Captain america 1943 serial

In Batman, our heroes are straight up officially sanctioned government agents who are on the lookout for Japanese saboteurs following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But Daka and the screenwriters have come up with an interesting twist: accompanying the henchmen is a sort of zombie that Daka controls via an electronic brain implant!

The terrified goon gives up the secret that the radium has been taken to The House of the Open Door, located in the mostly-deserted Little Tokyo section of the city. Lather, rinse, repeat. Like what often happens with these serials, a comic book fan has to wade through endless fights with top-hatted goons and scenes of cars driving to and fro just to find bits and pieces that make this serial distinct from all the other Westerns, jungle adventures, and spy thrillers.

In the comics Alfred was always comically portly and slightly clumsy, but following the serial he would become tall, thin, and veddy veddy proper. At a couple different points, Batman goes undercover always welcome to this old school Bat-Fan , and Alfred gets included in a surprising amount of the action.

Every scene that Naish — a gifted actor with a ton of credits like Beau Geste, Sahara and House of Frankenstein — is in just reminds you how unnecessary this change to the serial was. The mind reels as to what this thing might have looked like if it had been the Clown Prince of Crime as the main baddy. Inside his lair, Daka keeps a pit of hungry crocodiles, a very Joker-esque touch for sure.

If you can get past the ugly racism that litters this thing, the other performances are pretty solid. At 23, Lewis Wilson was the youngest screen Batman ever, but he looks older and has a nice swagger, especially in his scenes as Bruce Wayne. Douglas Croft, as Robin, was only six years younger than Wilson, and they have a nice rapport.

For whatever reason, when Columbia produced the second Batman serial, Batman and Robin , in , none of the personnel, in front or behind the camera, was brought back to reprise their roles.

Batman was reissued in helping inspire the pop culture explosion that was the TV show! Back when I worked at a video store in the s, we had this serial for rent, and I remember being charmed that the people who packaged it actually managed to find a still that made Batman look, well, kinda cool. Like Batman and Robin , Atom Man vs. The Dr. Click here. Author: Dan Greenfield. I LOVE this serial. Conversely, I hate the Batman serial.

Upon later reflection, nothing about this serial is particularly Batman-ish of the s comics. It did contribute the Batcave, a revised version of Alfred, and Linda Page.

Absolutely my favorite live action version of Batman— very pulp-ish with the zombies, death traps, alligators and a creepy hide-out for Daka. Propaganda was instrumental in winning World War II. Steve Rogers, a rejected military soldier, transforms into Captain America after taking a dose of a "Super-Soldier serum". But being Captain America comes at a price as he attempts to take down a war monger and a terrorist organization.

Jackson , Hayley Atwell. As Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world, he teams up with a fellow Avenger and S. D agent, Black Widow, to battle a new threat from history: an assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Jackson , Scarlett Johansson , Robert Redford. Sign In. So using the Purple Death, Maldor has been knocking his former pals off one by one, as well as trying to steal some of the sophisticated technological marvels sorry, timelys that another colleague, Professor Lyman, has been developing.

Why Republic diverged so drastically from the source material—seemingly for no good reason—is mostly lost to the ages. It seems pretty clear that Republic grafted together a couple of other movie serial scripts — a little Batman here, some Adventures of Captain Marvel there — and then shoehorned Cap into it. Dick Purcell looks a little paunchy for a super soldier, and the costume does him no favors though the shield-shaped belt buckle is pretty sweet. During one sequence, his secretary Gail Lorna Gray is strapped into a guillotine, as a ticking clock counts down the moments until we have two Gails.

Cap, of course, rescues Gail in time, but she does come within a few inches from certain death, which probably shaved at least a few years off her life. Admittedly, there is way, way too much of Purcell as Gardner, and he gets at least just as many action scenes as Captain America does. When Gardner runs out of bullets, he throws the gun at the bad guy, a classic move. Maldor spelled backwards reminiscent of one my favorite—and goofiest—Batman plot turns of all time.

This entertainment aimed at children ends with Gardner who everyone now knows is Captain America , Gail, the police commissioner and the mayor looking out the window and making jokes as the clock strikes midnight— the exact moment the Scarab is being executed! Hey kids, stay in school! Captain America would be reissued in as The Return of Captain America which is odd but somewhat appropriate, since Cap is already an established hero as the story begins.

Grant Gardner. The whole bad-guy-using-mind-control was used for another Marvel live-action production, the pilot for Spider-Man. And, of course, there were a few live-action Captain America specials around that same time.