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| The
Running Carnage Tally |
| For
Chapter Two: |
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When
we last left our heroes, Rex Bennet, Pierre LaSalle and Janet Blake,
had discovered the hidden location of a secret Nazi radio
transmitter. The men leave Janet outside to watch the guard they
captured and head inside the cave where they find Wolf, the Nazi’s
chief henchmen and two others, then a spontaneous fistfight
erupts...
One
of the bad guys got tossed into the generator room and the huge
contraption has gone critical (No
kidding, it’s a Strickfaden nightmare in there.) Bennet
is tossed into the room too where the deadly electricity is
flying...
-
- - -
The
bad guy grabs a spear and prepares to finish the job but LaSalle
manages to shoot him first and the spear-tosser tumbles into the
generator room, trips over Bennet and falls into a pit.
LaSalle
rushes in to help his friend but Wolf locks them both in the
generator room and escapes. He makes his way outside and runs right
into Janet who fires away at him. Janet proves a crack shot by
blasting Wolf’s gun out of his hand but empties her revolver in
the process so he seizes the opportunity and escapes on horseback.
Janet reloads and dispatches the guard before he skewers her, heads
inside and releases the other two. (I
can’t take you two anywhere!)
Bennet
tells them to gather up all the papers and decode them while he
reports back to the Sultan. (Who
has been secretly replaced by the evil look-alike Baron Von Rummler,
remember? If not see Chapter One.)
At the Sultan’s Hotel Suite (complete
with secret Nazi room) Von
Rummler yells at Wolf for abandoning all the secret documents at the
radio installation. Wolf says not to worry because it’s all in
code. Von Rummler rages that LaSalle is a master decoder when a
knock at the door sends Wolf scurrying into the secret room. It’s
Bennet and he reports the captured documents. The fake Sultan tells
him to keep him posted.
Von
Rummler is convinced that they will decode the documents and
discover their secret submarine base at the Saladin Inlet. The sub
U417 is due any moment with a load of supplies. Wolf is ordered to
take a plane to the Inlet warehouse that hides the sub dock, oversee
the disbursement of cargo and then destroy the warehouse and all the
evidence.
Back
at French Diplomatic Headquarters, LaSalle does break the Nazi code
and discovers the secret Nazi sub base. He and Bennet head for the
Saladin Inlet.
Wolf
lands his plane and is greeted by an armed guard. He warns Wolf that
the road to the warehouse is mined and to be sure to give the
snipers in the hills the signal or he can’t pass. Wolf tells him
to guard the plane then takes his horse and heads to the warehouse.
He misses the mines and gives the snipers the Nazi salute so they
allow him to pass. He enters the warehouse where the offloading
appears to be complete. He heads to the basement and boards the Nazi
sub.
The
sub commander tells Wolf he has good news. The Allies have a huge
convoy of medical supplies, munitions and replacement troops heading
towards North Africa. Wolf asks how can that be good news. The
commander says they have the convoys exact course and the Nazi Wolf
Pack (German
submarines) will
intercept and annihilate them.
Meanwhile,
Bennet and LaSalle drive towards the warehouse but hit one of the
mines. The explosion knocks the car off the road but they crawl out.
They're okay but they don’t know the signal for the snipers and
find themselves in a shoot-out. Bennet and LaSalle prove better
shots and take the snipers out. Bennet salvages the radio, calls
Janet and tells her to bring a plane and pick them up.
The
sub commander gives Wolf a map of the intercept course and attack
plans. Wolf tells him to finish up and leave because the base has
been compromised and has to be destroyed. Wolf gets off the sub,
heads upstairs and finds Bennet and LaSalle have already captured
two crewmen. One causes a distraction and another spontaneous
fistfight erupts.
Furniture
flies, spears are thrown and fists, kicks and bodies akimbo. Wolf
manages to throw the briefcase containing the map and plans out a
window. The other two goons manage to occupy the good guys while
Wolf sneaks away (again?).
Bennet recovers his revolver and kills the two bad guys. He tells
LaSalle to go after the briefcase and he’ll go after Wolf.
Wolf
makes it back to the landing field just as Janet comes in for a
landing. He takes the guard’s Tommy gun and blasts away at
Janet’s plane as it taxis down the field. Janet opens the canopy
and returns fire but realizes too late that her plane is headed
right towards the other plane. She ducks behind the controls as her
plane plows into the other and explodes.
Is
this the end of crack shot Janet and her funny hat?
| To
Be Continued In |
 |
| Coming
Soon! |
The
Cliffhangers Final Chapter?
The
cliffhangers were in trouble by the end of the second World War.
They
were becoming formulaic with recycled sets, props and plots. The
cliffhangers were streamlined down to nothing but a series of fights
and explosions relying on ridiculous predicaments and special
effects. (Sound
familiar?) The scripts were also
getting lazy on how the heroes escaped the deathtraps and what used
to create gasps of awe were generating laughs.
(To quote Annie Wilkes: "They cheated! He couldn't have gotten
out of the cock-a-doodie car!)
That
and three other things brought about the demise of the serial. First
was the anti-trust settlement slammed on the studios and they lost
their theater chains meaning the cliffhangers lost their venues.
Couple
that with the with the advent of television
- the second reason - and audiences
dwindled as most of their serial heroes, like Dick
Tracy and The
Lone Ranger,
moved to the small screen.
And
lastly there was Dr. Wertham and the rest of the safety Nazis who
claimed that the serials were too bloody and violent and, along with
rock-n-roll and comic books, were corrupting the youth of America.
Serials
were quickly becoming a luxury the studios could no longer afford.
The genre limped along as the already miniscule budgets were slashed
to ridiculously small amounts forcing even more drastic recycling.
Characters had to wear certain costumes to match old stock footage
from older serials.
(I can't name all the serials the Purple Monster's costume wound up
in.)
The
serial had a mini-renaissance with the surprising popularity of
Commando Cody and his rocket pack in King
of the Rocket Men.
(With
the complicated controls of up - down - fast and slow.)
It spawned two sequels Radar
Men from the Moon
and Zombies of
the Stratosphere.
Alas
it was the serials last hurrah.
Universal
bowed out of serial production in 1947 with Mysterious
Mr. M and
Republic's last gasp was King
of the Carnival
and it's counterfeiting clown. When Columbia released Blazing
the Overland Trail
in 1956, an era officially came to an end.
So
the serial as we knew it was done but the cliffhanger was far from
dead. Several serials including Flash
Gordon and Batman
were spliced up and sold to television and there influence was seen
in shows like Captain
Video. They also
influenced an entire generation of filmmakers who took the basic
principles of a cliffhanger and turned them into some of the most
entertaining action yarns of all time.
Stay
tuned!
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