The Green Hornet

I recently watched the 1940 serial edition of "The Green Hornet". As someone who has not watched very many serial movies, I found this film series to be fun and extremely well made for its day. The movie is about four and a half hours long, but is divided into thirteen chapters, each twenty minutes in length. I myself watched a chapter every few days over the course of a month or so.

"The Green Hornet" tells the story of the eponymous radio suspense character from the 1930's who is essentially a mild mannered newspaper editor who takes it upon himself to fight crime in disguise. The character is not exactly a vigilante, at least not in the violent sense, as the Hornet is constantly portrayed as a hero rather than an antihero. Still, his standing outside the law causes him to have run ins with both crooks and the police.

There is definitely a vibe to this film that fits into a "noir" genre, as the plot centers on an elaborate scandal. However, the film maintains a lighthearted vibe overall, as this is ultimately a superhero series, so to speak, rather than the kind of existentialist commentary one might expect from film noir.

The best thing this serial has going for it is its elaborate settings and fight scenes. Railroad scenes, flight scenes, train wrecks, auto wrecks, plane wrecks, flooded mines--this one has it all. And of course, each chapter ends with a cliffhanger made to keep you on the edge of your seat.

All that said, I've given this movie 7/10 stars. It's certainly well made and a delight for its day and age, and for its genre. However, it is quite a long series and by the end you're kind of ready for it to be over with. Still, the final chapter is perhaps the best of the series, and makes it all worth the watch.

"It's gone... like a spook! I've never seen a car move so fast." The two police officers who are constantly chasing the Green Hornet's car say that in almost every episode. Britt Reid (the Green Hornet) is a rich guy who like Bruce Wayne (Batman) and Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) has a secret identity that he uses to fight crime.

This serial is a lot of fun and like most serials ends each episode with an exciting cliff hanger. It suffers from the defects typical of serials of this era but also has the charm that is also typical of them.

Those of us who remember the Abbott and Costello Show will enjoy seeing Gordon Jones as Britt Reid/The Green Hornet. He was Officer Mike. Although Keye Luke (Kato) is no Bruce Lee he plays the part well. Those who enjoyed David Carradine as Caine in Kung Fu will enjoy seeing how Master Po (the blind monk who called Caine "grasshopper") looked as a young man.

Don't expect a sophisticated plot or deep character development. The dialog is corny but there is plenty of action and lots of fun.

'The Green Hornet' is, overall, a pretty good serial. Certainly it is a darn sight better than the superhero movies made since about, say, 2005, when suddenly Batman was willing to confess his true identity to a deputy DA just because he has the hots for her, or since 2006, when we learned that Superman was a dead-beat dad and a stalker (and don't get me started on the Fantastic Four or 'Spider-Man 3': blech!). 'The Green Hornet' features a hero unencumbered by ridiculous modern angst and subplots, who is good in a fight, yet is only able to perform feats that actual human beings could conceivably perform.

This serial has a good plot, or rather a series of good plots, that are much more grounded in reality than most other serials. It does not involve super-powers, magic, outer space, or super-villains. It's about crime. I myself enjoy the demented hallucinations of 'Flash Gordon' or 'Atom Man Vs. Superman' as much as the next person, but I like crime stories too.

This serial has decent fight scenes, not dazzling like 'Spy Smasher,' but nothing like the painfully ridiculous fights in Columbia's two horrible Batman serials. The cliff hangers are generally good, with the average amount of 'cheating' to resolve some of them. There is a good sequence with the Hornet jumping from his car onto a moving train, and who doesn't like that? To predict if you are going to like this serial, a lot depends on if you like the Green Hornet as a hero. This serial is very faithful to the original radio show, even to the extent that whenever actor Gordon Jones puts on the Green Hornet mask, his voice is dubbed in by Al Hodge, who played the Hornet on radio and later went on to be the best Captain Video on TV.

I like the Green Hornet because he has a super cool gas gun to knock out crooks (the special effect for this action works well here) and has a super cool souped-up car to chase crooks. Also, instead of wearing tights, he wears a suit and a hat, which looks a lot classier and certainly less sissy than superhero tights.

But now a word about Kato: in this version of Green Hornet, Kato is the one who invents the super cool gas gun and high powered engine that powers the super cool car. In real life, a guy that smart would have patented those things and gotten rich from them. Or if he got into the crime fighting business, he might have kept the gas gun and super motor secret so as to avoid them falling into the wrong hands, but certainly he would have invented other things and gotten rich from them.

Also, besides being a scientific genius, Kato is the one who knows martial arts. The Green Hornet is pretty good in a fight, but a Judo expert would outfight him every time.

What I am getting at is that Kato should have been the main hero, and the Hornet should have been his sidekick. My guess as to why the Hornet was dominant is that is something to do with the fact that Kato was not a Caucasian and Hollywood has been known to, from time to time, exhibit a little institutional racism.

To the credit of the writers, however, at least Kato was portrayed as smart, tough and valiant, rather than being a subhuman idiot or a satanic sadist (many non-Caucasians were represented thusly by Hollywood at the time). There are several instances in this serial when Kato saves the Hornet's butt.

Keye Luke, who played Kato in this and the 2nd Green Hornet serial, was a good actor who, while he never became a household name, worked steadily on a multitude of roles for about 50 years. He played Number One Son in many Charlie Chan movies, and had small to medium-sized roles in scores of other films. He was a constant guest star in TV shows of the 1960's, ranging from 'My Three Sons' to 'Star Trek.' But my favorite role of Keye Luke's was his excellent portrayal of Master Po, the all-seeing yet blind teacher from TV's 'Kung Fu.' IMO, he was the coolest person on the show. Strangely, the original concept for 'Kung Fu' would have had Bruce Lee playing the hero. Unfortunately some twit in Hollywood decided to hire David Carradine, who was pretty good, but still Lee would have been cooler. Bruce Lee, of course, besides being a martial arts movie superstar, played Kato in the underrated TV version of the Green Hornet.

This is not so much a user comment but corrections to Leslie Howard Adams's commentary, as they do need to be made.

1): "John Reid...became The Lone Ranger. Dang right The Lone Ranger had a name." As long as George Trendle and Fran Striker were in control, first names for the Lone Ranger and his ill-fated brother were never given (they sold that property to Jack Wrather in 1955). In the 1960s, both a "Houston Chronicle" (TX) newspaper obituary for Striker and a Gold Key comics adaptation of the origin called THE SURVIVING BROTHER Dan. "John" and "Dan," as are now so familiar--and I therefore do not fault Mr. Adams significantly for accepting them--do not appear to predate the 1970s, perhaps beginning in the awful 1981 big-budget movie version.

2): "One of the great non-true urban myths has it that Kato was introduced on the program as Japanese, and had to change his country-of-origin in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Not so. Kato was Filipino from day one in 1936 on the radio program....Surprised that somebody hasn't posted that myth on the IMDb site, somewhere." It is an incontestable fact that Kato WAS initially described as Japanese on the radio show, as I have audio recordings of early episodes to prove it. What IS widely believed but untrue is the part that has the change being made as of Monday December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. Jim Harmon in his book, "The Great Radio Heroes" (Doubleday, 1967, p.223--and I have photocopies of the pages of the entire Green Hornet chapter right in front of me) wrote, "It's a good story that Kato became Filipino the day after Pearl Harbor. Even some of the people on the show tell it. It isn't true, however. Kato was described as being a Filipino of Japanese ancestry as far back as 1940." This has apparently been misconstrued by many as saying he was NEVER indicated to be Japanese. These people presumably had it related to them second-hand as it is simply not open to that misinterpretation; Harmon is saying nothing about the character's status prior to 1940. The odd result is that one urban legend has been replaced, at least in some minds, by another. I repeat, my audio recordings prove conclusively that early on, Kato was said to be a Japanese (Harmon's intent, incidentally, seems to have been to suggest that the change was made by increments, first adding Filipino to the already existing Japanese, then SUBSEQUENTLY dropping the public-relations-wise problematical original; however, none of my original episode recordings give this dual ethnicity, just one, the other, or nothing more specific than "Oriental" if even that). For Mr.Adams's information, this so-called urban legend HAS been on this title's "Trivia" page for some time, and I recently modified it to remove the "Pearl Harbor" myth-information and add the note that this serial got there first in 1939--note the opening credits' copyright notice--and made him "a Korean."

If Mr. Adams wants to dispute any of this, I invite him to start a thread on this title's message boards, as THIS is not the appropriate venue, but his comments needed to be addressed where they were made.

I update to make an admission: Filipino was indeed said at least a few times in 1940 (and presumably consistently from then on), although these were just passing references in dialogue, not as part the standard opening, where it appears to have been very rarely heard (for whatever that distinction might be worth, if anything). In the only episode recording I have in which this occurs, it is clearly not the intro originally heard on the episode: It also says "...public enemies who try and destroy our America," even though this change--from "...even the G-Men cannot reach," at FBI objection--had yet to be introduced; the intro is read by a different announcer/narrator than the one heard throughout the remainder of the episode, further corroborating the switch. Just to make the information here completely accurate (I am as ready to correct myself as I am anyone else).

Let me tell ya - In spite of its many-many flaws, its b-grade visual effects, its laughable dialogue, etc., etc., etc. - This vintage, b&w serial from 1940 (presented in 13 thrill-packed episodes) was still definitely about 10 times more entertaining and exciting to watch than was the likes of (that doofus) Seth Rogen's disgustingly dismal and completely contemptible feature film adaptation of the Green Hornet character in 2011.

I really liked Gordon Jones as the Britt Reid/Green Hornet character. It certainly didn't matter to me that this character had no superpowers to speak of. I found that the Hornet's bare-knuckle brawling with the bad guys was satisfactory enough for me.

*Note* - Prior to becoming an actor, Gordon Jones (a real beefy dude) was a promising football player known as "Bull" Jones. Jones was 29 years old when he played the Green Hornet character. He died in 1963, at the age of 52.