The Lost Planet

One of Columbia's very last old time B&W movie serials.

The best thing about this serial is the title itself. I was not a child of the 50s but rather a child of the 70s so perhaps I have a different take on B&W serials than older viewers do?

Whatever the case, I view Columbia's Batman and Robin serial (1949) as the hands down best serial ever made and am always on the look out for another Columbia serial that might just come close to the quality of B&R (1949). No luck with The Lost Planet (1953).

On the positive side, "Planet" is different to just about every serial I have ever seen. Instead of endless fights it has endless boring people (some in a zombie state) talking about boring things. I wish I could use more educated language than that but right now this serial is getting on my nerves - because I expected something better!

Granted, I could not make it past chapter three and the faded Youtube print I watched looked like it came from under a rock, but I would not bother with this one. If you wish to see an old time B&W movie serial set in outer space I would go with Universal's Buck Rogers (1939) or Republic's Radar Men From The Moon (1952).

Hilarious paper mache space serial from the last wobbly days of Columbia's serial production line, this provokes screaming gaping laughter from kids if they are lucky enough to see it. in fact you owe it to yourself and anyone you know to watch it episode by episode, night after night and attempt to follow what is going on. In the same demented league as FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS or the near pornographic 1936 Republic masterpiece UNDERSEA KINGDOM, let me assure you we are NOT in Flash Gordon territory. ..well we are if PRC ever made serials, but they didn't so Columbia made a few as if they did. It looks sort of like the TV superman episodes, except there is a turnip looking space rocket that has sparkler/fizzer fireworks and a lot of visible wires. It goes to and from the Moon apparently, except all we really ever see is it arriving and leaving from the same brown paper cave. Fantastic!! Someone wants to do something to Earth...or something.

Dr. Grood, a mad scientist, plans to conquer the Earth using his scientific inventions directed from a lost, but nearby planet Ergro. While investigating a flying saucer crash near Grood's earth hideout in the hills, Rex Barrow (news writer) and Tim Johnson (staff photographer) are kidnapped and sent to Ergro by Grood, along with Ella Dorn, whose father is on Ergro, used by Grood to develop his gadgets. For 15 chapters, Rex, Ella, Tim, and Prof. Dorn must overcome the hypnotic effects of Grood's mind control devices to prevent Grood from taking over the world. A very imaginative serial with new gadgets and inventions popping up in every chapter make this late Columbia chapterplay fun to watch. The serial is repetitive and probably has the least amount of fistfights of any serial (I think they all happened when Rex was invisible "fighting" Grood's planet guards.) The addition of the racketeer character, Wolper, doesn't help the serial like the character should have. The bad characters should have been meaner, IMO. Rating, based on serials, 4.