Serial film
A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, generally advancing weekly, until the series is completed. Usually, each serial involves a single set of characters, protagonistic and antagonistic, involved in a single story, which has been edited into chapters after the fashion of serial fiction and the episodes cannot be shown out of order or as a single or a random collection of short subjects.
"Serial (film)" redirects here. For the comedy film, see Serial (1980 film).
Each chapter was screened at a movie theater for one week, and ended with a cliffhanger, in which characters found themselves in perilous situations with little apparent chance of escape. Viewers had to return each week to see the cliffhangers resolved and to follow the continuing story. Movie serials were especially popular with children, and for many youths in the first half of the 20th century a typical Saturday matinee at the movies included at least one chapter of a serial, along with animated cartoons, newsreels, and two feature films.
There were films covering many genres, including crime fiction, espionage, comic book or comic strip characters, science fiction, and jungle adventures. Many serials were Westerns, since those were the least expensive to film. Although most serials were filmed economically, some were made at significant expense. The Flash Gordon serial and its sequels, for instance, were major productions in their times. Serials were action-packed stories that usually involved a hero (or heroes) battling an evil villain and rescuing a damsel in distress. The villain would continually place the hero into inescapable deathtraps, or the heroine would be placed into a deathtrap and the hero would come to her rescue. The hero and heroine would face one trap after another, battling countless thugs and lackeys, before finally defeating the villain.
Availability[edit]
In theaters[edit]
There was always a market for action subjects in theaters, so as far back as 1935 independent film companies reissued older serials for new audiences. Universal brought back its Flash Gordon serials, and both Republic and Columbia began re-releasing its older serials in the late 1940s. Although Republic discontinued new serial production in 1955, the studio continued making older ones available to theaters through 1959. Columbia, which canceled new serials in 1956, kept older ones in circulation until 1966. Columbia still offers a handful of serials to today's theaters.
On television[edit]
Serials, with their short running times and episodic format, were very attractive to programmers in the early days of television. Veteran producers Louis Weiss and Nat Levine were among the first to offer their serials for broadcast.
The traditional week-to-week format of viewing serials was soon abandoned. As Republic executive David Bloom explained, "Attempts to program serials with full week intervals between chapters during the earlier days of television just about killed them off as effective sales product. It is understandable that this practice was adopted in view of their success in theaters on a Saturday matinee exhibition policy. But cliffhangers simply cannot be treated on TV as they were in theaters and still maintain the suspense so vital to their entertainment content. This suspense factor is diluted by the vast amount of other TV entertainment beamed between weekly showings."[4] TV stations began showing serials daily, generally on weekday afternoons, as children's programming.
In July 1956 TV distributor Serials Inc., a subsidiary of Jerry Hyams's Hygo Television Films, bought the 1936-1946 Universal serials (including all titles, rights, and interests) for $1,500,000.[5] Also in 1956, Columbia's TV subsidiary Screen Gems reprinted many of its serials for broadcast syndication. Only the films' endings were changed: Screen Gems replaced the "at this theater next week" title card with its standard Screen Gems logo. Screen Gems acquired the Hygo company in December 1956,[6] and packaged both Columbia and Universal serials for broadcast.[7] Republic's TV division, Hollywood Television Service, issued serials for television in their unedited theatrical form, as well as in specially edited six-chapter, half-hour editions ready made for TV time slots.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, serials were often revived on BBC television in the United Kingdom.[8]
Home movies[edit]
Both Republic and Columbia issued "highlights" versions of serials for the home-movie market. These were printed on 8mm silent film (and later Super 8 film) and sold directly to owners of home-movie projectors. Columbia was first to market, with three abbreviated chapters from its 1938 serial The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok. When Batman became a national craze in 1965, Columbia issued a six-chapter silent version of its 1943 Batman. Republic followed suit with condensed silent versions of its own serials, including Adventures of Captain Marvel, G-Men vs. the Black Dragon, and Panther Girl of the Kongo.
With the rise in popularity of Super 8 sound-film equipment in the late 1970s, Columbia issued home-movie prints of entire 15-chapter serials, including Batman and Robin, Congo Bill, and Hop Harrigan. These were in print only briefly, until the studios turned away from home-movie films in favor of home video.
Home video[edit]
Film serials released to the home video market from original masters include most Republic titles (with a few exceptions, such as Ghost of Zorro)—which were released by Republic Pictures Home Video on VHS and sometimes laserdisc (sometimes under their re-release titles) mostly from transfers made from the original negatives, The Shadow, and Blackhawk, both released by Sony only on VHS, and DVD versions of Flash Gordon, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Hearst), Adventures of Captain Marvel (Republic Pictures), Batman and Batman and Robin (Sony), Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman (Warner).
The Universal serials had been controlled by Serials Inc. until it closed in 1970. The company now known as VCI Entertainment obtained the rights. VCI is offering new Blu-Ray and DVD restorations of many Universal serials, including Gang Busters, Jungle Queen, Pirate Treasure, and three Buck Jones adventures. All of the new VCI releases derive from Universal's 35mm vault elements.
Notable restorations of partially lost or forgotten serials such as The Adventures of Tarzan, Beatrice Fairfax, The Lone Ranger Rides Again, Daredevils of the West and King of the Mounties have been developed and made available to fans by The Serial Squadron. A gray market for DVDs also exists consisting of DVD companies releasing titles from privately owned 16mm prints or even copies of previously released VHS or laserdisc editions, and various websites and internet auctions. These DVDs vary between good and poor quality, depending on their source. In 2017, Adventures of Captain Marvel became the first serial to be released on Blu-ray.
Amateur/fan efforts[edit]
An early attempt at a low-budget Western serial, filmed in color, was entitled The Silver Avenger. One or two chapters exist of this effort on 16mm film but it is not known whether the serial was ever completed.
The best-known fan-made chapter play is the four-chapter, silent 16mm Captain Celluloid vs. the Film Pirates, made to resemble Republic and Columbia serials of the 1940s and completed in 1966. The plot involved a masked villain named The Master Duper, one of three members of a Film Commission who attempts to steal the only known prints of priceless antique films, and the heroic Captain Celluloid, who wears a costume reminiscent of that of the Black Commando in the Columbia serial The Secret Code and is determined to uncover him. Roles in the serial are played by, among others, film historians and serial fans Alan G. Barbour, Al Kilgore, and William K. Everson.
In the 1970s, serial fan Blackie Seymour shot a complete 15-chapter serial called The Return of the Copperhead. Seymour's only daughter, who operated the camera at the age of 8, attests that as of 2008 the serial was indeed filmed but the raw footage remains in cans, unedited.
In 2001, King of the Park Rangers, a one-chapter sound serial was released by Cliffhanger Productions on VHS video tape in sepia. It concerned the adventures of a Park Ranger named Patricia King and an FBI Agent who track down a trio of killers out to find buried treasure in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
A second ten-chapter serial, The Dangers of Deborah, in which a female reporter and a criminologist fight to uncover the identity of a mysterious villain named The Terror, was released by Cliffhanger Productions in 2008.
In 2006, Lamb4 Productions created its own homage to the film serials of the 1940s with its own serial titled "Wildcat." The story revolves around a super hero named Wildcat and his attempts to save the fictional Rite City from a masked villain known as the Roach. This eight-chapter serial was based heavily on popular super hero serials such as "Batman and Robin," "Captain America," and "The Adventures of Captain Marvel." After its premiere, "Wildcat" was posted on the official Lamb4 Productions YouTube channel for public viewing.[9]
Studio/commercial efforts, cartoons, and spoofery[edit]
The serial format was used with stories on the original run of The Mickey Mouse Club (1955–58), with each chapter running about six to ten minutes. The longer-running dramatic serials included "Corky and White Shadow", "The Adventures of Spin and Marty", "The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure", "The Boys of the Western Sea", "The Secret of Mystery Lake", "The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of Ghost Farm", and The Adventures of Clint and Mac.
Other Disney programs shown on Walt Disney Presents in segments (such as The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, The Swamp Fox, The Secret of Boyne Castle, The Mooncussers, and The Prince and the Pauper) and Disney feature films (including Treasure Island; The Three Lives of Thomasina; The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men; Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue; and The Fighting Prince of Donegal) edited into segments for television presentation often had a cliffhanger-serial-like feel.
In England, in the 1950s and 60s, low-budget six-chapter serials such as Dusty Bates and Masters of Venus were released theatrically, but these were not particularly well-regarded or remembered.
The greatest number of serialized television programs to feature any single character were those made featuring "the Doctor", the BBC character introduced in 1963. Doctor Who serials would run anywhere from one to twelve episodes and were shown in weekly segments, as had been the original theatrical cliffhangers. Doctor Who was syndicated in the US as early as 1974, but did not gain a following in America until the mid-1980s when episodes featuring Tom Baker reached its shores. Although the series ended in 1989, it was revived in 2005, now following a more standard episode format.
The 1960s cartoon show Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle included two serial-style episodes per program. These spoofed the cliffhanger serial form. Within the Rocky and Bullwinke show, the recurring but non-serialized Dudley Do-Right, specifically parodied the damsel in distress (Nell Fenwick) being tied to railroad tracks by arch villain Snidely Whiplash and rescued by the noble but clueless Dudley. The Hanna–Barbera Perils of Penelope Pitstop was a takeoff on the silent serials The Perils of Pauline and The Iron Claw, which featured Paul Lynde as the voice of the villain Sylvester Sneakley, alias "The Hooded Claw".
Danger Island, a multi-part story in under-10-minute episodes, was shown on the Saturday morning Banana Splits program in the late 1960s. Episodes were short, full of wild action and usually ended on a cliffhanger. This serial was directed by Richard Donner and featured the first African American action hero in a chapter play. The violence present in most of the episodes, though much of it was deliberately comical and would not be considered shocking today, also raised concerns at a time when violence in children's TV was at issue.
On February 27, 1979, NBC broadcast the first episode of an hour-long weekly television series Cliffhangers!, which had three segments, each with a different serial: a horror story (The Curse of Dracula, starring Michael Nouri), a science fiction/western (The Secret Empire, (inspired by 1935's The Phantom Empire) starring Geoffrey Scott as Marshal Jim Donner and Mark Lenard as Emperor Thorval) and a mystery (Stop Susan Williams!, starring Susan Anton, Ray Walston as Bob Richards, and Albert Paulsen as the villain Anthony Korf). Though final episodes were shot, the series was canceled and the last program aired on May 1, 1979 before all of the serials could conclude; only The Curse of Dracula was resolved.
In 2006, Dark Horse Indie films, through Image Entertainment, released a 6-chapter serial parody called Monarch of the Moon, detailing the adventures of a hero named the Yellow Jacket, who could control Yellow Jackets with his voice, battled "Japbots", and traveled to the moon. The end credits promised a second serial, Commie Commandos From Mars. Dark Horse attempted to promote the release as a just-found, never-before-released serial made in 1946, but suppressed by the US Government.
Several serials are now in the public domain. These can often be downloaded legally over the internet or purchased as budget-priced DVDs. The list of public domain serials includes: