WW2 brought a new type of action hero to the serial cinema screen: the patriotic G-Man battling enemy agents (at first, unnamed but obviously German; later, they wore so many swastikas you’d swear der Fuhrer had a “minimum bling requirement”). Sometimes, the good guys wore snap-brimmed hats and grey suits; sometimes, capes and tights and masks. But they were both equally heroic in the eyes of kids of the day.

Some of the best wartime serials: Spy Smasher (1942) with Kane Richmond battling super-Nazi The Mask, who wore what appeared to be a shower curtain over his face; comic strip heroes Don Winslow of the Navy, Secret Agent X-9, and Smilin’ Jack leapin’ to life to battle America’s ruthless enemies on various fronts;  the ‘Dead End’ Kids forming a series of battalions to take on home front saboteurs in such classics as Junior G-Men, Junior G-Men of the Air, Sea Raiders and Sky Raiders; and even the mighty Batman, who fought one of the most ridiculous super-villains ever, the sinister Dr. Daka and his army of old white guy zombies in turtleneck sweaters.

The best of all the war serials, however, featured new heroes created for the occasion: Rex Bennett of the Secret Service was played by Rod Cameron, who battled our national foes in two 15-episode Republic serials, G-Men vs. the Black Dragon and Secret Service in Darkest Africa. The latter, with Rex racing to beat the Nazis to an historical artifact of great mystical power in North Africa, seems to have been the major inspiration behind the first Indiana Jones film.

The other great WW2 hero was The Black Commando, a Batman-like hero played by Paul Kelly, who battled the Nazis through 15 chapters for Columbia pictures in The Secret Code. Every episode of this fun serial includes an “Army Intelligence Officer” (actually actor Selmer Jackson) helping the kids in the theatre audience identify and decode secret German and Japanese messages.

America survived the war very well, but the Universal studio serial department didn’t. They were phasing out shorts and B-movies to a large extent, and by the end of 1946, it was a wrap on the final Universal serial, The Mysterious Mr. M. Columbia and Republic now had the cliffhanger production business all to themselves, but rising postwar costs and diminishing box-office returns curtailed much of the energy that had gone into serial production just a few years prior.

After a fairly strong start in the mid-late 1940s with The Purple Monster Strikes, The Crimson Ghost, Jesse James Rides Again and The Black Widow, Republics went downhill fast, hiring leading men who looked like previous stuntmen in order to match up the stock footage of the stuntmen who had been hired because they’d looked like the previous leading men. Hence The Flying Disc Man from Mars looked like The Purple Monster, Don Daredevil Rides Again in the Black Whip’s outfit, and the Panther Girl of the Kongo raided Jungle Girl’s closet for her wardrobe.

Things were going somewhat better at Columbia, although wildly uneven, as good serials like The Monster and the Ape and The Vigilante played tag with the dreadful Chick Carter, Detective and Jack Armstrong, The All American Boy. After false starts of almost a decade, Superman finally flew across the serial screen in 1948, and for the first time since Flash Gordon, a serial proved popular enough to play as an “A” presentation in major theatres. Kirk Alyn was terrific as Clark Kent, but his Man of Steel was sorely lacking – and when he “flew”, he dashed behind a car and emerged up in the sky as a badly-animated cartoon (thanks to notoriously cheap producer Sam “One Take” Katzman).

Still, the success of Superman gave new life to serials, for a while at least, and led directly to several prodigies: Columbia rushed out a new Batman and Robin serial (terrible, but great fun in its way, with Robert Lowery wearing a costume that didn’t fit to battle the much better-dressed villain The Wizard) and Republic ordered up their own flying super-hero, Rocketman, in King of the Rocket Men, a serial that proved so popular that it led to three sequels. Columbia produced a direct sequel to its hit with Atom Man vs. Superman, in 1950, with Lyle Talbot as Lex Luthor, before the Man of Steel moved on to television.

Ah, yes, television. By the 1950s, of course, kids could sit at home every day in front of the “idiot box” and watch cowboys and super-heroes battle Indians and villains, and it didn’t cost nothin’. The first big-screen adaptation of a TV series ever was, in fact, Captain Video in 1951 starring Judd Holdren; Columbia managed to eke out some pretty good serials during the ‘50s, including Mysterious Island, Blackhawk, The Lost Planet, and The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd. Unfortunately, they also produced an ill-advised sequel, Return of the Phantom, without clearing with Legal that they still had the rights; turned out they didn’t, and the comic-strip property was not available. So they hastily re-filmed as much as they could and released it as The Adventures of Captain Africa, possibly the worst serial ever – if not the worst ANYTHING ever.

Republic shut down their serial production slate with King of the Carnival in early 1955; Columbia, a year later, with the final new theatrical serial, Blazing the Overland Trail with Lee Roberts. The cliffhanger serial, once as popular as any type of motion-picture entertainment, was as dead as silent films.

Want to check out a serial?

We took a poll over at inthebalcony to ask a series of serial experts and cliffhanger fans to vote for their favorite serials. The winners:

1. Flash Gordon (Universal 1938, 13 chapters)
2. Spy Smasher (Republic 1942, 12 ch.)
3. Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic 1939, 12 ch.)
4. The Adventures of Captain Marvel (Republic 1941, 12 ch.)
5. Drums of Fu Manchu (Republic 1940, 15 ch.)
6. Perils of Nyoka (Nyoka and the Tigermen) (Republic 1942, 12 ch.)
7. Daredevils of the Red Circle (Republic 1939, 12 ch.)
8. Batman (Columbia 1943, 15 ch.)
9. Tim Tyler’s Luck (Universal 1937, 12 ch.)
10. The Spider’s Web (Columbia 1938, 15 ch.)

Not all of these are yet available on DVD; some other fine serials that are include:

• The Miracle Rider (Mascot, 1935, with Tom Mix, 15 ch.)
• Captain Midnight (Columbia 1941, 15 ch.)
• Jungle Jim (Universal 1937, 12 ch.)
• The Phantom Empire (Mascot 1935, with Gene Autry, 12 ch.)
• Undersea Kingdom (Republic 1936, with Crash Corrigan, 12 ch.)
• Action Heroes of the Cliffhanger Serials (90 min. DVD from Legend Films) More than 40 theatrical serial trailers, so a good place to start to see a lot of different well-dressed men in fedoras beating up on each other.

If you'd like to check out Part I, click here.

Clifford Weimer is a writer and film historian in Sacramento, CA. He can usually be found lurking about the dark corners of a movie theatre at inthebalcony.com.