Wordiezett So much average

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

JohnHowardReid Directors: RAY TAYLOR, ALAN JAMES. Screenplay: Barry Shioman, Winston Miller. Story: Morgan Cox, George Morgan. Based on the character characters created by Chester Gould. Photography: William Nobles and Edgar Lyons. Supervising film editor: Murray Seldeen. Film editors: Helene Turner, Edward Todd, William Witney. Art director: John Victor McKay. Set decorator: Morris Braun. Make-up: Bob Mark. 2nd unit director: William Witney. Music director: Harry Grey. Original music: Alberto Colombo. Special effects: John T. Coyle, Theodore Lydecker, Howard Lydecker. Process photography: Bud Thackery. Wardrobe master: Robert Ramsey. Wardrobe mistress: Elsie Horwitz. Production manager: Al Wilson. Script clerk: R.G. Springsteen. Sound recording: Terry Kellum, Daniel J. Bloomberg, Charles L. Lootens. RCA Sound System. Associate producer: J. Laurence Wickland. Producer: Nat Levine. Copyright 5 March 1937 (chapters 1-6) and 13 May 1937 (chapters 7- 15) by Republic Pictures Corporation. U.S. release: 20 February 1937. Each chapter consists of two reels, except for the first which has three. Total running time: 290 minutes.Chapter titles: (1) The Spider Strikes; (2) The Bridge of Terror; (3) The Fur Pirates; (4) Death Rides the Sky; (5) Brother Against Brother; (6) Dangerous Waters; (7) The Ghost Town Mystery; (8) Battle in the Clouds; (9) The Stratosphere Adventure; (10) The Gold Ship; (11) Harbor Pursuit; (12) The Trail of the Spider; (13) The Fire Trap; (14) The Devil in White; (15) Brothers United.SYNOPSIS: A notorious criminal, known as The Lame One or The Spider, kidnaps Dick Tracy's brother and turns him into a zombie who will obey the most fiendish orders without question, including the execution of his own brother!NOTES: Number five of Republic's 66 serials, filming commenced on 30 November 1936 and concluded on 24 December 1936. Negative cost: $127,640. Sequels: Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939), Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941). All three of these serials starred Ralph Byrd in the title role. COMMENT: One of Republic's most exciting and ingenious efforts, this solidly-made serial offers high-flying, non-stop entertainment from stop to finish, with only one exception. The economy chapter is number twelve. All the others are almost equally thrilling, combining an intriguing mystery element with super-fast action and stunts galore. There's little time for romance. Despite her billing, Kay Hughes has precious little to do. It's Fred Hamilton who makes a major contribution in each cliffhanger as Tracy's sidekick, with an assist from Smiley Burnette who offers a fair amount of comedy relief.Ralph Byrd is great in the role he was born to play. Also on hand is that glorious old trooper, Francis X. Bushman, who plays Tracy's boss, and Carleton Young who does a grand job in a role that actually amounts to chief heavy. (Fortunately, despite his elaborate introduction in Chapter One, Junior doesn't get into the line of fire too much and is not unduly in the way). The directors make absolutely brilliant use of their real locations including San Francisco's Oakland Bay Bridge and a disused power plant at San Pedro. And as for the Flying Wing, what a marvelous creation it is! Republic special effects wizardry at its zenith! Smart direction combined with impeccable photography and zestful film editing also deserve our unstinting applause. Each cliff- hanging dilemma presents us with a cleverly super-suspenseful fade- out too — except, of course, for that economy-conscious Chapter Twelve. In fact, (that dud twelfth episode notwithstanding) I would rate this entire serial as one of the Ten Best of All Time!

dbborroughs Ralph Byrd stalled forever his career by taking the role of Chester Gould's crime fighting hero. Byrd would play the role in three more serials, two hour long feature films (taking over when another actor proved unsatisfactory) and a TV series. Byrd could never really get away from Tracy and was type cast as the character even though he took a variety of other roles. Not to put too fine a point on it this, along with its three sequels, represent one of mystery films finest hours. In all of the films we have an excellent mix of crime, mystery and action. The film works as several different things all at the same time and all of them good. The plot of this serial has Tracy battling the Spider, aka The Lame one, who is bent on taking over the world. He's so bad that he is eliminating all the other criminals in town as well has kidnapping and twisting the brother of Tracy through vile means. Its heady stuff and a real joy to watch. It's a big story told on a large canvas with great special effects (The model work here, as with all Republic serials is as good as it gets). You really need to see this serial and its sequels since they all are a great deal of fun.

Travis_Moran Now I've never read a Dick Tracy comic. They were before my time. But I had a good time watching this serial. It moved well and wasn't all just crashes and fight scenes.There are a lot of pretty cool effects considering when this was made. The flying wing was my favourite. It looked like an old Northrop YB-35 with the props in front---and was obviously supposed to be bigger. Nice model though. Some other notable effects were the zeppelin crash and the shaking Golden Gate bridge.Some other decent stuff I liked was the speeded-up secret message on the phonograph disc, the mad doctor with the cat (he was cool), the little belt morse code transmitter (reminded me of Batman's utility belt), and Gwen (I liked how she could fly a plane, and do most other stuff the men did---what surprised me is that they didn't have her get captured by the spider gang at some point).One particularly goofy effect gave me a laugh: At the end of one chapter Dick Tracy's plane crashes into a bridge. The beginning of the next chapter shows the crash and then Dick getting up out of the plane wreckage, brushing off his clothes, and walking off. Pretty hokey there. And it seems Dick was fond of double-parachuting to get out of trouble---sorta funny.The stories were not bad. There was plenty of plot to keep me interested and it was plausible---except maybe for a couple of the escapes after the disastrous endings of the previous chapter like I mentioned above. Now it seems the spider gang tried its hand at almost every type of crime before finally getting squashed by Dick Tracy. Let's see...there was bridge-wrecking, plane-motor-stealing, counterfeiting (attempted anyway), illegal brain surgery (on Tracy's bro), gold stealing (2 instances of this...the prospector's mine and the ship), and stealing jewellery.And of course there are the typical fist fights that everyone expects. As usual, everyone involved gets up and walks away unharmed, without even any dirt or wrinkles on their clothes (as per the unwritten code of all serials it seems). Gun battles occur frequently, but no one notable ever gets hit (well Dick got hit at the end of one chapter, but by the next chapter he was miraculously healed). Additionally, there is no lack of car, boat, airplane, and zeppelin crashes.I really did have a good time with this serial. I gave it an 8 because it had decent stories along with some better-than-average effects. Old movie fans, and anyone who likes serials, shouldn't miss this one.

Vigilante-407 This is one of the better serials I've seen...especially of the less glitzy pre-1940 productions. There are few (in fact only one I think) cliffhanger ending that doesn't ring true (the kind where we see the action...and then the resolve shows different actions happening in the next episode). That puts it up real high in my book on just that point.There isn't all that much care put to keeping the serial like the comic strip. Tracy became a g-man instead of a city police detective and gone are the maladjusted and malformed villains of his colorful rogues gallery. The Lame One, the villain of this chapterplay, doesn't compare to the grotesqueries of The Brow or Little Face.Ralph Byrd is excellent as Tracy...in fact he IS Dick Tracy. Forget Morgan Conway's forgettable appearances in Dick Tracy's Dilemma and Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball (a horrible film)...and especially forget the primary color extravaganza that Warren Beatty put out. Ralph Byrd does them both in...stolid, straight forward and eager for action.I would rate this serial right up there with other great chapterplays, like The Adventures of Captain Marvel, The Masked Marvel and the like.