Scouts to the Rescue

Skeets Scanlon discovers a treasure map and has his scoutmaster Bruce Scott assemble his scout troop to search for it. Skeets' father has a slight connection with the map since his brother Denny was involved with a group of counterfeiters and the map leads to the location where the crooks hid the fake cash. Turk Mortenson, leader of the counterfeiters, abducts Scanlon to force him to make plates for their operations. G-Man Hal Marvin would also like to know the whereabouts of Scanlon, since he believes that Scanlon is a part of Mortenson's gang. While battling the crooks, the Scouts also have to encounter a renegade teen Rip Rawson as well as an undiscovered tribe of Indians, who have a store of radium on their reservation. This is another example of a Universal serial that must have originally conceived as a B movie, but stretched unnecessarily to a chapterplay. The serial does have the decent amount of action, good heroes & villains, and a continuous storyline to keep a kid coming back for 12 weeks, but I doubt that a kid would have gone out of his way to come back. I think the serial could have been improved if the treasure angle and Indian tribe played a bigger role, rather than focus on the counterfeiters angle again & again. Rating, based on serials, 5.

Serial aimed squarely at little kids. It is a little bit much to take today with our sophisticated society. It does promote the Scouts which can only do the most good for our kids today. But it is all so innocent and naive. Production values are good. Re-recorded music from earlier Universal features (such as "STORMY") are an added plus.