The Green Hornet, Episode 13: Doom of the Underworld

 "My job is finished..."

And so the serial ends... suddenly, within twenty minutes, but with finality. The Hornet rather efficiently foils the plot to blow up the offices of the Sentinel, and then foils the baddies entirely by using cunning to turn them against each other. It's all nicely done, incredibly cliched in the best possible way.

There is comedy, with Jenks and Axford, and Miss Case gets to finally meet her hero and, as we might expect, swoon over him. There is much banter at the end. And yet the end of the racket is unexpectedly brutal and violent, as movie serials can occasionally be.

This is, however, the end to a movie serial of the superior sort. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and shall be bavk for more before long.

The Green Hornet, Episode 12: Panic in the Zoo

 "I got the Hornet..."

I'll get to the episode in a minute- it is the penultimate one, after all- but, yeah, zoos in 1940. This zoo looks, on the one hand, like a lot of fun- rides, stalls and all that good stuff, but on the other hand... yes, it's obviously stock footage, but those poor animals in those horrible cages. The cruelty is obvious. It's all, quite blatantly, also a health and safety nightmare. The past is, sometimes, a very foreign country. And yet we're meant to approve of Britt trying to protect the zoo by not publicising the "jinx". Wow.

This aside... there's nothing to particularly indicate that this a penultimate episode. It's just another instalment- cliffhanger hets resolved, the racket is dealt and so we move on to a different bit of extortion. Interswsting, though, that the baddies should finally realise that silencing the Sentinel may well be in their interests, but not that the connection with the Hornet is as close as we know it to be.

How on Earth are they going to end all this in twenty minutes...?

The Green Hornet, Episode 11: Disaster Rides the Rails

 "Six months? Give me six days!"

It's incredible how close we are to the end. Next episode is the penultimate one.And yet still we have an episode of the racketeers being caught with one racket and moving on to another, with set pieces and car chases to pad things out... yet things are padded out so well. This is so much fun to watch.

Two interesting pounts to note, though. The vote rigging plot is wrapped up so quickly- if only Trump's criminal anticsat trying to steal the 2020 election across the pond could be so easily dealt with- and we move on. This is accomplished through narrative by newspaper front page... and one headline shows the word "armoured" spelled with a "u" as per this side of the Atlantic. Did Americans go through a phase of being less  pernickety about Noah Webster's linguistic diktats in 1940?

The second is that there's a random German baddie, in an American movie serial made in 1940 by an industry in which Jewish men were able to enjoy a rare exercise of power, alongside those in the comics industry. It would be nice to think this was political.

Away from such very weighty matters, though, this is fun. It will be interesting to see if the penultimate episode feels penultimate, though...

The Green Hornet, Episode 10: Bullets and Ballots

 "They are repeaters!"

Another episode and, after briefly pausing to resolve the cliffhanger, another racket: this time stuffing ballot boxes in order to rig an election, just like Donald Trump and his fellow vote riggers in today's USA, although their methods are of course quite different, more insidious, and more blaantly racist. Indeed it is, er, the land of the free.

This vote rigging, though, is very 1940, with the "repeaters" (very odd word, but Britt uses it in a newspaper headline so presumably it was current) driving around in cars with their hats and their guns, like a vote rigging Al Capone. It's all good fun.

And then the Green Hornet is driving a long a cliff edge and is blown off it. Bet they re-edit that a bit next episode.

This is all, as ever, just a succession of plotless set pieces. But what set pieces they are...

The Green Hornet, Episode 9: The Hornet Trapped

 "You're a rotten shot, Michael!"

And so we continue, seemingly no closer to the end, but this time with the focus not so much on the racketeers- although Lynch is killed, after leaving evidence in a waste paper basket after drawing a picture of a waste paper basket for Britt Reid to fing, which, er, makes no sense- but on the continuing hunt for the Hornet.

And so we end up with an exciting but fast conclusion, following a strangely slow episode,in which everyone- including Reid!- sets out to find the Hornet. It's all very exciting, and in no well feels like the pllot doggy-paddling it assuredly is at this point because the set pieces, this being a movie serial, remain splendid.

This is also a rare glimpse into how Britt Reid must get very few hours sleep per night, with his double life. He ought towatch it. Thatcher famously needed only four hours per night, and I understand this is considered the reason for her dementia. Lack of sleep in healthy neither for superheroes nor milk snatchers.

The Green Hornet, Episode 8: Dead or Alive

 "They made me blame it on you!"

This is more of the same, naturally, and another racket: tuis time a dry cleaning protection racket. There are more set pieces and, naturally, the plot won't progress until we get much closer to the end.

There's a twist, though, with the Green Hornet, always considered a criminal, this time being crudely framed for murder and with no one doubting his guilt. Both the police- really, this time- and the racketeers are after him. I hope this gets carried forward.

Gordon Jones really is excellent, his stentorian tones doing the trick very well indeed both as Britt Reid and the Hornet. It has to be said, too, that the acting, like everything, is very much above average for a movie serial.

We end, of course, with a random explosion. What else?

The Green Hornet, Episode 7: Bridge of Disaster

 "Where will we go now?"

Yet again we have a similar variation of the racketerring plot we've had throughout, including truckers. There's more sabotaged brakes. There's more corporate intrigue.There's another murder, the kind of locked room mystery where there isn't much mystery. There's a cliffhanger that's par for the course as our heroes, in a truck, traverse a bridge that proceeds to fall into an abyss.

It's a sausage machine. This episode is yet another sausage. 

Thing is, though, yet again, that descibes pretty much all movie serials. And it's so much not the point. But, inyterestingly, it's usually the set pieces that make each episode stand out. But you can tellthis is a superior episode of va superior serial as this is not the case. This is all about intrigue and, unusually, there's relatively litte action- but it works.

That's a tribute not only to the script but the charismatic performance of Gordon Jones. 

Movie serials are... well, what they are. But the best ones, like this, fascinate.

The Green Hornet, Episode 6: Highways of Peril

 "I never saw a car move so fast!"

It should have been Luke Cage in this slot but I needed something shorter, so here’s the next Green Hornet instead.

This is, essentially, another instalment in this superior movie serial much like all the others, with the same heavy usage of the theme tune as incidental music and all the same tropes. This is no bad thing. Not is the repetitive plot, as our hero faces racket after racket and peril after peril, this time with Reid stuck on a bus with no brakes about to crash over a precipice, as you do. 

Incidentally. The victimised bus company is called Whippet Lines…

We end with a shootout, with lots of action for our heroes and our comedy Irishman in the meantime. There no real plot whatsoever, but who cares?

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.

The Green Hornet, Episode Two: Thundering Terror

 "This man has been shot by the Green Hornet!"

Once again it's clear that this is a superior movie serial. The direction, the acting and even the script(!) are a cut above the usual enjoyable bit cheerfully cheap fare. And, this being the second episode, we get a crawl of text as recap that might well have been seen by a young George Lucas. On its own terms, it's a classy way to fulfil a narrative function.

It's also becomig clear how bloody good Gordon Jones as the Hornet/Britt Reid and Keye Luke as Kato are; movie serials don't usually get good actors. Even the portrayal of Kato, so far, soft-pedals the racism in ways we probably have to say are impressive for 1940.

Yes, the cliffhanger resolution is "cut to a bit later". Yes, there's a comedy Irishman with a terrible accent. Yes, the baddies are all behatted 1940s hoods. Yet it's all done so well. And the basic set-up- for one whose only actual knowledge of the Green Hornet comes from two episodes of Batman, although I have heard the superb theme tune before somewhere, is actually pretty awrsome. The Green Hornet is suspected as a criminal by the 1940s Keystone Kops, and Britt Reid is an outwardly cynical millionaire news editor.

Also, this is about rreal social issues, such as exploitative insurance fraud. Also also, the cliffhanger is a chase on top of a train.

This is going to be fun.

The Green Hornet, Episode One: The Tunnel of Terror

" I think the Hornet is the modern Robin Hood this city needs!"

Time for a new series to take the non-Marvel spot, and what better than this classic movie serial from 1940, a birthday present (nope, not telling you how old) from my brother and sister-in-law, who are well aware of my odd tastes. This serial is quite a prospect, partly because it stars a classic pulp radio noir hero who, twenty-seven years later, would guest star in Batman with Adam West, but mostly because Kato is played here by Keye Luke, who would go on, forty-four years later, to play the old man who sold Gizmo in Gremlins.

That's real stardom. Beat that, Bruce Lee.

Yes, this is standard movie serial stuff, with a pulp edge, but it's by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor. Yes, it follows the tropes, and there's lots of hilarious "as you, know, Bob" exposition, but this is a superior example, however silly the Hornet's mask may look. Both Gordon Jones- as a Britt Reid who leans farvmore into the playboy persona than Bruce Wayne ever will- and Keye Luke- as a gleeful Korean Q with a regular supply of gadgets- are superb.

The plot, no doubt, bears no relation to what is to come, centring on health and safety for miners of all things, with the cliffhanger being the collapseof a mine tunnel, but this is gloriously random, the cars are great and the social attitudes are fascinating. Let's see where this goes...