El retorno de Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy aims to bring down a criminal family unit, headed up by the merciless Pa Stark.

Having ....endured the previous movie, I have put off watching this one for about five years I guess, so today was the day I took the cellophane off the dvd.

You could easily dismiss this film as nonsensical and cheap, but in my review I've tried to partly consider what audiences way back in 1938 would have thought, and what the alternatives would have been.

It's very raw, but there are lots of action sequences, and it's a good old fashioned story of the good guys taking on the baddies.

Some of the dialogue has to be heard to be believed, some of it will have you hiding behind a cushion.

At this early stage, I don't think I could suggest that Ralph Byrd is my idea of Dick Tracy, but I'm not sure if that's down to the actor, or the script, he'd of course play the character for a long time.

6/10.

Fans of the "Flash Gordon" serials will instantly recognise the nasty "Pa Stark" here as none-other than the dastardly "Emperor Ming" himself - Charles Middleton. Thereafter, though, this has really little to remind you of anything as it condenses, rather clunkily, fifteen episodes of crime-fighting into ninety minutes. It's all about how the eponymous detective (Ralph Byrd) and his feisty stalwart "Gwen" (Lynne Roberts) get on the trail of the vicious and malevolent "Stark" gang. These guys are involved in just about every criminal activity known to man, but it's their international antics - including espionage and sabotage - that particularly interest our sleuth. Again, as with "Flash Gordon" these worked far better as weekly episodes with jeopardy points at the end of each instalment. Cutting it all together like this robs us of much of the anticipation we would have felt before the next episode and actually reduces the story to little better than slightly repetitive series of gun-battles, pistol whipping, seemingly irreversible disaster scenarios with the damsel always in distress but sadly no railway track onto which we could tie the hugely annoying kid "Junior" (Jerry Tucker). The production is basic and the script does little to inject much spice to this overly abridged adaptation that is really turns out to be all too forgettable. Original is definitely best.

Watching the feature film version of Dick Tracy Returns it becomes apparent how departed you are from the comic strip Dick Tracy and how appalling the serials were. It is just difficult to take any of it seriously.

Dick Tracy works for the FBI and he is after Pa Stark, the head of the Stark gang. A rookie FBI agent is shot, but not to worry as Tracy states, he will be fine as he has been placed in an iron lung. The agent dies because no one posted any round the clock guards so Pa Stark sneaked in and pulled the plug on his iron lung.

Then you get a scene of Tracy rounding up some bad guys only for his helper Junior shout 'well done Tracy' enabling the others to attack Tracy and Junior being taken hostage.

It gets better when one bad guy leaves a briefcase with a bomb behind in Tracy's office with Tracy in another room guessing that the bad guy will slip out while leaving his briefcase behind, Junior runs after the bad guy who is getting away in his car, but he manages to throw the briefcase inside the car just before it explodes.

It is all preposterous and silly, even nostalgia cannot save it. Thank goodness for the Warren Beatty version who salvaged Dick Tracy's cinematic reputation.

In this sequel to the 1937 serial ( and a heck of a lot better ), Tracy is on the trail of Pa Stark ( Charles Middleton gives a great performance ) and his five sons. After killing a rookie G-Man, Tracy goes after the youngest son ( aptly named the Kid ) and through out the serials he battles the enemy agents and saboteurs Stark is mixed up with to bring the master criminal to justice. Very action packed, but it does contain some corny scenes, but anything was better than the previous entry. In terms of serials, 8 out of 10.

There are good serials and there are mostly bad ones. The bad ones are cheaply made and very boring and use lots of "stock footage". This is the exception. The storyline is very original and is full of action. There are also lots of location scenes and the special effects were used here for the first time and not made for some other serial and reused here. I can see why serials were discontinued around the early fifties. TV came along and by then the serials were nothing like this one. It would be nice to get a nice print on a DVD of this one. My only problem and the reason I would give this a 9 instead of a 10 is the background music. For most of the scenes it is great but when they start fighting it goes to some speeded up uncomprehensible music that should only be used in a cheap western, otherwise it is terrific.