susan Douglas Rubeš), white everyman Michael Rogin (William Phipps), the aged bank clerk Oliver P. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), black everyman Charles (Charles Lampkin), and supposedly affluent adventurer Eric (James Anderson). Roseanne's sex and Charles' race become sources of drama, mostly because Eric exhibits a behavior described decades later by sociologists as "elite panic."

Lee Clarke and Caron Chess of Rutgers University coined the term in a 2008 journal article, in which based on available research and case studies of disasters from the 1950s through 2001 they determined that the source of panic in these scenarios was not the general public devolving into a mob, but by elites, fearing that their power and wealth would be violently stripped from them by a mob. Clarke and Chess specifically identify three relationships with panic that occur during disasters: elites fearing panic, elites causing panic, and elites panicking. My introduction to this concept came via an episode of the podcast Behind the Bastards recorded during November of 2020, when amid the COVID-19 pandemic and stress around the presidential election having a reminder that the majority of people are inherently giving, caring, communal creatures was a huge comfort.

In Five, after an initially violent encounter, Michael and Roseanne band together for survival, with Oliver and Charles later joining them. They compassionately deal with Roseanne's pregnancy and Oliver's mental dissociation and decline from radiation sickness amid their limited resources. Oliver's dying request to visit the nearby ocean results in the old man having as peaceful a death as available under the circumstances, and the discovery of a man washed ashore, Eric.

The injured Eric's explanation for how he survived the atomic bombing is bizarre compared to the banality of the others' explanations, who were shielded from the blast via being in an elevator, lead-lined hospital x-ray room, and bank vault, respectively. Instead Eric was actively climbing Mount Everest alone when a blizzard stranded him. When he made it back to basecamp he found other climbers dead. On foot and via abandoned conveyances Eric had made his way back to America, encountering no other survivors along the way, just dead bodies.

Eric's journey in its entirety sounds highly unlikely, but at first only one aspect utterly defied my credulity: who climbs Mount Everest alone? Mountaineering is not a pet topic of research for me, but I know enough to know that no serious climber attempts Everest without guides, frequently members of the local Sherpa community. "What happened to his sherpa?" I demanded aloud when we got to this point in the film. "Did he eat them?"

Given that Eric is gradually revealed to be a greedy opportunist, in retrospect his story may have been nothing but lies. It seems more likely he was in the United States the entire time and leapfrogged from one pocket of resources and survivors to another until he ended up washing up on the beach. Regardless of whether he actually was a billionaire or not--and the film does nothing to disprove his account--he nevertheless has an elite mentality: trying to hoard resources (including Roseanne) to himself. 

Eric is the sociopathic evolution of the wandering rapists from Deluge, and ultimately serves the narrative role of Michael's doppelganger. Michael may have initially tried to sexually assault Roseanne, but spends the rest of the film making up for that feral moment. Eric is predatory and ends up becoming a murderer in the course of the narrative; after being banished by the others, he goes back to steal supplies and kills Charles when he is caught. Michael is spared having to also become a murderer by the reveal near the end of the film that Eric has radiation poisoning and likely does not have much time left. The film makes it clear that Michael is a good man, and deserving of being the new Adam of the post-apocalyptic world.

Roseanne earns her new Eve status in part by being the token female, and in part because she is devoted to her missing husband until she finds definitive proof that he died in the bombing. Her dedication to her husband and baby are all that is needed to qualify her as a good woman. 

Unfortunately, her newborn dies for reasons of narrative convenience. Apparently it was too much to ask for Michael to be father to a baby he did not conceive. Instead it ends with Michael and Roseanne left alone. Despite the tragedies and threat of radiation sickness lingering, Five closes conservatively and reasonably optimistically: life will go on.

Before I wrap up, I would be remiss if I did not spend more time discussing Charles. His presence is itself a progressive act, given how the casts of most mainstream films surveyed thus far have been all or mostly white. However, he is introduced in a subservient role to an old white man, and spends the remainder of his time in the narrative as a litmus test to show who is the superior white man to repopulate the world: Michael or Eric. The notion that Charles might be a candidate for Roseanne's mate is never so much as suggested. For all the indignities Charles suffers throughout Five, he at least is spared the trope frequently placed on black men of being the first to die. Overall, Charles is a minor step forward for black representation in science fiction cinema.

Five, on the other hand, is a solid first representation of the post-nuclear apocalypse narrative. Later films built on the premise, like On the Beach (Dir. Stanley Kramer, 1959) and The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Dir. Ranald MacDougall, 1959), would result in better movies, but Five deserves greater attention within the sub-genre.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: The Thing From Another World

Week 28:

Film(s): The Thing From Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA)

Viewing Format: Blu-Ray

Date Watched: 2022-02-04

Rationale for Inclusion:

As stated before, part of the point of this chronological survey of science fiction cinema was an excuse to revisit favorite films. This week we finally get to one of my partner and my preexisting favorites of the genre: The Thing From Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA).

In part to differentiate it from the John Carpenter 1982 readaptation, this film is usually referred to as "Howard Hawks' The Thing" because the film is so full of the director's auteur tropes that it struck critics as inconceivable that he only acted as producer on the project. He did apparently contribute to the script, as did his frequent collaborator Ben Hecht, though sole screen credit for the adaptation of "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell is given to Charles Lederer, another regular Hawks collaborator. 

Based on the rest of his filmography, credited director Christian Nyby seems to have only operated as director on a technical level, following the example of his mentor Hawks. Despite how the Cahiers du Cinema bros' auteur theory has been interpreted, not all directors are inherently auteurs. Just as some producers exercise authorship of their productions (sometimes to the consternation of directors), but not all. If/then logic and cult of personality can blind critics to how these dynamics vary from filmmaker to filmmaker. 

All that to say, this film is "Howard Hawks' The Thing" in the same way that Destination Moon (Dir. Irving Pichel, 1950, USA) is "George Pal's Destination Moon." Hawks' preferences for content that define him as an auteur director flowed into him taking on the role of producer. I do think he left the mechanical chores of directing The Thing to Nyby, even as he was exerting great creative control.

At any rate, The Thing was the second film released in 1951 to focus on a crash-landed alien spaceship, roughly a month after The Man from Planet X (Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1951, USA). Of the many sci-fi films released in 1951, including the iconic The Day the Earth Stood Still (Dir. Robert Wise, 1951, USA), The Thing proved to be the biggest moneymaker. Contemporary reviews were decidedly mixed, yet it has gone on to be one of the most referenced and lauded examples of the sci-fi genre of its era, eventually being added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 2001.

Reactions: 

As mentioned before, The Thing was a film that my partner and I had both seen before and liked, but watching it in the context of other genre films of its era gave us a deeper appreciation for it.

Due to a combination of auteur sensibilities, special effects limitations, and Production Code considerations, The Thing is only a loose adaptation of "Who Goes There?" No characters overlap between the two; the film swaps the South Pole for its northern counterpart; the spaceship crash has just happened, instead of occurring thousands of years ago; and the extraterrestrial they haul back to camp in a block of ice is not a shapeshifting mimic, but a carnivorous plant monster. Those familiar with John Carpenter's version, The Thing (Dir. John Carpenter, 1981, USA), will note that based on this list of changes alone, the later adaptation is closer to its source material than the 1951 version. Those who have read "Who Goes There?" and seen both films will confirm this fact.

The liberties taken with Hawks' The Thing may seem frustrating to people who want to watch a tighter adaptation of the source novella, but in and out of the context of 1950s sci-fi cinema, the Hawksian touches are what makes it a stand out film. The characters are all world-weary professionals who lived through World War II, and many have the sardonic sense of humor that comes from living through too many unprecedented events. The tough-talking, gorgeous and unapologetically funny Hawksian Woman is present in the form of Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan), Dr. Carrington's (Robert Cornthwaite) highly competent secretary. Unlike the clunky and stilted cardboard characters that populate The Man from Planet X, the characters have the personality, camaraderie, and senses of humor that are typical of Hawks' filmography and it makes the film a joy to watch.

In keeping with the characters being flashed out as realistic and expert people, to quote my partner, "nobody is a dumbass." Even as Dr. Carrington's attempts to better understand and communicate with The Thing (James Arness) may seem foolish, they are perfectly reasonable for an implicitly ace/aro scientist obsessed with gaining new knowledge whose ego gets the better of him. Dr. Carrigton explains during the dissection of the Thing's arm that the entity seems to be from a planet where plant life became dominant instead of animal life, yet nevertheless seems shocked when his attempts to communicate with the Thing are met with the same violence the alien showed the sled dogs earlier in the film. Either he had not connected that all animal life forms are merely lower order food to the Thing, or thought that his scientific brilliance and attempt at friendship would be well received regardless.

Scientists being treated as impractical, incorrect children in conflict with correct, military men of action has been cited by a recurring theme in sci-fi films of the 1950s by Peter Biskind in his book Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. Given the nature of the Cold War politics, nuclear fears, and the United States pushing for heteronormativity after the gender role upsets necessary to engage in World War II, Biskind viewing sci-fi films like The Thing and Them! (Dir. Gordon Douglas, 1954, USA) as ideologically conservative is not an incorrect read. However, his way is not the only way to interpret these films; especially if you are not trying to make an overarching argument about a decade's worth of cinema.

Part of the appeal of The Thing is the same to me as Star Trek. My partner and I even commented on how the core plot (a militaristic group needing to protect a group of research scientists from a hostile alien) and character dynamics were proto-"Sass" Trek, as we often refer to the franchise, due to all Starfleet officers apparently having to meet a minimum sass requirement to serve. The less obvious narrative aspects The Thing has in common with Star Trek however is its respect for expertise, techno-babble, and practical, humanitarian underpinnings.

The first two are especially apparent amongst the team of scientists. Each one has discrete specializations, and is called upon to use them to interpret phenomena related to a crash landed extraterrestrial spacecraft, including its surviving passenger. In other sci-fi films, and not just during the 1950s, the scientist characters are often depicted as experts in all or multiple unrelated scientific disciplines. When such characters pop up, I am apt to quote Carlos the Scientist from an early episode of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale: "I'm a scientist. I study science."

The nature of expertise and experience translates into how the non-scientist characters are depicted and treat one another too. Captain Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) does not berate or question Tex (Nicholas Byron) the radio operator when the weather interrupts service, as some men of rank might a subordinate. Nikki's assessment of Dr. Carrington's personality and concerns about what the existence of extraterrestrials are taken seriously, not dismissed amid cocky sexism. Everyone clears the way when station nurse Mrs. Chapman (Sally Creighton) steps up to administer first aid to a victim of The Thing. The frustration that Scotty the journalist (Douglas Spencer) endures at not being able to put out his story about what's happening at the station is treated respectfully, and fully enabled when it becomes safe to do so. Despite frequently being positioned as opposing Captain Hendry, Dr. Carrington's knowledge or scientific findings are not questioned, just his lack of regard for the wellbeing of others. Individuals and their unique skill sets are prized, but so is community and general welfare, which is the dynamic that governs Star Trek crews, as well as any functional Dungeons & Dragons party.

The Thing is conservative in its plot, seeking to resolve itself by as close to a status quo as it can, and with the formation of a heterosexual union between Captain Hendry and Nikki. The dynamics in the universe where The Thing takes place are more egalitarian and good humored than the universe that Biskind delivered his criticism from. Although, The Thing is far from progressive: none of the scientists or officers are women, and the only non-white person in the film is Lee the Chinese cook (Lee Tung Foo). Still, its lack of explicit sexism and universal dignity allotted to its characters stands out relative to other films of the 1950s.

As iconic as the shot of the party investigating the downed ship forming a circle and the combat scenes with fire or electricity being used on the Thing are, it's the characters that endears The Thing to me so much as a movie. It's the quippy wingmen, kinky secretary and misanthrope lead scientist that draw me back to it again and again.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday on Pause Again (sorry)

Domestic chores are taking up more of my time than usual this weekend, so again, the next Sci-Fi Saturday post is going to be delayed.

Hopefully next week I'll finally have the time and mental bandwidth to get the next post together.

Thanks for your patience in the interim, and keep watching the skies!

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday this week was preempted by going to see a new sci-fi film: "Alien: Romulus" (Dir. Fede Alvarez, 2024, USA).

The good: Overall it's visually outstanding, its core story fits nicely into the timeline, and features a good expansion on how the alien lifecycle is depicted that will satisfy fans of the franchise.

The bad: Its lack of subtlety, use of some bad horror stereotype characters, and poor execution in places holds it back from being truly outstanding.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: The Man from Planet X

Week 27:

Film(s): The Man from Planet X (Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1951, USA)

Viewing Format: Streaming Video (Amazon)

Date Watched: 2022-01-28

Rationale for Inclusion:

So far the 1950s has yielded films about a flying saucer that was not extraterrestrial in origin, an accidental trip to mars, and a trip to the moon. What we have not had yet is a tale of aliens visiting the Earth, at least until this week.

The Man from Planet X (Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1951, USA) was selected for inclusion based upon the fact that it was the earliest film of its subgenre released during the 1950s. It beat out the more widely known The Thing from Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA) into release by roughly a month. My being a fan of director Edgar G. Ulmer's pre-Code horror film The Black Cat (Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934, USA), which pitted Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi against one another for the first time, also was a factor in this film's selection.

Reactions:

The plot of The Man from Planet X boils down to a first contact situation that goes from problematic to outright messy because of a bad apple scientist wanting to exploit extraterrestrial technology. Overall, my partner and I regarded the film as stereotypical and fairly unremarkable, but it had a couple of interesting quirks. 

Instead of setting the action in the southwestern American desert, as many sci-fi films of the 1950s would, the action takes place in the atmospheric Scottish highlands, which gives Ulmer a chance to exploit skills and imagery picked up as a set designer in the German silent film industry. 

More noteworthy, the visitor from Planet X (Pat Goldin) communicates via musical tones. This method was unique at the time and would inspire a more spectacular interpretation in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977, USA).

However, what stuck with me after the film ended was that the Earthlings may have murdered refugees from a dying planet. Late in the film, one of the men who first encountered the alien, American reporter John Lawrence (Robert Clarke), discovers that the alien is from the mysterious planet that is passing closely to the Earth on its way out of the solar system and mind controlling villagers in order to turn its crash landed ship into a wireless relay station to communicate with their comrades on that planet. Planet X is doomed, and the aliens are trying to escape to a healthy planet. The villagers not under alien influence decide the best path forward is to destroy the spacecraft turned comm station and prevent the invasion, which they do, along with the visitor from Planet X.

Since the alien cannot communicate their intentions to anyone other than the exploitative and cruel Dr. Mears (William Schallert), I found myself wondering if the aliens were actually invading, planet annihilating locust types as later seen in Independence Day (Dir. Roland Emmerich, 1996, USA) or simply desperate refugees. The villagers assume malevolence on the alien's part in turning their neighbors into mind controlled worker drones, but given that the alien failed to be understood by the benevolent Professor Elliot (Raymond Bond), and the man who could understand them attempted to murder them, perhaps it was a desperate attempt to save their race.

My interpretation definitely comes from a lifetime of watching Star Trek and witnessing countries regularly refuse aid to refugees of war and political persecution. Despite the fact that the Holocaust was a relatively recent memory for the filmmakers, I do not think they crafted their narrative with that in mind. Ultimately, I have to tell myself, "The filmmakers probably didn't spend this much time thinking about the plot or its symbolism, you shouldn't either."

The Man from Planet X was built using interesting ideas, but does not make use of them as well as future filmmakers and storytellers would.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Destination Moon

Week 26:

Film(s): Destination Moon (Dir. Irving Pichel, 1950, USA)

Viewing Format: DVD

Date Watched: 2022-01-21

Rationale for Inclusion:

As noted in many posts, a lot of the films selected for this survey came to my attention via consulting Wikipedia lists. However, what motivated doing this survey in the first place was an excuse to watch our favorite sci-fi films and works deemed to be classics that we had not gotten around to seeing yet. Destination Moon (Dir. Irving Pichel, 1950, USA) was one of the films that I had been meaning to see for years because I knew it had noteworthy special effects, thanks to a featurette I saw on American Classic Movies once upon a time in the 1990s. Digging a copy of the out of print 50th anniversary DVD from the bins at Amoeba Records was one of the first purchases I made towards this survey. 

Reactions:

Despite being in competition with Rocketship X-M (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950, USA) to be first into release, the films are thematically, as well as aesthetically, quite different. Apart from Destination Moon being filmed in Technicolor, as opposed to black and white with selective use of red tinting cinematography of Rocketship X-M, the independently funded film pushes the argument that private industry will be the leaders in space travel technology, and the government will have to purchase or lease the technology from them. Spaceships in prior films were either implicitly government funded or privately funded by wealthy men of science, but more often than not, the filmmakers did not think that aspect of creating and testing experimental spacecraft was not worth spending screen time on.

Destination Moon being an outright libertarian science fiction film is novel for its time, but not entirely surprising given that its script was co-written by author Robert A. Heinlein. Most write-ups on Destination Moon celebrate Heinlein's hard sci-fi sensibilities shaping what is regarded as the most scientifically accurate depictions of space flight since Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond, Dir. Fritz Lang, 1929, Germany), but fails to take into account the author's politics. Granted, Heinlein's politics shifted and evolved throughout his life, and his beliefs circa 1950 were not as libertarian as they would become by the mid-1960s, when he wrote the Ayn Rand inspired The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Still, anyone familiar with the arch of Heinlein's bibliography would look at the politics espoused in Destination Moon and say, "Well, that makes sense."

Something that may not make sense to modern viewers is the presence of Woody the Woodpecker in the promotional film to raise funds for the Luna project. Beyond the fact that many may not realize that Woody was a popular cartoon character in the 1940s (since the character, his shorts, and later revivals lack the popularity enjoyed by his contemporaries created by Warner Brothers and Disney), he was created by Walter Lantz, who was best friends with producer, and former Oscar nominated animator, George Pal. In fact, Pal, who went on to produce the spectacular H.G. Wells adaptations The War of the Worlds (Dir. Byron Haskin, 1953, USA) and The Time Machine (Dir. George Pal, 1960, USA), would regularly find ways to insert his friend's anthropomorphic woodpecker in subtle ways throughout his cinematic output.

As for the lauded special effects that interested me in Destination Moon in the first place, they were quite enjoyable. The Academy Award for Best Special Effects deservedly went to this film for its depictions of weightlessness in space and G-force stresses make-up effects. 

The film's lush use of color also gave way to a favorite game of mine whilst watching movies made with the Technicolor process, last referenced in my post about Doctor X (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1932): "Is this Technicolor abuse?" As a reminder, for something to count as Technicolor Abuse by my definition, the use of color is for spectacle more than contributing to the overall diegesis of the film. 

For additional context, Technicolor's Color Director Natalie Kalmus, infamous amongst filmmakers for her combative insistence that the color process be used to replicate natural colors and not garish over theatrical ones, had exited her position with the company in 1948. While she did contribute to projects that were released as late as 1950, Destination Moon was not one of them, opening its production crew to make more liberal use of color.

My partner called attention to the vividness and abundance of red smoke being used during the Luna's takeoff. I dismissed it as Technicolor Abuse, because it wasn't theoretically unrealistic for that to be the color produced by the ship's atomic propellant system.

As soon as the EVA suits were shown, however, I indicated, "Now THAT is Technicolor Abuse!" Each suit was a different color--orange, yellow, green, or blue--with a white helmet and neutral black and chrome accessories. 

As the movie went on, I realized I might have been wrong in my assessment, however. Against the black vastness of space, with limited communications, being able to identify individual crew by a bright, unique color is actually a practical option. I also can't help but think it inspired the single color space suits later shown in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968, USA). Compared to the mostly monochrome suits actually used by astronauts and cosmonauts in the coming years though, the EVA suits in Destination Moon are downright flamboyant and fanciful.

Another major difference between Destination Moon and its rival Rocketship X-M, and a lot of 1950s sci-fi movies actually, is the lack of women scientists and spaceship crew. The upside of this sexism by omission is screen time is not spent on flirting that is actually sexual harassment or performative heteronormativity. The downside is patriarchal gender role promotion by this omission. Not surprisingly, the all male crew is also all white. The closest attempt at diversity of crew that Destination Moon makes is the blue collar Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson), whom my partner described as resembling a "Budget [Humphrey] Bogart," becoming the substitute radar and radio operator on the expedition.  

My biggest negative criticism with Destination Moon is not its homogenous characters, colorful aesthetics, or Libertarian politics, but its ending. Due to technical difficulties experienced by the crew throughout the film, it is clear to the audience that they may not be able to safely land back on Earth. As the Luna approaches the Earth, the film cuts to a title card that reads, "This is THE END...of the Beginning." The film does not make it explicit either way if the crew safely returned home or burned up upon reentry.

Maybe the audience is supposed to infer that there's a happy ending to Destination Moon. Crewed ships returning safely had not regularly been shown in space travel films to date, the Space Race had not fully begun yet, and audiences did not have the trauma of the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster that modern space nerds would bring into the film. Those things aside, if, like my partner and I, they had seen Rocketship X-M prior, might they assume that the crew's death on return was conceivable, as shown in that film? I don't dislike open endings normally, as they often are more appropriate notes to end narratives on, but after so much peril being introduced the lack of closure reads as a flaw.

Still, Destination Moon is one of the better space travel sci-fi films of the 1950s, and I do recommend genre fans watching it. In fact, if you live in the San Francisco Bay area, Odyssey Film will be screening a 16mm print of the film on September 10 at the Roxie Theater. If time and distance don't make that advantageous for you, the film can be found on DVD or Amazon streaming.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Haredevil Hare and Rocketship X-M

Week 25:

Film(s): Haredevil Hare (Dir. Charles M. Jones, 1948, USA) and Rocketship X-M (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950, USA)

Date Watched: 2022-01-14

Viewing Format: Blu Ray for Haredevil Hare, DVD for X-M

Rationale for Inclusion:

I don't recall at what point I remembered that select Looney Tunes shorts needed to be included in this survey. Either the Fleischer Superman shorts by virtue of being animated, or Buck Rogers because of it reminding me of the parody short Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, made me realize that we needed to include the shorts featuring Warner Brothers' iconic alien Marvin the Martian.

Marvin appeared in five shorts during the classical period of Looney Tune animation, beginning with Haredevil Hare (Dir. Charles M. Jones, 1948, USA) and concluding with Mad as a Mars Hair (Dir. Charles M. Jones and Maurice Noble, 1963, USA). Of these shorts we only will be including two in the survey, and what better to start with than Haredevil Hare?

But wait, that short is from 1948 and we are squarely in the 1950s now. Why wasn't it watched earlier? Honestly, because it did not pair as well with any of the films of the 1940s in the survey as it did with this week's feature film Rocketship X-M [AKA: Expedition Moon and Rocketship Expedition Moon] (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950, USA), as they're both about experimental rocketships that end up on Mars. They're also closer together in creation than Haredevil Hare is to Invisible Agent.

As to why Rocketship X-M made it onto our survey, it was the first post-World War II space adventure film released, beating George Pal's Destination Moon (Dir. Irving Pichel, 1950, USA)--which will be next week's film--to release by a month in 1950. Much like The Flying Saucer (Dir. Mikel Conrad, USA), despite achieving a first for the genre, it has largely been overshadowed by later films. Rocketship X-M also has the indignity of being the first film of the survey to have later been mocked on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Dir. Jim Mallon, et. al., 1988-1999, USA).

Reactions:

Like basically every Warner Brothers short that Charles M. "Chuck" Jones directed, Haredevil Hare is a quality short, in terms of its animation, pacing and humor. Bugs Bunny plays the role of reluctant astro-rabbit before lapsing into his usual trickster self when the Earth is threatened with annihilation by Marvin the Martian. The majority of the short's action takes place on the moon, which has standard gravity and oxygen for narrative convenience. Frankly, it would be more surprising if this cartoon attempted to depict realistic space flight and lunar conditions than it is that Jones and his team couldn't be bothered to engage with known reality more than necessary.

As for Marvin, he looks as audiences have come to expect him to: in his Roman inspired attire since his home planet is named after their god of war. Mel Blanc's characterization for Marvin is more nasal than what his voice would be in the later shorts. I also was amused to see his trusty dog K-9 appear in this originating short. I thought he did not appear in a later short. 

Like Bugs Bunny, the crew of Rocketship X-M is bound for the moon and has an aggressive encounter with a Martian. Unlike Bugs, their Martian encounter actually occurs on Mars, after a meteor storm forces them to recalculate their fuel ratios and they end up off course.

Despite it being a long passé technique, the scenes on Mars are tinted red in the otherwise black and white movie. The fact that Martian civilization went from an "Atomic age to a stone age" and is now a post-apocalyptic tribal society seems to be influenced by H.G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine, and marks the first time an atomic powered apocalypse was referenced in a major motion picture. The presence of atomic destruction is attributed to the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who acted as an uncredited script doctor on that sequence.

While the Mars sequence is definitely in the realm of soft sci-fi, some realistic elements are featured in the film. Rocketship X-M features a spaceship composed of multi-stage rockets, as would later be used in the real life American and Soviet space programs. The filmmakers apparently copied its design from illustrations featured in a January 17, 1949 issue of Life magazine, which is likely why that aspect of the film is more true to life than other parts. Less accurate is the haphazard depiction of microgravity, as some items are affected by weightlessness, but not everything that should be. The attempts at hard sci-fi seem to be dependent on if the filmmakers thought it was interesting, or within the special effects budget.

Nevertheless, Rocketship X-M set other precedents for atomic age sci-fi films. 

The film's score by Ferde Grofé features the unique electronic tones of a theremin in places. While the instrument had been featured in film scores as early as 1931 in the Soviet Union, it was Miklós Rózsa's scores for Hollywood films in the 1940s that brought it to the attention of his colleagues in the American film industry. Despite being the first sci-fi film to make use of the theremin, two films that followed Rocketship X-M, The Thing From Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (Dir. Robert Wise, 1951, USA), would be the examples that cemented the instrument's connection to the genre in general and atomic sci-fi specifically.

Rocketship X-M also re-introduces the lady scientist love interest to the genre. Prior to Dr. Mary Robinson (Janice Logan) in Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA), the women love interests working with the male scientist main characters were merely assistants. A fully independent lady scientist, like Dr. Helen Jackson in Son of Ingagi (Dir. Richard C. Kahn, 1940, USA) was, and to a large extent remains, unthinkable in a mainstream Hollywood production. So for all her accomplishments, like being the developer of the mon-atomic hydrogen fuels that power the R-XM, Dr. Lisa Van Horn (Osa Massen) is in Rocketship X-M to mostly be a hetero-disclaimer for the ship's pilot Col. Floyd Graham (Lloyd Bridges). 

When it comes time to implement a new fuel ratio after the meteor storm, Col. Graham opts to go with the figure suggested by Dr. Karl Eckstrom (John Emery) over the one put forth by Dr. Van Horn. Eckstrom did design the RX-M and is a physicist, so a rationale other than sexism is an influence in Graham's decision. However, Dr. Van Horn is both a chemist and the person who developed the fuel system, so in theory she ought to know the best practices for fuel rations, but apparently her lady brain's math is not to be trusted. Interestingly, Col. Graham going with Dr. Eckstrom's calculations is what causes the ship to end up off course and on Mars. Would Dr. Van Horn's calculations have gotten them to the moon and back home safely? Uncertain, but half the crew definitely wouldn't have died due to Martian attack.

At any rate, Rocketship X-M establishes what became the template for how female scientists and/or assistants in 1950s sci-fi films will be treated: they are there to be hetero-disclaimers primarily with their career as a narrative means of justifying their presence. In the best cases the relationships seem to form organically and without sexual harrassment.

However, unlike many of the films to follow, Rocketship X-M does not end with the happy formation of a hetero-couple. Yes, the last time Col. Graham and Dr. Van Horn are seen on camera they are embracing, but they also are about to crash land and die. None of the crew of the RX-M make it back to Earth alive, yet enough of their data did that the space program can carry on.

The film closes on an optimistic yet bittersweet note.Ultimately both Haredevil Hare and Rocketship X-M are good examples of the potential for their characters and stories of space travel, but the best had yet to come.

[pandoramsbox]

No Sci-Fi Saturday this week due to a family visit.

Until next week, check out these stellar dresses from the Fashioning San Francisco exhibit at the De Young Museum.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: The Flying Saucer

Week 24:

Film(s):  The Flying Saucer (Dir. Mikel Conrad, 1950, USA)

Viewing Format: Streaming on Amazon Prime

Date Watched: 2021-12-04

Rationale for Inclusion:

This week we enter the 1950s, where we will stay for a long, long time. For this survey my partner and I watched 62 films made between 1950 and 1959, and that was with omitting accessible and applicable titles either due to repetition of theme, or not having the bandwidth for yet another critically unremarkable, low budget sci-fi film. 

A question we regularly asked ourselves whilst watching the films of this decade was, "Had Sputnik happened yet?" Since Sputnik I didn't launch until 4 October 1957, the answer was usually, "no." Given the emphasis on space travel and exploration in this decade's movies, it was hard not to have the timeline of the Space Race in mind as context.

A different real life event would influence sci-fi in the 1950s, and for decades to come: the Roswell Incident, wherein some believe a crewed extraterrestrial spacecraft crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in late June of 1947, and the United States government covered up the incident. The mythmaking event, however, was just one of multiple flying disc sightings that summer, which would form the modern foundation of unidentified flying object (UFO) and alien lore. 

The first feature film to feature a flying saucer would come out 3 years later, in 1950: The Flying Saucer (Dir. Mikel Conrad, USA). The independent film was produced, directed and starring Mikel Conrad, who claimed to have footage of actual flying saucers that he obtained in Alaska in the winter of 1947 while filming Arctic Manhunt (Dir. Ewing Scott, 1949, USA). This footage, however, did not make it into the final cut of The Flying Saucer, despite Conrad's claims.

Reactions:

This was the perfect film to start the 1950s with. The plot concerns Cold War espionage around Soviet spies versus American agents trying to obtain control of a flying saucer being developed by an American scientist in the remote Alaskan Territory. (Alaska would not be promoted from U.S. territory to state until 1959.) No extraterrestrials come into play, just new, human created technology. Like Loss of Sensation (Гибель сенсации, Dir. Alexandr Andriyevsky, 1935, USSR), the narrative turns on a scientist's dreams for his invention being superseded by politics.

For being an independent B-movie, The Flying Saucer is a decent film. Its production values are respectable, including visual effects, even if it may lean too hard on b-roll of Alaska to pad its 75 minute running time. The story is engaging even though none of its components achieve icon status.

In context, and as a historical curiosity, The Flying Saucer is worth a watch, but when it comes to watching a sci-fi film of the 1950s there are so many better options.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Invisible Agent

Week 23:

Film(s): Invisible Agent (Dir. Edwin L. Marin, 1942, USA)

Viewing Format: DVD

Date Watched: 2021-11-19

Rationale for Inclusion: 

As I wrote in my post about Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA) a few weeks back, most of the purer works of science fiction in the 1940s were being produced in serial or short format, whilst features were mostly horror hybrids, and frequently linked to past Universal Horror movies or adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. As a result, this post will be the last one on sci-fi films of the 1940s, and also will finally feature one of the Universal Monster sequels.

While the sequels to Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1931, USA) leaned more into fantasy and horror, the sequels to The Invisible Man (Dir. James Whale, 1933, USA) showed more cross-genre compatibility. The first sequel, The Invisible Man Returns (Dir. Joe May, 1940, USA), sticks to the horror, sci-fi roots of the original with the added thriller narrative of a wrongly convicted man trying to prove his innocence of a murder. The second sequel, The Invisible Woman (Dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1940, USA), goes the comedy route, and narratively has little to do with the prior films apart from its title. The third sequel, Invisible Agent (Dir. Edwin L. Marin, 1942, USA), puts the invisibility serum of the original film towards the war effort in a sci-fi espionage film. Two more sequels followed, The Invisible Man's Revenge (Dir. Ford Beebe, 1944, USA) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (Dir. Charles Lamont, 1951, USA), which were a return to horror and comedy, respectively.

For all its cultural dominance during the 1940s, World War II rarely shows up directly in feature length sci-fi films of the era. Part of that has to do with the United States' late entry into the war, but also other mediums, like comic books and radio, being the preferred showcase of spectacular worlds and technology. The novelty of its espionage plot is why, out of all the Universal Monster sequels that also fit in the sci-fi genre, I thought Invisible Agent warranted inclusion on this survey.

Reactions:

Continuity within the Invisible Man series is frequently casual, since unlike the Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolfman films, no characters exist in multiple films. Invisible Agent does narratively connect back to The Invisible Man by having protagonist Frank Griffin Jr., alias Frank Raymond, (Jon Hall) be presented as the grandson of the first film's Dr. Jack Griffin, who possesses a copy of the recipe for the invisibility serum. Never mind the fact that in The Invisible Man Jack Griffin was not married, nor shown to be a philanderer, and deliberately destroyed the only existing copy of the invisibility serum formula; the filmmakers probably figured their audience would not have seen the 1933 film, or at least not recently enough for the change in continuity to be an issue.

Retroactive continuities, or as we say today "retcons", have been fixtures of popular media since popular mass media first took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, anyway. So it is safe to presume that audiences in 1942 were apt to just accept the changes with minimal reaction or thought. Increased access to past works in the post-modern, digital age have prompted a more negative response from devoted fan communities when continuity is deviated from. As a fan spoiled by access who typically watches The Invisible Man annually, I definitely responded to the retcon in Invisible Agent by thinking that it made no sense based on what was present in the original film.

However, retconning aside, having the grandson of Dr. Jack Griffin use the invisibility serum to help the United States government and Allies, instead of giving it to the Axis Powers, or maniacally sewing anarchy as a free agent with it, was the story that the era demanded. The film unfolds as a competent sci-fi, spy thriller with gimmicky yet clever effects moments to convey invisibility that were the true hallmark of the series.

The whole narrative is itself a work of Allied propaganda, but it only goes explicitly heavy handed during a speech of Griffin's whilst trying to get information out of the incarcerated Gestapo Standartenführer Karl Heiser (J. Edward Bromberg).

Given the history of German emigrants playing Nazis in American films during the war, it may be a surprise to modern audiences to discover German emigrant Peter Lorre in yellowface playing a Japanese agent, Baron Ikito. Lorre, who worked his way from France to England to America to get away from the Nazi regime as quickly as possible, had previously played Japanese detective Mr. Moto in eight films between 1937 and 1939, so audiences were accustomed to seeing him play Japanese characters. Between his experience playing Moto, and Lorre's skill as an actor, his performance of Baron Ikito is fairly neutral for a yellowface performance, albeit problematic by its very nature. 

Invisible Agent is an interesting cultural artifact. Its narrative is built on a respectable sci-fi concept and it places middle of the pack when it comes to Universal Monster sequels.

World War II and Nazis factor more deeply in later retro and period piece science fiction works than during the actual 1940s. It is somewhat disappointing, but if anything is an incentive to look more into the print offerings of the era.

Next week we move onto the 1950s: flying saucers, aliens, and all manner of atomic terrors.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Fleischer Studios' Superman

Week 22:

Film(s): Superman (Dir. Dave Fleischer, et. al., 1941-1942, USA)

Viewing Format: Blu Ray

Date Watched: 2021-11-05 and 2021-11-12

Rationale for Inclusion:

Every child who has grown up in the United States since 1938 remembers the first version of Superman that they encountered. For my parents' generation, it was typically the television series starring George Reeves, Adventures of Superman, which ran between 1950 and 1958, but much longer in reruns. For me, and a lot of my generation, the first time involved one of the films produced between 1978 and 1987 featuring Christopher Reeves as the superhero, even if it was rapidly followed by the 1993-1997 television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman starring Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain and/or the 1996-2000 Saturday morning cartoon Superman: The Animated Series from the same creative team that made Batman: The Animated Series.

Unlike his fellow pulp comic heroes Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, Superman's pop culture relevance never lapsed over the decades. Buck and Flash may have remained fixtures on the funny pages between their popular serials and feature film revivals in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but for the most part they are associated with their original popularity in the 1930s and a retro aesthetic. Superman has been perpetually contemporary since 1938, changing and evolving to meet present day aesthetics and technologies, in part because his exploits have been continuously running in multiple mediums, beginning with The Adventures of Superman radio show in 1940. 

The first time Superman lept from the comic pages to a moving image medium, however, was 1941 with the first of 17 animated shorts starring the Man of Steel by  Fleischer Studios, and later Famous Studios, and released through Paramount Pictures. These shorts fell into the public domain and were a fixture on the early years of the Disney Channel, from which my mother recorded them onto VHS tapes that I grew up watching. 

As is the case with most public domain works, the shorts are widely available, in varying degrees of quality and with or without watermarks; you can find multiple copies on Archive.org. The original camera negatives ended up in the ownership of Superman's current copyright holder, Warner Bros, who released 4K scans of them on Blu Ray in 2023. That probably is the ideal home video version to watch, but it didn't exist yet when it was time in our survey to view the shorts, so we went with the standard definition copies on the 2011 Blu-Ray set The Superman Motion Picture Anthology. That set only includes the first 9 shorts, produced by Fleischer Studios, not the later 8 produced by Famous Studios. 

As with the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials, we did not watch all of the shorts, only a representative selection: Superman (The Mad Scientist, Dir. Dave Fleischer, 1941, USA), The Mechanical Monsters (Dir. Dave Fleischer, 1941, USA), Billion Dollar Limited (Dir. Dave Fleischer, 1942, USA), and The Arctic Giant (Dir. Dave Fleischer, 1942, USA).

Reactions: 

The quality of the animation, pacing, and Sammy Timberg score make these shorts a joy to watch over 80 years after their original debut. Fleischer Studios made the most of their signature use of rotoscope and the Technicolor color process, keeping the color palette vibrant yet realistic. Nostalgia bias factors into my opinions, of course, but so does rewatching them after going through film school.

Fans of Superman who watch the Fleischer shorts for the first time may be surprised to discover that the character's origin story is different from the one they know. The prologue to The Mad Scientist explains Superman's origins: he is still the seemingly last survivor of planet Krypton, but like all Kryptonians was born with his wondrous powers. Later iterations on his origin would explain that Kryptonians were basically the same as Earth humans, but the rays of Earth's yellow sun made the child of a planet that had a red sun (like Krypton) gain superpowers. (Apologies to any deeply devoted Superman fans if I am misrepresenting or over simplifying this lore.)

While casual fans may not be aware of Superman's conversion to solar power, most will tell you that the escape pod with baby Superman, or Kal-El, was discovered in Smallville, Kansas by a couple driving by in a car, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who adopt him and raise him as their son. In the character history given in The Mad Scientist, however, baby Superman grew up in an orphanage, despite the Kents having been previously introduced in the comics in 1939. I expect the Kents were written out by the Fleischers for the sake of brevity, and fortunately that creative choice did not become a standard part of Superman's canon.

A creative choice by Fleischer Studios that did become a major part of character canon though was Superman's ability to fly. Prior to The Mad Scientist, Superman could only "leap tall buildings in a single bound," as the expository intro originating with the shorts goes. The Fleischers thought that in animation this leaping looked funny--an example can be seen of Superman leaping from rooftop to rooftop in The Arctic Giant--and suggested that he fly instead. This upgrade in movement also suited the concise nature of the shorts, and led to them opening with a variant on the exclamation from the radio series: "Up in the sky, look! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!"

The radio show and shorts not only shared key phrases, they also shared actors. Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander voiced Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane, respectively, on The Adventures of Superman radio show and reprised their roles for the animated shorts. As someone who has appreciated Kevin Conroy voicing Bruce Wayne/Batman and Mark Hamill voicing the Joker across multiple television series, movies and video games, I was delighted to discover that this consistency across mediums had an earlier precedent.

One precedent that neither the shorts nor the radio series originated was Superman fighting for, "Truth, justice, and the American way." Much like "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, "the American way" was added in the 1950s amid the Red Scare and start of the Cold War. Granted, like other aspects of Superman, his mission statement has varied over the decades; it's currently, "Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow."

Like her love interest, Lois Lane has also changed to meet the needs of whatever was appropriate for a contemporary working woman to be like. Regardless of the decade, she frequently is thrust into the role of damsel in distress, either due to being too gung ho to capture a story or unfortunate coincidence. While that is the case in most of the shorts, it was refreshing to see her pick up a machine gun in Billion Dollar Limited and actively fight the train hijackers. A lot of pulp and science fiction media would never have a woman use, or be given, a gun, even if the protagonists are actively fighting a monster. (I'm looking at you specifically The Creature from the Black Lagoon.) So kudos to the Fleischers for going there, even if it was for the sake of narrative convenience more than a purposeful statement of female capabilities.

Looking at the Fleisher shorts in terms of the science fiction genre, some are more obviously works of science fiction than others. Yes, Superman's status as an alien across the more crime based stories, like Billion Dollar Limited, or fantasy stories, like The Arctic Giant, means there's always a current of sci-fi through the shorts. However, the laboratory and beam weapon of the title character in The Mad Scientist and the robot thieves of The Mechanical Monsters are explicitly and influentially sci-fi.

The aesthetics of those two shorts in particular inspired the "dark deco" style used in Batman: The Animated Series, and the robot thieves would be homaged and referenced in multiple works of media, probably most notably in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Dir. Kerry Conran, 2004, USA).

Although not often explicitly cited as an influence on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (Dir. Eugène Lourié, 1953, USA) or Godzilla (Gojira, Dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954, USA), The Arctic Giant is clearly a precursor to both. The Tyrannosaurus in Arctic Giant is found frozen in the Arctic, like the Rhedosaurus of 20,000 Fathoms. The reporters on the rooftop in Godzilla are just as brave and foolish as Lois Lane in The Arctic Giant when it comes to capturing the story, though sadly they don't have Superman around to prevent their death. Granted all three rampaging dinosaurs owe a debt of influence to Kong trashing New York City in King Kong (Dir. Marion C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933, USA), but it still was fascinating to see Superman take on a city destroying dinosaur a decade prior to 20,000 Fathoms expanding on the theme, and Godzilla making it truly artful.

In summation, the Fleischer Superman shorts are an influential delight. It's rare to have something from your childhood remain just as engaging and enjoyable to watch as an over-educated adult. If you have never taken the time to see them, I highly recommend you check them out.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Son of Ingagi

Week 21:

Film(s): Son of Ingagi (Dir. Richard C. Kahn, 1940, USA)

Viewing Format: Amazon Streaming

Date Watched: 2024-06-19

Rationale for Inclusion:

Last week I concluded my post on Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA) by noting that I wish I had done more thorough research, or given consideration to additional themes and subgenres, whilst building out the titles for this survey from the silent era through 1940s. While I am not interested in doing posts on films made before 1940 at this point, I did realize a film that I had recently learned about could be inserted into this blog series, despite the fact that in terms of viewings for this survey, my partner and I are well into the 1960s.

What is this exceptional film? One that I originally dismissed because its title made it sound like another derivative horror sequel, Son of Ingagi (Dir. Richard C. Kahn, 1940, USA). I came to discover that it was a film worth including in this survey thanks to watching the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Dir. Xavier Burgin, 2019, USA), which in an early segment explains that Son of Ingagi was the first sci-fi horror film with an all black cast, with a script by Spencer Williams, based on his short story "House of Horror." Given the lack of black people in early American genre cinema it seemed a noteworthy film to include.

Reactions:

My partner and I both went to film school, and spent many hours in our late-teens and early twenties shooting no budget movies with friends and classmates. We consequently have a lot of patience for low budget filmmaking, and had to employ it whilst watching Son of Ingagi. The shots were often staged for ease of long takes, close-ups lacked proper focus or good framing, and some of the performances were rather stiff. Additionally, the copy available on Amazon that we viewed was a standard definition transfer or a mediocre print, which was also unfortunate, but not an uncommon mode of access for independent movies of the 20th century.

The most egregious technical aspect of Son of Ingagi for us though was it was clearly missing a reel. The transition between newlyweds Bob (Alfred Grant) and Eleanor Lindsay (Daisy Bufford) being accused of murdering Dr. Helen Jackson (Laura Bowman) to inheriting her house is jarring. One moment the audience is seeing a flurry of expository newspaper headlines, the next Eleanor is preparing a meal in the kitchen of Dr. Jackson' manor house and chides Bob for having eaten the roast duck she had intended to use for supper. I had to rewatch the transition to verify that one of those headlines does in fact indicate "Lindsay Cleared of Jackson Murder," but it flashes by so quickly at the end of the montage that the audience can scarcely read it.

The newspaper montage is followed by another moment of questionable print integrity. Eleanor chides Bob for eating the roast duck "bones and all", her voice carrying over a blank, gray slug of frames, then Eleanor is suddenly in the manor's office talking to Bradshaw (Earl J. Morris), the executor of Dr. Jackson's will. Luckily, Eleanor explains in that scene that Bob is out at the shop replacing the missing food, which fills in the narrative gap.

The American Film Institute catalog entry lists the film's runtime as 70 minutes, but the transfer available for rent on Amazon.com and viewing on Archive.org only clocks in at 62 minutes. That means that 8 minutes, or slightly under a single reel of 35mm film, is definitely missing from the version that's readily in circulation. In theory, that time would smooth and clarify the jarring, unclear transitions in the version we saw.

Does a complete print of this film still exist? Were those 8 minutes lost to deterioration, damage, or censorship? I wish I knew. I wish I had the time and funding to find out. I hope some archivist is already assembling a grant to do a better, more complete preservation transfer of Son of Ingagi given its importance to American film history.

Despite its technical flaws, Son of Ingagi is a noteworthy film for its era. Race films, or films with all black casts targeted at a black audience, had existed since the silent era and encompassed independent films by black creatives about middle-class, educated black people to films by mainstream Hollywood studios with white creatives and depictions of lower income, Southern accented black stereotypes. Son of Ingagi falls in the center of this spectrum: it's an independent film with a white director, but black screenwriter, and its characters are mostly middle-class types, not caricatures grown out of minstrel shows and D.W. Griffith's questionable sources.

If you are used to seeing early sound films where only token black characters turn up as domestic servants, "exotic" entertainment, menial labor, or comic relief, seeing the opening scenes of Son of Ingagi are a breath of fresh air. The wedding of Bob and Eleanor has a home movie quality in its mundane naturalness. As much contempt as some members of the community have for Dr. Jackson's miserly nature, she's always addressed by her title. (White female doctors aren't always given that respect in mainstream Hollywood productions to this day!) Dr. Jackson's shiftless brother who attempts to steal her fortune, Zeno (Arthur Ray), and the bumbling Detective Nelson (screenwriter Spencer Williams) fit within archetypal roles played by white characters in mainstream Hollywood films. Any negative racial baggage associated with black men playing those types in a mainstream (i.e. dominantly white cast) film is rendered neutral by the all black casting.

And then there's the missing link ape-man that Dr. Jackson apparently brought back from her trip to Africa, along with a fortune in gold, that lives in her secret basement: N'Gina. For viewers today his presence and the lack of exposition around him stands out as surreal in a film that opens as a realistic drama. Granted, as soon as Dr. Jackson's secret basement laboratory, complete with chemistry set, is revealed, it is clear that the film has entered the realm of sci-fi horror in the tradition of Frankenstein or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Yet, despite modern write-ups referring to Dr. Jackson as a "mad scientist," she does not fit the pre-established archetype. Yes, she is doing secretive experiments, without peer review, that will supposedly benefit mankind, but she does not act as test subject herself, nor kidnaps unconsenting test subjects, nor traffic in reanimated bodies. N'Gina is not her creation nor prisoner test subject, but more of an acquired, rare pet. Dr. Jackson is not without empathy for others either, as is evident by her choice to help her community via mostly anonymous donations, and the kindness she shows N'Gina when he accidentally cuts himself. Mad scientists tend to be self-centered and insular, with some exceptions. It is more accurate to describe her as an eccentric woman of science than a mad scientist.

In fact, the amazing, but undefined, breakthrough that Dr. Jackson achieves shortly before her death is largely irrelevant beyond being a catalyst in N'Gina going into a homicidal rage. The balance of the film is more concerned with the question of what happened to Dr. Jackson's African gold hoard and N'Gina defending the manor against any outsiders. Frankly, I question if Son of Ingagi should qualify as science fiction at all, since it is closer to a work like the original, short story mystery The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe than the mad scientist infused 1932 film adaptation with Bela Lugosi, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Dir. Robert Florey, USA).

Granted, in the selection of titles for this survey I deliberately left off King Kong (Dir. Marion C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933, USA) and have been quite particular about films that include dinosaurs or other monstrous creatures. Zoology may be a legitimate field of science but gigantic apes and miraculously surviving dinosaurs in narratives without clear technology tie-ins, or atomic intervention, are more like cryptids in my estimation, thus fantasy.

Yet, this line of thinking fails to take into account the iceberg of meaning gerding the film's title: Son of Ingagi. Why is the film titled that when "Ingagi" is neither someone's name nor N'Gina's classification as a creature? The short answer is scientific racism. 

An unfortunate consequence of Darwin's Theory of Evolution was white supremacists exploiting it to claim that not only were black people of African decent not the same species as white people of European decent, but that they were evolutionarily closer to apes and monkeys than white people; with other races ranking somewhere in between, but still inferior to whites. None of these assertions were backed by evidence gathered via true scientific method, but they nevertheless shaped (and sadly continue to shape) attitudes about human genetic variation. (For more information on this topic, I recommend Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini.) 

With such theories in circulation, Edgar Rice Burroughs having Tarzan's claim that he was the product of a union between a human man and female ape in the original Tarzan of the Apes (1912) going unquestioned by the shipwrecked party he encounters makes sense. And the belief that apes and humans could procreate together, or at least successfully engage in sexual intercourse, found its way into other popular media narratives, including a 1930 film called Ingagi (Dir. William S. Campbell, 1930, USA).

Ingagi was an exploitation film that falsely claimed to be a documentary during its original release. In addition to relying on unlicensed, existent footage of Africa and footage shot around Los Angeles' Griffith Park Zoo, the filmmakers staged scenes of gorillas (actually men in suits) claiming scantily clad, black African women as sex slaves, supposedly in accordance to a local ritual in the Belgian Congo.

The film was outed as being fake during its theatrical run, but Ingagi was successful enough that it influenced the creation of King Kong and insertion of the mad scientist trying to find a human mate for his pet gorilla plot into the film version of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. White women being molested by apes in these films has been read by critics as having bestiality presented in the place of miscegenation, thus black men erotically menacing white women, in accordance with a favorite stereotype of white supremacists.

With that cultural milieu for context, the decision to title the film adaptation of Spencer Williams' "House of Horror" "Son of Ingagi" was a deliberate choice to capitalize on and engage with the racialized fad of killer ape movies. That being the case, the audience was meant to infer that N'Gina was not simply a missing link ape-man, but the product of a human-ape coupling thus the son of the women fetishizing gorillas from Ingagi, which incidentally is apparently the Ikinyarwanda word for "gorilla." 

Son of Ingagi consciously operating with the subtext of scientific racism does add more legitimacy to its classification as science fiction. I still would be more apt to file it under "mystery" or "horror," while the AFI catalog takes the broad view that Son of Ingagi is a "comedy-drama," but regardless of metadata choice it is a fascinating cultural artifact. I am glad that I spent the time to view and unpack it, and do genuinely hope a more complete restoration turns up in the near future.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Dr. Cyclops

Week 20:

Film(s): Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA)

Viewing Format: Blu Ray

Date Watched: 2021-10-29

Rationale for Inclusion:

In looking over a list of science fiction films of the 1940s, most of the feature films were more horror than sci-fi: sequels to Universal Horror movies, dipped more into fantasy than science fiction, and/or re-hashes of the core story of Frankenstein. Narratives where science fiction didn't come conjoined with horror were mostly found in serials, like the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials discussed last week. Across all formats, the mad scientist remained the mainstay of the genre.

Representative of this decade sci-fi cinema is this week's film, Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA). Mad scientist? Check. Horror paired with science fiction? Check.

On a technical level, however, Dr. Cyclops is a standout. It was the first science fiction film ever shot in 3-strip "glorious" Technicolor and one of the first sci-fi films to be nominated for a Best Special Effects Academy Award. These characteristics made it stand out and secure a spot on this survey. 

Reactions:

On a technical level, Dr. Cyclops did not disappoint. The Technicolor was vivid without being over the top, and my partner and I were both surprised by the quality of the visual effects. It was the first time on the survey where we found ourselves going "Oh, the effects are good" with no caveats, including but not limited to "for the era." Black and white cinematography can cover up a lot of sins when it comes to visual effects work, so the fact that we had this reaction to a color film was all the more notable to us.

An aspect of the film that took us by surprise, but in retrospect really should have been more obvious was how much of the film was based on the cyclops episode from Homer's Odyssey. The name "Dr. Cyclops" should have been a dead giveaway, but cyclopses are mythological creatures that existed prior to Homer's epic poem chronicling Odysseus's fraught trip home from the Trojan war, and their name has been applied to various works, characters, and vehicles without invoking the story of Polyphemus. Nevertheless, it wasn't until the bespectacled Dr. Thorkel (Albert Dekker) uses his experimental shrink ray on a group of unsuspecting scientists, and traps them in his lab, did the allusion sink in. Like Odysseus and his crew, despite their disadvantage in size, the scientists must use their cunning to blind their poorly visioned captor and escape. 

I was also amused to note that since Dr. Thorkel's shrink ray is powered by radium it means that, like The Invisible Ray (Dir. Lambert Hillyer, 1936, USA), Dr. Cyclops is a pre-Atomic Age atomic sci-fi film. Labeling a film as being "atomic sci-fi" will rapidly lose its novelty once we get to movies made during the Cold War, which is why I find examples of atomic energy figuring in science fiction narratives made prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 fascinating.

It also had not occurred to me until later that Dr. Cyclops would be the first film of this survey to deal with characters being miniaturized or shrinking. Using the survey as an excuse to watch The Incredible Shrinking Man (Dir. Jack Arnold, 1957, USA) and Fantastic Voyage (Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966, USA) had occurred to me, but had I been thinking about shrinking people as a recurring sci-fi narrative, as I did killer brains, robots, and devolution, I would have included The Devil-Doll (Dir. Tod Browning, 1936, USA) in the survey too.

Oh well. I keep being reminded that when this project started it was meant as a representative survey and not a mission to watch every available science fiction film ever made. Still, I wish that I had given titles from the silent era through the 1940s the same attention I would later give films of the 1950s and 1960s.

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe

Week 19:

Film(s): Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkin, 1939, USA); Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Dir. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1940, USA)

Viewing Format: DVD and Streaming

Date Watched: 2021-10-08, 2021-10-22, and 2021-10-29

Rationale for Inclusion:

So far we have covered adaptations of some of the foundational literary works of science fiction, but this week we move onto two influential franchises that originated in the funny papers: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

To some degree, I know that I am doing both characters a disservice by lumping the two together, as the general public tends to view them interchangeably, but the motion picture serials featuring the characters were both produced by Universal Studios and shared actors, behind the camera talent, and props. In fact, Buster Crabbe stars as the title character in both Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkin, 1939, USA) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Dir. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, 1940, USA).

The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. comic strip was first published in 1929. Modern day former aviator Buck Rogers ends up getting trapped in a cave while carrying out a surveying job, where a strange gas renders him unconscious and keeps him in suspended animation until he awakens 500 years later in 2429. In the future that Buck awakens in, the Mongol Reds have conquered the United States forcing Americans into rebel organizations to fight back to retake their country. Buck is supported in this strange new world by love interest Wilma Deering, plucky boy sidekick Buddy Deering, and scientist Dr. Huer. Together they fight forces led by Killer Kane and his lady Ardala.

Flash Gordon was created in 1934 in response to the popularity and commercial success of the Buck Rogers strip, and with an initial plot lifted from the 1933 Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie novel When Worlds Collide, which itself would be adapted into a motion picture in 1951. During the present day, polo player and Yale graduate Flash Gordon, his love interest Dale Arden and scientist friend Dr. Hans Zarkov use Zarkov's newly invented rocketship to prevent planet Mongo from colliding with the earth. In the process, they run afoul of Mongo's malevolent ruler Ming the Merciless. Their adventures later include various kingdoms on planet Mongo and later planets.

Despite being created second, Flash Gordon was adapted into a motion picture serial first in 1936. Motion picture serials, or chapter plays, had existed since the silent era and made the transition to sound. The two-reelers, 15-20 minute episodes, were screened along with newsreels, cartoons and stand-alone shorts as part of a motion picture theatrical presentation culminating in the screening of a feature film. Audiences had to return to the theater each week for the next installment, with serials lasting 12 to 15 chapters. The format ceased to be by the mid-1950s due to television becoming the preferred mode of distribution of episodic moving image entertainment. The serials did, however, become known to new audiences when they too ended up broadcast on television in subsequent years.

Since Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were both action oriented, episodic comic strip narratives, they were perfect candidates for serial adaptation. In addition to Flash Gordon (Dir. Frederick Stephani, 1936, USA), Flash and friends appeared in the serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (Dir. Ford Beebe, Robert F. Hill, and Frederick Stephani, 1938, USA) before the serial we watched for this survey, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. The reason for the selection of this Flash Gordon serial was ease of access as well as having the comparison of an already established hero in a serial versus one that required an origin story, as was the case with Buck Rogers.

It was always a given that one or both serials would have been featured on this survey, as these space operas have influenced, and been parodied and homaged by, subsequent sci-fi films and television shows from their creation to the present day.

Reactions:

My partner either did not know or had forgotten that the vertical title, chapter and prologue scroll frequently associated with Star Wars (Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, Dir. George Lucas, 1977, USA) had originated with these sci-fi serials. His reaction of "that's where that comes from!" was fantastic to witness.

I, meanwhile, was amused to note that amongst the production elements that both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe share are excerpts from Franz Waxman's score for Bride of Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1935, USA). Perhaps Universal Studios took a comment made by the reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press to heart when they noted that the laboratory equipment in Bride of Frankenstein would have been more appropriate in Buck Rogers? More than likely the score was used for the same reason preexisting sets, props and stock footage were used in both of the Universal Studios produced serials: to save money.

In fact, props and costumes used in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars were used in Buck Rogers, and then the "chamber of death dust experiments" from Buck Rogers was used in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

The saminess between the serials resulted in us only watching half of each one. Not even the daring cliffhangers could bring us back after a certain point. Buster Crabbe plays Buck and Flash as essentially the same character despite the differences in their back stories and skill sets. The recaps at the top of each episode also made the serials hard to watch in rapid succession. Since the serials were created based on the understanding that people would wait a week between episodes, and may not have seen the proceeding episode or episodes, content overlaps quite a bit between installments. In their original edits, serials were not meant to be watched in one sitting.

Another grating aspect for modern audiences is the Yellow Peril influence on the way the villains are named and portrayed in the serials, especially in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Befitting of a sci-fi narrative that heavily borrowed from preexisting content, Flash Gordon's arch enemy Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) is based on the supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu. Like his inspiration, in the moving image adaptation Ming is portrayed by a white actor in yellowface. This insensitive tradition would continue in future adaptations well into the 1980s. 

Those criticisms aside, after having seen Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon parodied in everything from a Daffy Duck cartoon to Star Trek: Voyager, we expected the serial episodes to be a lot more cheesy and kitschy than they were in and of themselves, and in the context of the survey. The plots, settings and costumes are certainly ripe for the exaggeration that followed, but the originals aren't as over the top as the popular imagination would have you expect.

Buck and Flash will return to the survey in their own feature films in 1979 and 1980 respectively, thanks to the success of Star Wars making retro, space opera cool again in 1977.