Former World War One ace Captain Bob Dayton (Donald Woods), with his buddy, Lieutenant Ed Carey (Robert Armstrong), operates Sky Raiders Inc., an airplane manufacturer. Dayton has perfected a fast pursuit plane intended for the U.S. Army. But Felix Lynx (Eduardo Ciannelli), an agent for a foreign government, has a spy in the Sky Raiders office that keeps him informed about the new airplane. The inspiration for Indiana Jones? An exciting 40s serial with lots of amazing aerial stunts including an auto-gyro!
Bela Lugosi plays Boroff, a mad scientist who's attempting to pawn off his deadly invention, a disintegrating gas, to the highest bidder. Before the gas can be manufactured, however, Boroff must go in search of certain difficult to find ingredients and the villain is thwarted at every step by US Coastguard agent Terry Kent (Ralph Byrd and crusading newspaper woman Jean Norman (Maxine Doyle). Mad Scientists and Death Rays gone wild! Yow!
Britt Reid, publisher of The Sentinel newspaper, is secretly the vigilante crime fighter The Green Hornet. He and his Korean valet Kato investigate and expose several seemingly separate criminal rackets. This leads them into continued conflict with “the Chief,” the mastermind behind the criminal syndicate controlling those rackets. With Gordon Jones, Wade Boteler and Keye Luke. Look out Bruce Lee, here comes Keye Luke as Kato. This is a full length movie edited from the original serial.
Two men escaping the police by ship are blown off course by a typhoon and shipwrecked on an uncharted island populated by women who make a living diving for pearls. What the men don't know is that the women are also part of a shark cult that sacrifices young virgins to the sharks in the surrounding ocean in order to appease the shark gods. Tikis, shark gods and young virgins collide in this South Seas quirky tale. With Bill Cord and Lisa Montell.
Flash Gordon battles the Purple Death in this exciting movie edited from the serial. A mysterious plague, the Purple Death, ravages the earth. Dr. Zarkov, investigating in his spaceship, finds a ship from planet Mongo seeding the atmosphere with dust. Sure enough, Ming the Merciless is up to his old tricks. So it's back to Mongo for Flash, Dale, and Zarkov, this time with ready-made allies waiting: Prince Barin of Arboria and Queen Fria of the frozen northern land of Frigia; where, it so happens, is found polarite, antidote to the plague. But Ming will use all his forces to keep our heroes from thwarting his plans of conquest! One of the best Tesla Technology serials with electric spaceships buzzing through the Universe instead of rockets!
Agent Mala, an intelligence operative, investigates sabotage on remote Clipper Island in the South Pacific. A gang of spies causes the eruption of a volcano, for which Mala is blamed. He convinces the native Princess Melani of his innocence and helps her ward off a takeover by rival High Priest and spy collaborator Porotu and discover the identity of spy ringleader H.K. A great retro-serial set on a mysterious island in the South Pacific. Starring Ray Mala as Mala, operative of the United States Intelligence Department undercover as a Pacific Dirigible Airlines radio operator. Also starring Rex the Wonder Horse and Buck the Dog.
The Perils of Pauline (1947) is a fictionalized Hollywood account of silent film star Pearl White's rise to fame. Pearl White (Betty Hutton) is a frustrated factory worker who aspires to become a dramatic actress. She joins a touring theatrical troupe managed by handsome but pompous Mike (John Lund), but fame and fortune elude her because she's unable to suppress her natural rambunctiousness. In desperation, White takes a job at a movie studio, where she promptly finds herself in the middle of a slapstick pie fight. Pearl soon becomes world-famous as the star of such cliffhanging, tied-to-the-railroad-tracks serials as The Perils of Pauline. A great retro-movie on the birth of the cliff-hanger serial!
Based on the famous Arthur Conan Doyle book, starring Wallace Beery with Bessie Love and Lloyd Hughes starts with Professor Challenger facing a skeptical press corps when he asserts that giant dinosaurs are alive and flourishing in the farthest depths of the Amazon. Newspaper reporter Edward Malone learns that this claim originates from a diary given to the professor by fellow explorer Maple White’s daughter, Paula. Malone’s paper funds an expedition to rescue Maple White, who has been marooned at the top of a high plateau. Joined by renowned hunter John Roxton, the group goes to South America, where they do indeed find a plateau inhabited by prehistoric creatures.
At the dawn of the Tesla age was this incredible serial from 1935 which featured Tesla’s wireless transmission of power and other inventions. Scientist Bruce Gordon comes to a secluded area in Africa after realizing that a series of electrically induced natural disasters had been detected in the area. There he finds Zolock, last of the Lemurians, in a secret complex under a mountain. Zolock had created the natural disasters as a prelude to his attempt to take over the world, holding a brilliant scientist their hostage with his daughter. He had also forced the scientist to create mindless “giant” slaves out of the natives as a private army. As the serial progresses we learn that the scientist had also turned another tribe, the Wangas, into white burley haired midgets. Lots of Tesla technology and futuristic hallways and rooms with numerous gadgets on the walls. plus a remote viewing television screen, a death ray that eats through metal and threatens the strapped-down Gordon in a scene identical to Goldfinger’s laser burning toward James Bond’s crotch, plus tons more 1930s superscience. This is the world of Tesla Technology that we were supposed to have, shown to us from 1936. This may be partly the source of the “myth” of Marconi’s secret city in the jungles of South America.
The Lost Jungle (1934). Animal trainer Clyde Beatty heads a rescue party in search of his girl, Ruth, and her father who have gotten lost looking for an uncharted island. His dirigible crashes into the jungles of the island. When he locates Ruth, he learns that her father has disappeared. The ensuing search is hindered by greedy gold hunters and wild animals. The classic retro-serial and eventual movie that all the later adventure animal shows were based on. Go lost jungle!
Zombies, Nazis and Mind Control all collide in this moody 40s thriller on a Caribbean Island with lots of very nasty things. The early telling of a secret island base for the use of the battling superpowers. The movie starts somewhere over the Caribbean during the very beginning of WWII, a small plane gets downed by a tropical storm. The pilot, his passenger, and the passenger’s manservant find themselves on a plantation owned by the mysterious Dr. Sangre. The manservant discovers that there are zombies wandering about, while the pilot and the other guy figure there’s something rotten about Dr. Sangre. It turns out that Sangre is a spy for an unnamed European power —apparently the Nazis—that was before Pearl Harbor and America wasn’t officially in the war yet) and has captured a U.S. military official. And he plans to use a voodoo ritual to extract classified information from his prisoner. Starring Dick Purcell (of Captain America serial fame), Mantan Moreland and Joan Woodbury. The best of all the old zombie movies!
THE UNDERSEA KINGDOM: THE MOVIE. This great 1936 serial, now an edited and digitally enhanced movie, is the story of Ray “Crash” Corrigan, Athlete and Navy Lieutenant, who joins Professor Norton in a Rocket Submarine to inspect an enigmatic location beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Following a suspicious earthquake, and detecting a series of signals, Professor Norton leads an expedition, including Crash and reporter Diana Compton, three sailors (Briny Deep, Salty, Joe) and their pet parrot Sinbad. Unknown to the expedition until it is underway and in trouble, Billy has stowed away on the Rocket Sub as well. Finding a lost kingdom they become embroiled in an Atlantean civil war between Sharad (with his White Robes) and the usurper Unga Khan (with his Black Robes) who wishes to conquer Atlantis and then destroy the upper world with earthquakes generated by his Disintegrator. Thus he will rule the world—unless he can be stopped in time! Great 30s Tesla death rays and other weird Atlantean technology. The original movie about Atlantis! Plus period trailers.
The Shadow vs International Crime (1937) stars Rod LaRoque as The Shadow., a man with mysterious powers that he acquired in Tibet. In the radio drama, which debuted in 1937, The Shadow was an invisible avenger who had learned, while "traveling through the Orient," "the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him." This feature of the character was born out of necessity: time constraints of 1930s radio made it difficult to explain to listeners where The Shadow was hiding and how he was remaining concealed. Thus, the character was given the power to escape human sight. Voice effects were added to suggest The Shadow's seeming omnipresence. To explain this power, The Shadow was described as a master of hypnotism, as explicitly stated in several radio episodes.
The Shadow Strikes (1937) stars Rod LaRoque as The Shadow., a man with mysterious powers that he acquired in Tibet. In the radio drama, which debuted in 1937, The Shadow was an invisible avenger who had learned, while "traveling through the Orient," "the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him." This feature of the character was born out of necessity: time constraints of 1930s radio made it difficult to explain to listeners where The Shadow was hiding and how he was remaining concealed. Thus, the character was given the power to escape human sight. Voice effects were added to suggest The Shadow's seeming omnipresence. To explain this power, The Shadow was described as a master of hypnotism, as explicitly stated in several radio episodes.
The Lost Zeppelin is a 1929 talking adventure film directed by Edward Sloman and produced and distributed by Tiffany-Stahl. It stars Conway Tearle, Virginia Valli and Ricardo Cortez. Tearle plays a navy officer modeled on U. S. Navy Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd who was then a national aviation hero. Byrd made his own genuine Antarctic adventure With Byrd at the South Pole during his South Pole Expedition 1928-29. Utterly modernistic in design and equipped with every possible convenience and provision, the big blimp nonetheless meets disaster in the snowy wastes of "Little America." The Lost Zeppelin really picks up the pace in its closing reels and remains among the most impressive of the early independent talkies.
This great 1952 serial, now an edited and digitally enhanced movie, is the story of George Wallace as Commando Cody, ‘Sky Marshal of the Universe,’ a civilian researcher and the owner of Cody Laboratories which has a sizable staff of employees. He works with American scientists Joan Gilbert and Ted Richards in the development of a rocket-powered flying suit and a rocket to the Moon. When the US finds itself under attack by a mysterious power that wipes out military bases and industrial complexes, government security chief Henderson suspects it’s an “atomic ray” originating from the Moon! He assigns Commando Cody with his secret flying suit to investigate the source of the atomic ray. Cody, Joan and Ted take off in a rocket to the moon and, upon arrival, Cody is captured by Moon-men. They confront the moon’s dictator Retik, who boldly announces plans to conquer our planet and move his subjects there. Cody escapes from Retik and the Moon and is soon battling a lunar native named Krog and the gang of human crooks he has hired to steal and stockpile supplies for the invasion. Cody continues making trips in his experimental rocket back to the moon, in a perilous and all but single-handed effort to thwart the planned invasion of Earth.
