SERIADOS do Cine Marilia 1959-1960

Seriados eram filmes de curta-metragem que os norte-americanos produziam desde os anos 20, para serem exibidos depois da 'atração principal'. Vejamos, num domingo normal nos anos 50, nós, crianças entrávamos na fila que se formava em frente ao Cine Marília e se estendia pela rua Campos Salles até a rua 4 de Abril (as vezes 'dobrando' a Quatro), para assistirmos à matinee, que começava as 13:00 horas.

Eram sempre dois filmes, de aventura, far-west ou comédia. No final da sessão, lá pelas 17:00 horas, depois de passados os 2 filmes principais, o Migué projetava o que nós mais esperávamos: esses tais 'seriados' [serials] de 15 ou 20 minutos, cheios de aventura, muitos socos e corridas de carro, avião ou cavalo, espalhados entre 12 e 15 capítulos. Esses seriados sempre terminavam no momento mais excruciante, quando o mocinho/mocinha estava em grande perigo, prestes a cair num precipício, ser devorado por alguma besta horrível ou queimado de forma vil por algum facínora empedernido.

Nós, crianças nunca nos esquecíamos do 'ponto' em que o seriado tinha parado no domingo anterior. As vêzes, durante as aulas da semana, eu ficava a imaginar como o herói iria sair daquela cilada, mas, no fim, ele/ela sempre dava um jeitinho de se livrar dos horrores gerais.

Em dezembro de 1960, minha família planejava mudar-se de Marília, e minha maior preocupação era não poder assistir ao capítulo final de 'O Cobra' [The mysterious Dr. Satan], que eu, meus irmãos e primos vínhamos acompanhando desde agosto. Para meu alívio, nós só partimos de Marília em 15 de dezembro de 1960, uma semana depois do final feliz, quando o Cobra (Copperhead, protagonizado por Robert Wilcox) derrota o maligno Dr. Satan (Eduardo Cianelli).

Quando chegamos em São Paulo, eu notei que aqui em Pinheiros/Vila Madalena, já não se passavam mais os tais seriados... isso era coisa de 'cinema-de-interior'. No entanto quando fui visitar parentes na Vila Gustavo, que era bem afastada do centro, vi que o Cine Prata ainda passava os desejados 'serials'... mas como era muito longe, eu acabei nunca assistindo nenhum. Mas a lembrança dessas aventuras-maiores-que-a-vida, nunca saíram de minha imaginação. Quando nos anos 80, começou-se a fabricação de video-cassettes VHS, eu descobri que dava para se encomendar seriados diretamente dos EEUU. Hoje, depois do advento da Era Digital, dá para se assistir a quase todos eles através do YouTube e outros canais.

Posto aqui as scenas mais interessantes dos meus seriados favoritos, que na verdade não são tantos assim. Me lembro nitidamente do 'Cobra', já citado, da 'Mulher Tigre' (Tiger Woman), que foi meu favorito no. 2, e 'Capitão Africa', que era muito parecido com o Fantasma, dos gibis. Ah, não posso esquecer do 'Batman' tampouco.  Não esse Batman anabolizado atual, mas aquele mais simples, em branco-e-preto, que era projetado na tela do Cine Marília, que para mim, era um Palácio de Prazeres.

'Batman' O Homem Morcêgo - 1943

Batman sendo seviciado... olha a cara do 'bandido', com feições orientais.

J. Carroll Naish como Doctor Daka. Em 1943 os EEUU estavam em guerra contra o Japão, daí o vilão 'oriental'.

olha o Batmóvel, não era muito 'especial'...

Batman & Robin  -  1 9 4 9 

6 anos mais tarde - 1949 - a Columbia rodou novo seriado sobre Batman.

o seriado de 1949 chama-se 'Batman & Robin', vistos aí em ação.

'O Cobra' (The Copperhead) or The mysterious Dr. Satan - 1940

It’s the masked defender The Copperhead versus the mysterious Dr. Satan! As mad scientist Dr. Satan (Eduardo Cianelli) plots to steal key pieces of technology to enable him to build a Robot Army to strike against society at large in a mad grab for unbridled power. 

Standing in his way is stalwart and stoic Bob Wayne (Robert Wilcox), who adopts the guise of the mysterious masked defender, The Copperhead!! Also starring William Newell, C. Montague Shaw and Dorothy Herbert. 

Originally released in 1940, directed by the cliffhanger experts William Witney and John English, it is considered one of the best action serials of the genre's heyday. See it here in all it's glory, all 15 chapters digitally remastered on DVD, in black & white, just as it was filmed.

Robert Wilcox como Bob Wayne, embora ele nunca tenha sorrido no seriado.  

Robert Wilcox em foto promocional.

Robert Wilcox as the future Copperhead.

the dreadful Robot was impervious to any kind of bullet...

'Mulher Tigre ' - Tiger Woman - 1944

Tiger Woman

A cena mais impressionantes desse seriado era o ritual da dança macabra, onde o homem pendurado por uma corda era jogado num lago de lava e fogo que ficava lá em baixo dessa portinhola maldita. A Mulher-Tigre presidia a cerimônia, embora não tivesse ordem para contradizer o malvado sacerdote-mor Ramgah (Robert Frazer).

Linda Stirling direto das agencias de modêlos da Madison Avenue para o papel de Mulher-Tigre.

Allan Lane & Linda Stirling.

'As Aventuras do Capitão Africa' - 1955

Um dos ultimos seriados produzidos em Hollywood, pois a TV já estava competindo com o cinema. 

John Hart, que a principio faria o papel do Fantasma, na sequência do seriado de 1943; porém a firma que detinha os direitos do personagem de Lee Falk exigiu muito dinheiro e a Columbia resolveu 'adaptar' a história do Fantasma em um personagem bem parecido. Aliás, Hart já tinha começado a filmar com o uniforme do Phantom (veja foto abaixo). Acabou trocando máscara por um capacete de couro de aviador e outras pequenas alterações.

Esse é o Phantom de 1943...

 'Mulher Tigre' e 'Capitão Africa'

It sometimes amazes me the things Hollywood could get away with in serials which never would have made it past the boys at the Breen Office or any of the other regulatory agencies that policed movies in the Golden Days of the movies. Did they even bother to take a gander at the content of cliffhangers which were, at least in theory, primarily aimed at juvenile audiences, the group most would think of when considering protection from gratuitous violence and or moral and social corruption?

Take Republic’s 1944 “Tiger Woman” for instance. The audience is no sooner drawn into Chapter One than it’s introduced to the title character, the reigning queen of a certain undisclosed country who presides over the territory and safeguards her subjects with a feverish intensity. Interlopers are not merely escorted to the border with a stern order not to return and a minor slap on the wrist, but are summarily tied to a rope and dangled over a stalactite infested subterranean cave and dropped into a lake of volcanic fire below. Talk about a quick cure for an immigration problem!

It also becomes fairly obvious from the dialog that this isn’t a once in a lifetime episode, but rather this sort of cold blooded and horrific sacrifice goes on all the time thanks to the Tiger Woman. Or as one native character explains, “Once the Tiger Woman gets her hands on a white man, it’s the end.” And she’s the heroine of the film! Can you imagine if a mainstream film of the same period tried to foist off a central female character responsible for such wanton murder? Even Joan Crawford in her fullback shoulder pads and at her nastiest couldn’t get away with it. Of course, the heroes of this serial work for a huge oil company and I think you’d have a hard time today getting away with that one as well.

In any case, the Tiger Woman (who inexplicably sports a leopard spotted outfit which is not nearly as appealing as Francis Gifford’s earlier “Jungle Girl” getup and at times looks more something a Ziegfeld girl or Radio City Rockette might sport) is played by Republic’s then newest female discovery Linda Stirling, a former model whose first foray into cliffhangers this was.

Linda Stirling as the Tiger Woman

According to Stirling, her studio audition was more in the nature of an athletic test than a traditional acting scene. And this would certainly come-in-handy in a serial such as “Tiger Woman” where the heroine gets involved much more with physical action than in other less athletically demanding chapterplays. Whether riding, shooting or employing judo moves, this is one lady who’s not afraid to mix it up.

She does have help, however, in the person of intrepid heroes Allen Saunders (Allan Lane), later the popular (except with his co-stars) star of many B-westerns, and the always reliable (and future Cisco Kid) Duncan Renaldo as Jose who for a short time in his career seemed to always show up in serials as the hero’s staunch ally. Lane is not much of an actor, painfully stiff and rigid (even for a serial hero), but Renaldo, as always, is relaxed and enjoyable to watch.

Fleshing out the cast, mostly as villains, are familiar serial mugs George J. Lewis, LeRoy Mason, Robert Frazer, Keene Duncan, Stanley Price, plus a large contingency of the studio’s actor/stuntmen including Tom Steele, Duke Green, Eddie Parker (the same year he doubled Glenn Strange in “House of Frankenstein”), Ken Terrell and Cliff Lyons.

the beautiful Tiger Woman in glorious colours...

Veteran director Spencer Gordon Bennet helms this time with the aid of Wallace Grissell from a script by Royal Cole, Grant Nelson, Jesse Duffy, Basil Dickey, Joseph Poland and Ronald Davidson. There’s only one Lydecker in the credits this time, brother Theo, but he’s more than up to the challenge of creating the necessary miniatures and special effects of which there are some good ones. I particularly enjoyed the rapid-tossed boat going over the cliff in Chapter Four.

The plot has two rival oil companies—one bad, one good—vying for a patch of oil rich land controlled by the Tiger Woman and her subjects, a race of brown-skinned, blow pipe wielding natives. In reality our feline gal is none other than Rita Arnold, heiress to a vast fortune who, as a small child, was lost in the jungle following a plane crash. The villains decide, since she seems to prefer the overtures of Saunders and Jose, to knock her off and substitute a replacement for her who will sanctum their drilling, but it doesn’t quite turn out that way with lots of action, mayhem and thrills ensuing before the conclusion of Ch. 12.

“The Tiger Woman” is a good solid serial. Plenty of action and, for a novice actress, Linda Stirling is appealing, likable, decorative and convincing in the rough sequences. No wonder Republic decided to employ her services in many more serials. Good pacing and lots of exciting tight corners elevate this one to B+ status.

Tiger Woman is tied up and in trouble...

“The Adventures of Captain Africa” 1955

With only a few exceptions most Hollywood sequels don’t live up to expectations although there are a handful of efforts such as “The Bride of Frankenstein” and “Godfather II” which prove that this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Usually sequels are limp and uninspired re-workings of the parent product, lazy retreads churned out quickly to take advantage of the success of the original. But sometimes sequels are even worse than this. Sometimes they are simply drop dead awful.

“The Adventures of Captain Africa”, a cliffhanger produced by Columbia in ‘55, falls into this latter category. It is, in fact, one of the worst serials ever made, not a minor achievement given some of the bottom of the barrel chapterplays turned out in the closing days of this film genre.

Originally “The Adventures of Captain Africa”was intended to be a follow-up to Columbia’s earlier offering “The Phantom”, produced in 1943 and based on the popular Lee Falk comic strip character.

“The Phantom” starred Tom Tyler, a former record-holding weightlifter and western player who, in costume, physically bore a startling resemblance to Falk’s purple-suited and masked creation. A solid serial but not a great one, it boasted good action and was fairly loyal to its comic strip storyline.

12 years later the folks at Columbia (that is to say producer Sam Katzman) got it into their heads to make a second Phantom serial, this one staring John Hart who had starred in the studio’s earlier cliffhanger “Jack Armstrong” and would go on to replace Clayton Moore for a couple of seasons on “The Lone Ranger” TV show.

Cliffhangers had been dying a slow death beginning some years earlier and their life expectancy wasn’t long. Budgets had been slashed and early TV adventure and comic book inspired shows were beginning to encroach on their territory. In order to trim costs even further many serials produced in the ‘50s were shoddy makeovers, old concepts with a thinly applied coat of celluloid paint that relied heavily upon resurrected scenes from older and better serials. To this end actors were often hired to match stock footage of other performers from earlier productions, often even dressed in the same costumes.

Such was going to be the case of the Phantom sequel. In an interview many years later, Hart explained the entire Phantom sequel was actually filmed with him in the proper costume (stills exist depicting this). However, a stumbling block occurred when King Features, who owned the rights to the character of The Phantom, wanted too much money to use him again. This did not, however, deter skinflint Katzman who decided to go ahead with the project only altering the character’s name to Captain Africa and slightly changing the familiar comic strip costume.

According to Hart, aside from certain shots without him, the entire serial was scrapped and re-filmed as “Adventures of Captain Africa”. Captain Africa wore a similar double holstered gun belt as his precursor but the skintight purple outfit with the striped trunks, hood and mask were replaced by a heavy-turtleneck sweater, an aviator helmet and goggles. It was hardly an improvement.

Frankly, the serial is a total mess. Screenwriter George Plympton and director Spencer Gordon Bennet went back to the drawing board and fashioned a crazy-quilt concoction made of scenes from the first Phantom serial, the aborted sequel, several other of the studio’s cliffhangers (especially “Desert Hawk”, but also “Congo Bill”, “Jungle Menace” and the Johnny Weissmuller feature “Voodoo Tiger”) and shot after shot of stock footage clumsily woven together within a totally nonsensical storyline. To aid in making some sense out of this a voice-over narration was also introduced. It didn’t help.

The plot, which takes place in what is described as the Near East has something to do with an attempt on the part of Nat Coleman (Bud Osborne), an animal trapper, and Ted Arnold (Rick Vallin), an adventurer who works for a world government agency (hmmmm, the United Nations perhaps), to help Nat’s native assistant Omar (Ben Welden) who is working against the evil intentions of bad guys Boris and Greg, to help restore his country’s throne to its rightful heir, the disposed caliph. Although they get into assorted scrapes along the way they are invariably assisted by the mysterious Captain Africa, described as a strange being the natives fear but worship.

“Captain Africa”, in addition to being one of the talkiest, most long-winded, action free and dullest serials ever produced, also looks as if it was filmed 30 years earlier. In comparison to watching this serial crawl along, observing paint dry is an exciting spectator sport.

One can only imagine what the actors made of all this. The reshuffle from the earlier shoot and attempt to integrate so much diverse footage into the action as a means to curb costs must have made things very confusing. Moreover, serials, particularly Columbia serials, were on an incredibly minuscule budget already, so the idea of having to film this production twice must have really caused havoc with the front office.

In any case, the performances, like the serial itself, run the gamut from indifferent to embarrassing, but to be fair, given the mishmash of the production, one can hardly hold the most-likely bewildered players responsible. It was undoubtedly a payday they wouldn’t have minded forgetting about.

As Captain Africa poor John Hart has little to do but stand amidst a bunch of potted plants—doubling for an exotic jungle—pretending to observe the action going on around him. Likable Bud Osborne, traditionally a fixture in B-westerns, probably has more dialog in this than the sum total of lines spoken by him in all his other films combined. He seems completely out of his element and Rick Vallin, who shares most of his scenes with Osborne, looks similarly uncomfortable and perplexed. The always enjoyable Ben Welden as Omar gets to play a good guy for once but seems more silly than sincere. He was no doubt hired to match his original footage lifted from “Desert Hawk” (‘44). While there is really no female lead, a lackluster June Howard portrays Princess Rhoda with all the pizzazz of a park bench. Familiar faces Lee Roberts and Terry Frost are the bad guys Boris and Greg.

Judging by this production, the motion picture serial was not just dying. It was mercifully putting itself out of its own misery.

Captain Africa - serial cast

John Hart  -  Captain Africa
Rick Vallin  -  Ted Arnold
Ben Welden  -  Omar
June Howard  -  Princess Rhoda

Bud Osborne  -  Nat Coleman
Paul Marion  -  Abul El Hamid
Lee Roberts  -  Boris
Terry Frost  -  Gregg
Ed Coch  -  Balu

?  - Shipboard man (chapter 1); ?  -  Garmand (chapter 1)
?  - Joe; Boyd Stockman - Boris' heavy (white suit) #1
Lynton Brent - Boris' heavy (white suit) #2; George Robotham - Boris' heavy (Pith helmet)

Augie Gomez - Hamid's man (chapter 1); Outlaw (chapter 7)
Michael Fox - Hamid's Prime Minister (chapter 7, 8); Kermit Maynard - Akbar (chapter 8)
Paul Stader - Bearded heavy (chapter 8, 13); Ed Colebrook (?) - Outlaw leader (chapter 9)

?  -  Benoud (chapter 9); ? - Guard (chapter 10); 
? - Guard (chapter 10); Marshall Reed - Guard with dagger (chapter 11)
George DeNormand - Gorilla guard (chapters 12, 13)

?  -  Gorilla  (chapters 12, 13); ?  -  Guard (chapter 13); 
?  -  Merchant (chapter 13); Roger Creed  -  Cave heavy (chapter 14)

And various other non-speaking heavies of the World Organization, desert outlaws, and tyrant’s guards. The patched-together serial was originally intended as a second Phantom serial but when producer Sam Katzman realized, after filming the serial, he didn’t have the proper rights, all of star John Hart’s scenes were re-shot. 

The serial includes stock footage from “Jungle Menace”, “The Phantom”, “Desert Hawk”, “Voodoo Tiger” and “Congo Bill”. Hal Polk notes stuntman Paul Stader often doubled Rod Cameron. Ed Coch was in Katzman’s last four serials and had bits in many ‘50s films like “Creature With the Atom Brain”, “Riding Shotgun”, etc. Formerly billed as Rico De Montez in Universal serials and features. (Cast compiled by Boyd Magers and Hal Polk.)

veja mais aqui: http://www.historiasdecinema.com/2010/07/os-herois-fantasiados/

O código secreto (The secret code) 

A Columbia fez outro seriado, com Bennet atrás das câmeras, desta vez com um herói fantasiado não oriundo de histórias em quadrinhos: 'O código secreto' (The secret code) 1942, cujo personagem principal vivido por Paul Kelly, era o Comando Negro.

Com intenção de prender uma quadrilha de sabotadores, o tenente Dan Barton (Paul Kelly) forja uma demissão da Policia e se infiltra entre espiões. Disfarçado com a indumentária do Comando Negro, com a ajuda da repórter Jean Ashley (Anne Nagel) e seu colega Pat Flanagan (Clancy Cooper), ele consegue localizar o código secreto dos inimigos e desmascarar o chefe da quadrilha.     

A boa história, simpatia e irreverência de Paul Kelly, fez do seriado um dos melhores da Columbia. O ponto alto do seriado é quando o Comando Negro luta com o piloto do avião. A aeronave é alvejada pela artilharia anti-aérea e explode. No episódio seguinte, vemos o piloto caindo de pára-quedas, o Comando Negro agarrando-se a ele, os dois se atracando em pleno ar e, finalmente terminando a briga em terra firme.