The Green Hornet, Episode Four: Pillar of Flame

 "He'll be getting a visit from the Green Hornet!"

It's fascinating to think that literally all the movie serials I've done this far have been based on (very early iterations of) superheroes, but this comes from a different tradition: the pulp hero. And the Green Hornet is not even a character from pulp magazines but from radio, from whence the awesome theme tune comes. Yet, with a superlative directorial team (look at the wipes between scenes) don't treat this genre any different to that of its successor, the superhero. Then again, I suspect they're both themselves, within the movie serial format, basically fitting within an adventure crime genre.

I mean, there's no plot here. Last week it was insurance fraus via booby trapped plans; this time its a car racket. I don't care. It's fun, it's classy, and Kato's costume (goggles and bow tie) is hilarious. The DA has an English butler; it's 1940. There's a brilliant succession of brilliantly directed plane crasahes, car chases, brilliant set pieces.

The Green Hornet, Episode Three: Flying Coffins

 "Any landing you can walk away from isa good landing!"

A summary of this episide wouldn't give much of a clue as to how good it is. Insurance frauds continue, this time through the dastardly practice of insuring the lives of young traineee pilot and sending them up in planes rigged to crash. Again, the Green Hornet investigate, there's a death, and the Hornet is framed.

Yet the action sequences are genuinely superb. There's a car chase where a car goes off a cliff. The cliffanger resolution ends excitement on top of a train. And the cliffhanger has the Green Hornet, brave and stubbern to the pointy of being utterly bonkers, force the boss of the flying schoolinto one of the planes known to be dodgy- with himself- and uses the insane levels of peril to get answers to bhis questions. That's intense, to put it mildly, and leads to quite the cliffhanger as the plain goes into the inevitable tailspin and the equally inevitable explosion. It's all so wel, shot it isn't obviously stock footage.

It's not the fairly bog standard movie serial plot- just one set piece after another- that makes this a cut above your average movie serial. It's just really well made.