Having enjoyed several viewings in the past of Republic Pictures' 1949 serial 'King of the Rocket Men', I had long been intrigued by the supposed existence of a follow-up serial using the same type of 'Rocket Man' character and finally got around to seeing it.
And what a let-down it proved to be!
I was prepared to cut this production a lot of slack. Firstly, it was a story about space travel made before such a thing became a reality, so the science was expected to be somewhat off the mark. Secondly, the requirements of the chapterplay format was always going to be a handicap to the progression of the plot. Some of the old film serials still managed to work extremely well in spite of the need to cram action set-pieces and the all-important cliffhanger into each individual 15-minute segment, whereas others suffered from turgid repetition.
Radar Men From The Moon has enough of an expansive plot for it to avoid the pitfalls of such repetition and at least gives the sense throughout most of its individual chapters that plot is actually progressing. But only just.
The main storyline is a simple one, yet bold: Earth is under attack by the inhabitants of the Moon (I said I'd cut it some slack), who are preparing for a full-on invasion of our world.
Yet despite such a broad canvas, the limitations of the budget mean that this interplanetary battle is actually played out between three small groups of protagonists, each in their own private headquarters.
Firstly there is our group of heroes, a team of crack scientists headed by Commando Cody (George Wallace) whose achievements include building himself a rocket suit which allows him to fly in the air, and also the construction of a rocketship capable of travel through space.
Which is very handy, as this allows Cody and his pals to travel to the moon to investigate the cause of a series of mysterious attacks on major installations on Earth.
There Cody discovers evidence of an advanced civilisation in the form of a vast city, and on further investigation he just happens to wander into the main laboratory where the first person he meets is the ruler of the Moon, Retik (Roy Barcroft), who in perfect English reveals that the attacks from the moon's advanced ray guns have the aim of softening up man's defences prior to a planned invasion. Retik explains that because the moon's atmosphere has become so thin, his people now need a new home, and intend to make the Earth their own world. In this incredibly low-key portrayal of mankind's first ever encounter with an alien intelligence, Cody responds in rather deadpan fashion by telling Retik that he won't find the Earth so easy to conquer, and rather than seek a peaceful resolution by offering help to the endangered civilisation, he pulls a revolver on him and initiates a fight which ignites an action-packed runaround between the Moon and the Earth as he and his team seek to thwart the planned invasion.
The third group who play a major part in the proceedings is Retik's agent on Earth, Krog (Peter Brocco). Hiding in a cave which he has converted into a makeshift laboratory, Krog is assisted by two petty thugs, Graber (Clayton Moore, before his Lone Ranger fame) and Daly (Bob Stevenson). It is Graber and Daly who prove to be the biggest thorns in the side of Cody as they drive around the countryside using their alien ray cannon, or generally just turning up somewhere (including at his office) to try and put him out of action. Why two Earthmen are so hellbent on assisting an alien takeover of their own world is never addressed.
There are many of the expected set-pieces present, such as cars going over cliffs, planes going into a crash-dive, heroes seemingly trapped in a dead end inside an underground cavern as a deluge (of lava, in this case) approaches... And sadly far too many are cheaply resolved with the insertion of a previously unseen shot of the hero escaping the situation before the deadly climax.
Of the other action, again as might be expected there is the obligatory fist-fight in virtually every chapter, and a plethora of shoot-outs in which the hero Cody often shows a blatant disregard for the safety of others - for example, at one point he's shooting at a plane knowing full well that his pretty assistant Joan (Aline Towne) is held captive aboard it, and in another sequence he's shooting indiscriminately at Graber and Daly's car as it speeds along a city street full of innocent bystanders.
In fact, although he's meant to be the hero, Cody cuts a very questionable figure. His objectives often end in failure (for example, his insistence that his colleague Ted leave the vital alien ray gun behind so that they can save their own necks ultimately places the Earth in greater peril) and he's not even very chivalrous, failing on every occasion to check that Joan is okay whenever she suffers some mishap such as when she is rather brutally slugged unconscious on the rocketship by their unwilling alien passenger.
I struggled to be convinced by George Wallace in the leading role, he looks decidedly unlike a typical action hero when not dressed in the rocket suit. Though I gather he was a tough cookie in real life and suffered for his art in making this serial by performing many of his own stunts.
There's plenty throughout the serial that just lacks sense. Whether it's the moon ruler's lab or Cody's lab, the enemy can just walk right in unchallenged, and not just once but repeatedly. Graber and Daly, with a weapon in their possession capable of reducing a whole building to rubble in an instant, instead go to the ridiculous lengths of trying to kill Cody by feeding a deadly gas into the air conditioning of his laboratory. Realising the room is filling with this gas, Cody doesn't think to throw a chair or something to smash the window.
Then there's Al's Diner, a place where Cody learns that Graber and Daly sometimes hang out. Sure enough he finds them there and engages them in combat. So, knowing that they might no longer be safe to frequent the place, Graber and Daly continue to go back. And the proprietor, knowing that last time Cody turned up there his place got trashed and his customers were all scared away, calls him back and suffers the same outcome.
Oh, and I can't post this review without pointing out that this invasion of Earth also relies on the moon's Earthbound agent Krog raising necessary funds by organising a bank robbery!
Some of the special effects are very good, but the best ones are generally pieces of footage lifted from earlier productions. The rocketship looks quite unspectacular compared with the ones that populated the Flash Gordon serials many years earlier, likewise the alien laboratory lacks the kind of visual impact that the labs of Ming the Merciless or Doctor Frankenstein could boast back in the 1930s.
Yet in spite of being utterly ridiculous, Radar Men From The Moon is good solid fun in the best tradition of the old film serials. It certainly never gets dull!
And what a let-down it proved to be!
I was prepared to cut this production a lot of slack. Firstly, it was a story about space travel made before such a thing became a reality, so the science was expected to be somewhat off the mark. Secondly, the requirements of the chapterplay format was always going to be a handicap to the progression of the plot. Some of the old film serials still managed to work extremely well in spite of the need to cram action set-pieces and the all-important cliffhanger into each individual 15-minute segment, whereas others suffered from turgid repetition.
Radar Men From The Moon has enough of an expansive plot for it to avoid the pitfalls of such repetition and at least gives the sense throughout most of its individual chapters that plot is actually progressing. But only just.
The main storyline is a simple one, yet bold: Earth is under attack by the inhabitants of the Moon (I said I'd cut it some slack), who are preparing for a full-on invasion of our world.
Yet despite such a broad canvas, the limitations of the budget mean that this interplanetary battle is actually played out between three small groups of protagonists, each in their own private headquarters.
Firstly there is our group of heroes, a team of crack scientists headed by Commando Cody (George Wallace) whose achievements include building himself a rocket suit which allows him to fly in the air, and also the construction of a rocketship capable of travel through space.
Which is very handy, as this allows Cody and his pals to travel to the moon to investigate the cause of a series of mysterious attacks on major installations on Earth.
There Cody discovers evidence of an advanced civilisation in the form of a vast city, and on further investigation he just happens to wander into the main laboratory where the first person he meets is the ruler of the Moon, Retik (Roy Barcroft), who in perfect English reveals that the attacks from the moon's advanced ray guns have the aim of softening up man's defences prior to a planned invasion. Retik explains that because the moon's atmosphere has become so thin, his people now need a new home, and intend to make the Earth their own world. In this incredibly low-key portrayal of mankind's first ever encounter with an alien intelligence, Cody responds in rather deadpan fashion by telling Retik that he won't find the Earth so easy to conquer, and rather than seek a peaceful resolution by offering help to the endangered civilisation, he pulls a revolver on him and initiates a fight which ignites an action-packed runaround between the Moon and the Earth as he and his team seek to thwart the planned invasion.
The third group who play a major part in the proceedings is Retik's agent on Earth, Krog (Peter Brocco). Hiding in a cave which he has converted into a makeshift laboratory, Krog is assisted by two petty thugs, Graber (Clayton Moore, before his Lone Ranger fame) and Daly (Bob Stevenson). It is Graber and Daly who prove to be the biggest thorns in the side of Cody as they drive around the countryside using their alien ray cannon, or generally just turning up somewhere (including at his office) to try and put him out of action. Why two Earthmen are so hellbent on assisting an alien takeover of their own world is never addressed.
There are many of the expected set-pieces present, such as cars going over cliffs, planes going into a crash-dive, heroes seemingly trapped in a dead end inside an underground cavern as a deluge (of lava, in this case) approaches... And sadly far too many are cheaply resolved with the insertion of a previously unseen shot of the hero escaping the situation before the deadly climax.
Of the other action, again as might be expected there is the obligatory fist-fight in virtually every chapter, and a plethora of shoot-outs in which the hero Cody often shows a blatant disregard for the safety of others - for example, at one point he's shooting at a plane knowing full well that his pretty assistant Joan (Aline Towne) is held captive aboard it, and in another sequence he's shooting indiscriminately at Graber and Daly's car as it speeds along a city street full of innocent bystanders.
In fact, although he's meant to be the hero, Cody cuts a very questionable figure. His objectives often end in failure (for example, his insistence that his colleague Ted leave the vital alien ray gun behind so that they can save their own necks ultimately places the Earth in greater peril) and he's not even very chivalrous, failing on every occasion to check that Joan is okay whenever she suffers some mishap such as when she is rather brutally slugged unconscious on the rocketship by their unwilling alien passenger.
I struggled to be convinced by George Wallace in the leading role, he looks decidedly unlike a typical action hero when not dressed in the rocket suit. Though I gather he was a tough cookie in real life and suffered for his art in making this serial by performing many of his own stunts.
There's plenty throughout the serial that just lacks sense. Whether it's the moon ruler's lab or Cody's lab, the enemy can just walk right in unchallenged, and not just once but repeatedly. Graber and Daly, with a weapon in their possession capable of reducing a whole building to rubble in an instant, instead go to the ridiculous lengths of trying to kill Cody by feeding a deadly gas into the air conditioning of his laboratory. Realising the room is filling with this gas, Cody doesn't think to throw a chair or something to smash the window.
Then there's Al's Diner, a place where Cody learns that Graber and Daly sometimes hang out. Sure enough he finds them there and engages them in combat. So, knowing that they might no longer be safe to frequent the place, Graber and Daly continue to go back. And the proprietor, knowing that last time Cody turned up there his place got trashed and his customers were all scared away, calls him back and suffers the same outcome.
Oh, and I can't post this review without pointing out that this invasion of Earth also relies on the moon's Earthbound agent Krog raising necessary funds by organising a bank robbery!
Some of the special effects are very good, but the best ones are generally pieces of footage lifted from earlier productions. The rocketship looks quite unspectacular compared with the ones that populated the Flash Gordon serials many years earlier, likewise the alien laboratory lacks the kind of visual impact that the labs of Ming the Merciless or Doctor Frankenstein could boast back in the 1930s.
Yet in spite of being utterly ridiculous, Radar Men From The Moon is good solid fun in the best tradition of the old film serials. It certainly never gets dull!