Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

hwg1957-102-265704 Doubly directed by Alan James and Ray Taylor this an excellent serial concerning the exploits of Dick Tracy. A master criminal called The Lame One runs The Spider Ring who engage in smuggling, espionage, murder and similar illegal activities and the valiant Tracy and his team go head to head with them. The Lame One has also captured Tracy's brother Gordon and with the evil doctor Moloch's skills ("a simple altering of certain glands"!) has turned Tracy into a pliable assistant for himself. The altered brother carries out most of The Lame One's schemes. Incident follows incident in some good locations until the breathless finish.Ralph Byrd is perfect as Dick Tracy, determined and dedicated to to his task. The identity of The Lame One is kept to the end. He hobbles about wearing a built up shoe and barks out orders from a desk. The mad Moloch is played by the creepy John Picorri (often stroking a black cat) and Carleton Young is effective as the changed Gordon Tracy, a streak of white hair on his head after his character changing operation, with an air of sadness about him that is poignant. Unfortunately the great Byron Foulger is only in it briefly as the gangster Korvitch.Smiley Burnette is one of Tracy's assistants Mike McGurk and is supposed to be the comic relief but who isn't at all funny. Also appearing in a couple of scenes are 'Oscar' and 'Elmer' who were a comic team at the time but they aren't funny either. Lee Van Atta as Junior gets more laughs. I. Stanford Jolley plays 'Roadside Thug' and 'G-Man' and 'Reporter' and 'Intern' to show his versatility.It has great model work by the Lydecker brothers including a wonderful flying wing that is used a lot. Indeed a lot of the scenes take place in the air. The fifteen packed episodes are a great start to the Dick Tracy serials.

oscar-35 I just found this VHS double tape 30's matinée serial and thoroughly enjoyed viewing it. Great to see the pre-WW2 vintage cars, flying wing and clothes fashions of this fine show. It was well edited, shot, written and expertly acted. Great and interesting Dick Tracy casting with this beloved and loved comic-book character. Ralph Byrd surely makes the quintessential Tracy over all others. I always felt that in the later Dick Tracy serials, TV show, and Disney/Touchstone feature film could not hold a candle to this earliest '37 project. Republic Pictures is back and re-releasing their archive of films. The home studio of early John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and other matinée serials was in the present CBS Radford studio lot in Studio City, CA. The show still manages to hold-up in today's superheroes and was refreshing to see the stunt work and physical special effects and NO over used CGI.

jalilidalili After watching all 15 episodes I have to tell you that this Dick Tracy seems to have paved the way for some of today's action heroes taken from the classic comics. The plot line is simply put - silly (a big crime ring cooperates with foregin goverments, wants to blackmail their own government, brainwashes people...). There seem to be hundreds of things going on and not a single case is solved. Tracy comes in, gets in a fight, the evil scheme is spoiled (case closed), bad guys escape, Dick follows them and get's in terrible danger. End of episode, right before Dick is about to die a horrible death. The next episode opens with a long revision of the previous story and Dick escapes unharmed. Meets with friends and the new problem arises. They investigate for a few minutes and then the same story all over. All right, the effects were awesome for the time when this was made and the ideas for how the villains planed to take charge were probably highly original back then (but were copied ever sense), still, not a single episode seems to have any depth. It was just jumping from one quick and shallow attempt by the Lame one to do whatever it was he wanted to do (there never seemed to be a grand plan behind his actions) to another. All in all, if they wouldn't repeat those previous episode scenes at the beginning of each episode and if the episodes took some time to develop a story it might have been good. Now (especially after watching it at once) as one long Dick Tracy session, I was really disappointed by the shallowness, but pleasantly surprised by the great effects.

bsmith5552 "Dick Tracy" was the first of three serials based on Chester Gould's popular comic strip produced by Republic Pictures in the late 30s. The title character was played by Ralph Byrd in all three films. In this installment Tracy and his assistants Steve Lockwood (Fred Hamilton), Junior (Lee Van Atta) and Mike McGurk (Smiley Burnette) are up against a terrorist organization known as the Spider Ring. The gang is led my a mysterious shadowy figure known only as the Lame One. The gang tries among other things, to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge with a sonic sound wave machine, take over a gold mine and steal the plans for a new high speed aircraft. Tracy and his pals are kept busy trying to foil the gang's moves over 15 fast-paced chapters. Co-directors Ray Taylor and Alan James keep the action moving and provide us with plenty of excitement. There is a least one fight in every chapter. There is also the requisite "flashback" chapter which Republic used in most of their serials. The unmasking of the Lame One in Chapter 15 is almost anti-climatic. I challenge you to remember who the character was who turns out to be the Lame One. The DVD which I purchased was produced by Marengo Films. The print from which it was duplicated was apparently borrowed from a collector so IT WAS NOT duplicated from the fuzzy public domain print that has been used for several years. The picture quality is very good and the sound crisp and clear. Some interesting notes. The shooting down of a dirigible foreshadowed the real life Hindenberg disaster the following year. The high speed plane forecast the development of jet planes by some ten years. The Flying Wing used by the gang almost reminds one of the Stealth Bomber even though this was the 30s. And yes there's those great vintage 30s cars too. The running time of 290 minutes makes this I believe, the longest running serial of all time. Francis X. Bushman who plays G-Man chief, Clive Anderson had been in films since 1911 and was one of the first matinee idols. He is probably best remembered for his role as Messala in the silent "Ben-Hur" (1927). Lee Van Atta and Smiley Burnette both appeared in the serial "Undersea Kingdom" (1936). Burnette of course would go on to be one of the best known "B" western sidekicks riding with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Charles Starrett (The Durango Kid). Also in the cast in assorted roles, are Roy Barcroft as an air crewman on The Flying Wing, Milburn Morante as "Death Valley Johnny", I. Stanford Jolley as an intern and veteran silent heavy Walter Long in a bit. Future serial director William Witney served as a film editor on this project. Followed by "Dick Tracy Returns" (1938) and "Dick Tracy's G-Men" (1939).