One of those things

[ericcoleman]

I love old movie serials. This started when I was a kid and one of the local TV stations would show Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

I have a lot of them now, they are generally cheap since a lot of them are in the public domain.

One of my xmas presents was the complete Superman serials, one from 1948 and the other from 1950. Starting into them now.

Anyone else suffer from this affliction? Do you have any favorites that I should look into?

Comments

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

You need to meet my brother/friend Wayne Owens. He has every series, every old movie and it The Man when it comes to movie and TV trivia. He used to be a stand-up comedian and writes amazing stories. His wife Pam is one of the niftiest women around, an amazing cook and SHE is a folk music geek (I knew her for 2 decades before I found this fact out, btw.)

Hmmm, next time you guys are through, we need to arrange this. Yes, we do.

[guppiecat]

Superman vs the Mole Men is one of my all time favorites.

[ericcoleman]

That is actually the first movie, and the first to feature George Reeves as Superman.

[astro-not1.livejournal.com]

Hmm, if you haven't seen it yet I think you'll find The Phantom Empire to be a real (reel?) hoot. Imagine a sci-fi western, starring Gene Autry. Not only is he fighting ordinary crooks, he's also up against an underground kingdom complete with robots wearing tin Stetsons!

Now, the real scary part is that there was an attempt to 'revive' the idea of the old serials on TV in either the late 70's or early 80's, and one of the stories they tried was a remake of The Phantom Empire. They took the basic plot, set it in a 'real' western town in the 1800's, removed the 'singing cowboy' nonsense, and cast Mark Lenard as one of the underground baddies. The series itself only lasted about 6 weeks before dying of poor ratings, and the worst part was they started this one with Chapter 3 (I think) and never got the chance to recycle to the beginning.