Dick Tracy

After watching all 15 episodes I have to tell you that this Dick Tracy seems to have paved the way for some of today's action heroes taken from the classic comics. The plot line is simply put - silly (a big crime ring cooperates with foregin goverments, wants to blackmail their own government, brainwashes people...). There seem to be hundreds of things going on and not a single case is solved. Tracy comes in, gets in a fight, the evil scheme is spoiled (case closed), bad guys escape, Dick follows them and get's in terrible danger. End of episode, right before Dick is about to die a horrible death. The next episode opens with a long revision of the previous story and Dick escapes unharmed. Meets with friends and the new problem arises. They investigate for a few minutes and then the same story all over. All right, the effects were awesome for the time when this was made and the ideas for how the villains planed to take charge were probably highly original back then (but were copied ever sense), still, not a single episode seems to have any depth. It was just jumping from one quick and shallow attempt by the Lame one to do whatever it was he wanted to do (there never seemed to be a grand plan behind his actions) to another. All in all, if they wouldn't repeat those previous episode scenes at the beginning of each episode and if the episodes took some time to develop a story it might have been good. Now (especially after watching it at once) as one long Dick Tracy session, I was really disappointed by the shallowness, but pleasantly surprised by the great effects.

Republic Pictures were clearly hitting their stride in superior (and super) serial production with this quite sensational 15 chapter crime-terrorism drama made in 1936, released in early 1937. For any faults: too long as 12 chapters would do; the tedious antics of the infantile Smiley Burnette, there is a dozen truly astonishing and eerie/creepy moments that easily compensate. The first episode is so weird, and on a huge screen in a giant old theater full of screaming kids (or even adults) has several hair raising scenes where master evildoer The Lame One has maximum effect. The first chapter ending sees The fabulous Lydecker Brothers in full big budget special effects mode on a thrill set piece aboard the Golden Gate Bridge. The opening two chapters also features an astonishing triangular flying wing plane (looks like a cross between a stealth bomber and a flying sandwich) which for its day is a genuine masterpiece of inventive and graphic/realistically clever sci fi imagination. The recent film SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW owes a huge debt of imagination to this one flying apparatus alone. Republic clearly intended this serial to play to adults and it is not a G rated serial at all...given the menace, action and violence. It has three great villains one of whom is Gordon Tracy (Dick's brainwashed bro) who, after getting the treatment, sports a very fetching Bride Of Frankenstein hair stripe along with a mean scar. Another hideout menace is Moloch, a cat patting hunchback akin to a lost Uncle of Peter Lorre. Incredible action stunt sequences abound and very inventive use of miniatures and special effects..the chapter endings of 9 and 10 especially with a huge blazing Zeppelin and then a sheet of hull metal swinging from a repaired ship are very well thought out. Often the resolves cheat with Dick just getting up and running off, or rolling out of the way, but given the very high standard of the rest of all parts of this huge and complex production it was a major step forward for Republic at the time proving their willingness to make a serial for all ages that employed excellent craftsmen...especially the incredible Lydecker Brothers they inherited in their merger with Mascot Pictures. Remove them and the serial industry would have been all chases and fights. No wonder this serial was so successful it offered a big marker for two more Dick Tracy epics in 38 and 39. Excellent! Beware of dud dvds though, the one I saw was awful and bleached, in good quality this 15 chapter pre-noir horror serial must be a knockout.

I've watched only 4-5 serials, so I don't have a lot to compare this

to, but so far it's easily the worst of the lot. The overlap from

chapter to chapter is too great (too much material repeated in the

new episode that was seen in the previous episode). The acting is

poor, especially Ralph Byrd (if he stood still for a moment, he'd be

attacked by a woodpecker). The "comedy" of Smiley Burnett is

nothing to smile about (he's even worse here than in the Gene

Autry movies). The character with the most brains in this serial is

actually the 12 year old kid, played by Lee Van Atta. And perhaps

most of all, has anybody seen Dick Tracy in this film? I must have

missed him, because no one in this movie even remotely

resembled the comic strip character. Low budget is not enough of

an excuse for low tech here. At least the director could have put a

watch on Ralph Byrd's wrist, & pretended it was radio controlled.

The two low budget jungle serials I watched with Phyllis Coates

("Panther Girl of the Congo" & "Jungle Drums of Africa") were way

better than this, & so was a low budget jungle serial with Clyde

Beatty ("Lost Jungle"). Not that those were great serials, but they

were better than this one, so tells you something about Dick Tracy.

If you'd like to watch a better crime serial, I recommend "The Green

Archer." That & the serial I'm in the middle of now, "Captain

Marvel," are far superior to Dick Tracy. I rate it 3/10.

Now I've never read a Dick Tracy comic. They were before my time. But I had a good time watching this serial. It moved well and wasn't all just crashes and fight scenes.

There are a lot of pretty cool effects considering when this was made. The flying wing was my favourite. It looked like an old Northrop YB-35 with the props in front---and was obviously supposed to be bigger. Nice model though. Some other notable effects were the zeppelin crash and the shaking Golden Gate bridge.

Some other decent stuff I liked was the speeded-up secret message on the phonograph disc, the mad doctor with the cat (he was cool), the little belt morse code transmitter (reminded me of Batman's utility belt), and Gwen (I liked how she could fly a plane, and do most other stuff the men did---what surprised me is that they didn't have her get captured by the spider gang at some point).

One particularly goofy effect gave me a laugh: At the end of one chapter Dick Tracy's plane crashes into a bridge. The beginning of the next chapter shows the crash and then Dick getting up out of the plane wreckage, brushing off his clothes, and walking off. Pretty hokey there. And it seems Dick was fond of double-parachuting to get out of trouble---sorta funny.

The stories were not bad. There was plenty of plot to keep me interested and it was plausible---except maybe for a couple of the escapes after the disastrous endings of the previous chapter like I mentioned above. Now it seems the spider gang tried its hand at almost every type of crime before finally getting squashed by Dick Tracy. Let's see...there was bridge-wrecking, plane-motor-stealing, counterfeiting (attempted anyway), illegal brain surgery (on Tracy's bro), gold stealing (2 instances of this...the prospector's mine and the ship), and stealing jewellery.

And of course there are the typical fist fights that everyone expects. As usual, everyone involved gets up and walks away unharmed, without even any dirt or wrinkles on their clothes (as per the unwritten code of all serials it seems). Gun battles occur frequently, but no one notable ever gets hit (well Dick got hit at the end of one chapter, but by the next chapter he was miraculously healed). Additionally, there is no lack of car, boat, airplane, and zeppelin crashes.

I really did have a good time with this serial. I gave it an 8 because it had decent stories along with some better-than-average effects. Old movie fans, and anyone who likes serials, shouldn't miss this one.

THE FILM & GENRE -- Serial of 290 minutes. Besides the usual futuristic devices, this also has the "flying wing" aeronautical marvel, a hunchback, and a mad doctor. There is also a TV-Movie Feature created from the Serial.

THE VERDICT -- I'm not a big serial lover but this one kept my attention, and the flying wing is impressive.

FREE ONLINE - Yes. The serial for sure. As for the feature, I found one on YT at 102 minutes which matches IMDB DICK TRACY (1990) at 101 minutes. Wiki has a different duration of 72 minutes but I've never seen that.