SOS Coast Guard

In Republic's third year of existence they certainly hit their action serial stride in this very well made exciting coast guard serial thriller. Still following the format well designed by Mascot Pictures from 1930-34 until Republic bought them, the opening recalls of each chapter are entertaining and brief and concise. The titles are exciting and the sturdy sets and model work exciting and good to look at. Also of extra interest is the amount of vacant suburban and seaside Los Angeles on show and viewers familiar with locales around LA will enjoy the sight of bare streets, dilapidated buildings and empty beaches no doubt crammed with modern buildings today. Each chapter has an extraordinary amount of location shooting in LA streets and ocean/beach locales. The DVD I have does not have a Republic logo and the chapter endings have original plain text which may have been the style for the time, but I believe from seeing serials from about 1940 there was a more stylised look for the in and out titles. The ocean model work is very well done and a treat to follow, given the Lydecker reputation.

"S.O.S. Coast Guard" benefits from the casting of Bela Lugosi as the chief villain. He adds a certain menace that only he can provide, what with that thick Hungarian accent and his patented menacing stare.

Coast Guard Lt. Terry Kent (Ralph Byrd) discovers that the evil Boroff (Lugosi) has developed a deadly disintegrating gas which he hopes to sell to a foreign power (in this case, "Morovania"). The key component of the gas, an element known as "arnatite" is being smuggled aboard the freighter "Carfax" to Boroff's hideout. En route the ship runs into a storm and runs aground.

News reporter Jean Norman (Maxine Doyle) and her photographer Snapper McGee (Lee Ford) recognize the fleeing Boroff. While escaping, Boroff is pursued by Terry's brother Jim (Thomas Carr) who is murdered by Boroff. Terry vows to avenge his brother.

Meanwhile, in order to hide the evidence of the arnadite, Boroff sends his hulking mute henchman, Thorg (Richard Alexander) to cut the cables securing the distressed vessel. The ship then sinks. Boroff enlists scientist Rickerby (John Picorri) to manufacture the deadly gas.

Boroff has Thorg dive to the sunken ship to recover the arnadite. This leads to several death defying encounters between Terry and Thorg. Eventually Boroff is able to manufacture his gas and moves to ship it. Again and again Terry thwarts his efforts. Finally Terry and the Coast Guard bring the villains to justice in the final chapter, as we knew he would.

I believe that this was the first time Republic Pictures used that "melting/disintegration" special effect. You can see variations of this effect in several of their subsequent serials.

Others in the cast include Herbert Rawlinson as Terry's commanding officer, George Chesboro, Carleton Young and in an early serial villain role, Roy Barcroft as Boroff's henchmen.

It's interesting to note that the name "Boroff" is a contraction of the name BORis KarlOFF. The name of the ship, "Carfax" is the same as the name of the abbey Lugosi as Dracula rented (i.e. "Carfax Abbey")in "Dracula" (1931). Coincidence? Who knows?

Ralph Byrd would go on to portray comic strip detective "Dick Tracy" in three Republic serials, a role with which he would be identified for the rest of his career.

Typically exciting Republic serial, with Ralph Byrd, who went on to a career as Dick Tracy, in stalwart form with an unlimited supply of dress uniforms: in every chapter he's either dirtied, soaked, or blown up, but he always comes back conforming to regulations. Lugosi is evil scientist with a gas that disintegrates almost everything. Some great (and some laughable) special effects from the Lydecker brothers, gaining experience that would make them tops in the field in coming years.

SOS COAST GUARD (1937) never flags throughout its entire run of twelve chapters. Nearly every episode offers something new and different, be it a chase involving two cars and a motorcycle in one episode or one involving speedboats and tommy guns in the next. Most of it is filmed on location in all sorts of picturesque Southern California coastal sites. As the hero, Ralph Byrd (Republic's own Dick Tracy) seems to do a lot of his own stunts-on land and at sea. He clambers around rocks, flies a plane, goes out in boats, rides a motorcycle, runs around rooftops, jumps off of them and when he has to fight, he plunges right in, getting into furious scraps with a host of different henchmen. And it's never the typical movie fight in which opponents trade telegraphed punches. It's pummeling, tussling, shoving, grabbing, rolling, kicking-messy, like a real fight.

The hero and villain (Bela Lugosi) are well matched. They're both smart and proactive. The villain's always one step ahead-as it's gotta be for a serial to last 12 chapters-but Byrd is no dope and he catches up pretty quickly. The villain uses lots of henchmen, divided into different teams for different tasks, so Byrd's not fighting the same bad guys in every episode. Also, unlike most serial heroes, Byrd's not afraid to call in police or Coast Guard backup. One great scene has the henchmen staking out a lab where a scientist is trying to analyze the villain's disintegrating gas so he can find a method to counteract it. Byrd's got several policemen protecting the lab. The lead henchman comes up with a clever plan to get Byrd out of the way, find a ruse to get past the police, get into the lab, kidnap the scientist and get him out without arousing the cops' suspicions. Usually, scenes like this rely on wild coincidences or highly improbable circumstances, but the plan used here actually makes sense and one has to give the bad guys credit for using their heads. It makes the whole thing so much more dramatically interesting when the hero faces genuine challenges.

Bela Lugosi plays the villain, Boroff, a criminal mastermind trying to develop disintegrating gas to sell to foreign powers for use in the coming war. Lugosi plays it straight, without any of his usual over-the-top mannerisms, and he's very effective. He's well supported by the actors playing his men, who look and move like actual thugs and not pretty boys from Central Casting.

If I have any complaint it's that the idiot comic relief, inept photographer "Snapper" McGee, gets way too much screen time and is the only element that actually slows the serial down. Also, some of the cliffhanger endings are a little on the cheating side. In one ending, Byrd ducks into the cockpit of his plane as a water tower falls on top of him. At the beginning of the next episode, it shows that he escaped injury---by ducking into the cockpit of his plane! Not exactly worth waiting a week for. This actually doesn't bother me because the rest of the story is so filled with action and thrills that the cliffhanger endings really don't matter much.

When this serial was made, there was a moratorium on horror films, brought on by Joseph Breen of the Hays Office. Consequently, Boris Karloff did thrillers at Warner Bros. (but not really any horror films), and Lugosi did poverty row movies and serials. Of the latter, this one I think is his best, but his having the name "Boroff" plus his using a ship called the "Cairfax" (as in Cairfax Abbey, where Dracula stays in London) are obvious in-jokes, though I doubt they were of Lugosi's doing.