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| The
Running Carnage Tally |
| For
Chapter Two: |
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When
we last left our hero, Rex Bennet, he was slugging it out on a
German munitions boat trying to recover the sacred Dagger of Solomon
and the Nazi’s bogus scroll. (What
are those? You'll have to check out Chapter
One.)
One of the bad guys chucks a barrel of gunpowder into the furnace. (All
bet he’s fired.) Outside,
on the deck, another henchmen blasts away at the locked door with a
machine gun...
-
- - -
The
bullets hit the dope that threw the barrel. Rex retrieves the dagger
and the scroll while dodging more bullets. He busts through the
door, knocking the machine gunner down then goes over the side, into
the river, and swims to safety before the powder detonates and the
entire ship explodes. (So
he didn’t blow up as the last chapter suggests. Whew. That was a
close one. I'm saving my "No way!" card for later
chapters. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.)
Rex
takes the scroll and dagger to a council meeting of the Arab
chieftains. The Nazi, Baron Von Rummler, disguised as the Chief
Sultan, says the dagger is authentic and asks if the scroll is (trying
to salvage the plan.) Another chief reads and it says they
should follow the swastika. (Uh-oh.)
But they know it’s bogus because it wasn’t found in the tomb
like the prophecy says and realize it was just a silly Nazi trick.
They all share a laugh. Von Rummler joins in but he’s not happy on
the inside. (Rassa - frazzin -
Rex Bennet - rassafrazzin…)
Von
Rummler’s assistant, Ernst Mueller, retreats to the secret room
and the real Sultan, Abou Ben Ali, chides him on the Nazi’s
failure asking if he’s looking forward to being hung when his
treachery is discovered. Mueller slaps his face and promises the
Sultan that he’ll die first.
Later,
Von Rummler calls Bennet and asks him to investigate an
assassination attempt on the Sultan. He tells Bennet that someone
fired several shots at him from the old fish shack while he traveled
down the old Coast Road.
Wolf
and two other men set up an ambush at the shack that Bennet stumbles
right into it. (Nice
going there, Magellan.) They
drop a net over him and Wolf demands to know the address of the
resistance movement in Berlin but Bennet won’t talk. Wolf ignites
a cutting torch and threatens to use it to burn his arm off unless
he talks. (Kind of a vicious
little creep isn’t he?)
Bennet gives him an address but Wolf thinks he
talked to easy and the information must be verified before they kill
him.
He
tells the other two to find a rope and tie him up. Wolf orders
Bennet to stand up not realizing he’s standing on the net. Bennet
does stand up and pulls the net out from under Wolf’s feet sending
him splaying and a fight erupts. Wolf finds a spear and tries to hit
Bennet but hits his own man so he amscrays, exiting stage left via a
horse.
Bennet
dispatches the last man and heads back to LaSalle’s headquarters.
He tells him to monitor any radio broadcasts involving the false
address he gave Wolf so they can triangulate the coordinates and
find the little pain in the ass. It works and they narrow it down to
Kalif Canyon. Bennet, Janet and LaSalle head out to find the Nazi
transmitter.
They
track down the signal to a tent near a cliff that’s concealing a
cave entrance. Inside, Wolf and two more henchmen (from
the Red Shirt Brigade) receive
word back from Berlin that the address Bennet gave them doesn’t
exist. Wolf is furious and tells one of the men to shut off the
generator. He goes in to an adjoining cave and we can't help but
notice the generator is friggin' huge. (I’m
betting that’s going to blow up.)
Back
outside, the guard by the well draws a gun on our snooping heroes
but Bennet plugs him. The men leave Janet outside as a guard, creep
in and find Wolf by the radio. A spontaneous fistfight erupts (a
lot of those happen in this serial)
and all the furniture gets broken. LaSalle and
Bennet switch fighting partners. Bennet tosses his into the
generator room where the bad guy falls into a pit full of gears that
causes the generator to overload and the sparks start to fly.
Bennet
looks inside at the rapidly deteriorating situation and doesn’t
notice Wolf sneaking up behind him. (Where
the heck’s LaSalle?) He knocks
Bennet into the room and shuts the door as the generator reaches
critical mass.
Can
anything save our hero?
| To
Be Continued In |
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The
Golden Age of the Cliffhangers
The
Phantom Empire set the standard for the
serial but Universal Studios did it one better. They acquired the
rights for Alex Raymond’s Flash
Gordon comic strip. The comic was
at the height of popularity as each week readers were taken to the
exotic locales of Mongo.
Universal
splurged and spent $350,000 on the production. They cannibalized the
sets of Frankenstein
and The Mummy
and stole the soundtrack from The Bride
of Frankenstein. Buster Crabbe took the
lead role and the space adventure, with plenty of sexual innuendo,
was such a big hit that the serial was off the matinee circuit and
back in prime time.
Also
around this time, Mascot Studios merged with several other studios
and formed Republic Pictures; which became the undisputed king of
the cliffhangers. To keep up with Universal, they basically remade The
Phantom Empire as The
Undersea Kingdom.
With
the huge success of Flash Gordon,
studios scrambled around to sign up other pulp heroes and get them
on the screen; Captain Marvel,
Spy Smasher
and Dick Tracy
to name just a few. Also Batman,
The Phantom
and Captain America
to name a few more. (And
yes, even back then, people were complaining that Hollywood was
taking too many liberties with there beloved comic book characters.)
Each
serial was broken up into 12 to 15 chapters. The first episode may
run up to 30 minutes with each following episode trimmed down to no
more than fifteen. The target audience were young males so a no
nonsense approach was taken. There was enough plot (barely)
to
take you from fistfight to fistfight. Each danger more diabolical
than the other until the slam bang conclusion. Lots of intricate
equipment and the promise of some kind of gruesome death were also a
plus.
There
was always a female present but she was not really a romantic
interest, she was just there to get in trouble and be rescued. But
to be fair, more often than not, these gals could hold there own
against anybody.
Oh,
and one more thing, every piece of furniture in the room had to be
broken before the fights ended.
The
budgets were never that great but some marvelous work was still
getting accomplished. The Lydecker brothers were making some
wonderful miniatures and perfected some wild pyrotechnic techniques.
Matching them was the incredible stunt work by the likes of Yakima
Canutt and Tom Steele. These guys were so good that the casting
director had to find leading men who looked liked them instead of
the other way around.
From
the premiere of Flash Gordon to
the end of World War II the cliffhanger flourished but the end was
near and you could see it already if you were paying close
attention. In other words - didn’t we see that scene already?
Stay
tuned!
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