Maravilhoso Mascarado

Perplexing? It is never revealed how the Masked Marvel acquired his aura.

He doesn't possess magical powers, super brains, or any particular crime fighting skills. He does sport a mask. But what for? What's he trying to hide? He's truly not much, if all, different from the other three good guys.

One thing is clear. Men's hats must have been surgically attached. No amount of fighting, falling, leaping out of cars or boats, can dislodge the hats.

It appeared all of the serials many pugilists were in tremendous physical condition. How many blows to the chin, back flips, kicks, hurling into walls could you take? They are simply indefatigible.

The Masked Marvel serial makes Steven Segal foes seem like pre-schoolers.

In 1966 or so during the "camp"craze, the 1943 Columbia serial of "Batman" was released to ride the publicity generated by the Batman-TV program. (As an aside, as a True Believer I quickly tired of that program, haven't watched it since) Republic edited several of its much better made serials into 2 hour or so movies, sold them in syndication. Among the ones I remember were "Fighting Devil Dogs", "The Invisible Monster", "Manhunt of Mystery Island" and of course "The Masked Marvel" My mother joked that the actors hats seemed to be stapled to their heads, I later learned that they wore elastic bands so you couldn't tell it was a stuntman and not an actor, if in a fight scene one of the performers' hat came off he was a stuntman all along. Sort of a screen convention of the time. That said, this is one of the best wartime serials, I occasionally needed an adult to explain some of the wartime reference-the gas rationing stamps that the Marvel uses to track down Mace's car, e.g.

One sad bit of trivia, in Chapter One the actor David Bacon looks at a secret message dated September 13, 1943, he was murdered on September 13, 1943.

If you were living in the 1940s or 50s you remember seeing the old Republic & Columbia serials each week at your local theatre...

Well, sit back and enjoy the best of that bunch!!!

Tom Steele (stuntman extraordinaire) is the man behind the mask who is trying to save the US from Japanese saboteurs during WW2. Gunfights...fist fights...car chases...

We pay $8-$10 to see that now!! See what $0.25 got you on a Saturday afternoon!! Enjoy...enjoy...enjoy!!

If you have never seen a `real' serial before, they can be more fun that a true classic. By a "real" serial, I do not mean something made to fill 20 minutes of time on a Saturday afternoon like The Phantom Empire, The Brute Man or Radar Men From the Moon. The low budgets, the obvious stunt doubles (Sakima's stunt double in Episode 10 could have been any short man on earth other than Sakima) and the impossibility of the hero escaping tragedy at the end of each episode are all extremely enjoyable. In the Masked Marvel, I especially enjoyed all four investigators wearing the same suit with identically folded breast pocket handkerchiefs. Keeping track of everything that is going on can keep the viewer very busy.

For an adult, serials can be particularly enjoyable because they are mindless entertainment. One does not have to interpret any metaphors. There are no words of wisdom, no dissecting the characters and no symbolism to decipher. Just sit back and let the action roll!

The Masked Marvel is one of the kings of action serials. By my count there were 19 fights (four or more men fighting in two or more rooms were counted as one fight), an even 20 killings by gunshot, 15 deaths by miscellaneous means (explosions, knifes, auto accidents, to include the same shot of a car going over a cliff in Episodes 2 and 8, etc.) and 15 explosions (including cars going over a cliff and the three explosions at the beginning). Given that the killings by gunshot, the miscellaneous killings and the explosions are all divisible by 5, I may have missed a fight (I did not double count the deaths, explosions, etc. that occurred in the rehashing of the end of the previous episode at the beginning of the next episode). The entire serial runs 3 hours and 17 minutes. Subtracting 2 minutes for rehashing of the end of the previous episode at the beginning of the next episode (11 times) leaves 2 hours and 55 minutes. So on average there is a fight every nine minutes, a killing every 5 minutes and an explosion every 12 minutes. And they took The Wild, Wild West off the air because it was too violent. Parents/adults are no fun at all.

The next time I watch the video, I am going to have to count the number of times they use the same staircase. In the hospital scene there was a gurney on the landing. In the warehouse scene there were boxes on the landing. And in the office building scene there was nothing on the landing. The staircase was used a few other times, but I do not remember the exact scenes.

With the exception of the two bodies falling from the top of a building (the dummies could have been Raggedy Andy wearing a man's hat), the special effects were very good. The explosions were especially realistic and the stunts were top notch. There have been other comments regarding Tom Steele's excellent stunt work so I will not dwell on the subject.

Please do not take my comments as criticism. Much of the enjoyment in watching a serial is paying attention to the detail, or lack thereof, and catching the irregularities one would not be able to catch if they were nine or typically would not find in a higher budget film. The Masked Marvel is a top notch serial.

This serial has a number of good moments and will be fun and enjoyable for serial fans but is not representative of the usually high quality for Republic serials of this era. First, the good things:

1. The fights and stunts, the efforts of Republic's cadre of expert stuntmen and fight choreographers, are all up the usual high standard for this studio.

2. The action and plot are fast moving, and the WWII background and references are interesting.

3. The cliff hangers and escapes are good.

4. Louise Currie playing Alice Hamilton, the plucky heroine whose father was murdered by the Axis spy ring. Ms. Currie was a good actress who never gained the fame she deserved, but did added a lot of class to this serial, and of course, the excellent 'Adventures of Captain Marvel'(1941). She is quite appealing as well as valiant in both of these serials, especially the 'Masked Marvel,' where she puts herself in mortal peril by going undercover, holds thugs at bay with a rifle, and escapes at least 2 death traps by herself, with no help from the eponymous hero.

5. The villains and thugs are pretty good actors. Of note is veteran character actor Johnny Arthur, playing the master villain Sakima. Mr. Arthur's performance is, overall, skilled and competent, and he seems sufficiently evil (though not nearly as evil as Ming the Merciless from 'Flash Gordon' or 'Dr. Daka' from the 1943 'Batman'). Note however, that like every other U.S. portrayal of a Japanese person from this period, racism is a huge factor.

But as much as Johnny Arthur is an asset, he is also a problem. That is because Mr. Arthur is going to be immediately recognizable as the actor who played the comic foil to the Little Rascals in a couple of the funniest 'Our Gang' comedies (he played Darla's father, Mr. Hood). Once an actor has been vanquished by Buckwheat and Alfalfa, it is hard believe he is a serious menace to our heroes. Mr. Arthur specialized in playing finicky, effeminate characters, and you get this sense that underneath the evil, Sakima is really just a sissy. This impression is reinforced when Sakima finds out that the Masked Marvel has discovered his hideout: Sakima pauses to pack his things!

Other problems:

1. The running gimmick, that the audience doesn't know who the real Marvel is, means that you can't imagine the man behind the Mask. The Marvel has comparatively few lines, is never photographed in close up, and never sticks around very long, so you really don't ever start rooting for him very much.

2. The 4 insurance dicks, one of whom is secretly the Marvel, never say enough lines, do enough or have enough close ups for the audience to want to root for any of them too much. One of the insurance dicks, David Bacon, is so wooden that Howard Hughes could have built a seaplane out of him. (Unfortunately, poor Mr. Bacon was murdered about a week after shooting on this serial wrapped. The crime was never solved!)

3. The direction shows a profound lack of imagination and only the most primitive understanding of the principles of cinema. While having access to one of the best stunt and fight crews in the world, it seldom occurs to the director to try different camera positions in the fights, and there are only 2 medium close up shots of the Masked Marvel's face in any of the fight scenes. It's too bad, because the Mask has a striking dramatic effect, one that would make the Marvel appear more formidable. You know, strike terror into the hearts of evildoers. But no, that seems never to occur to director Spencer Bennett, best known for his work making lousy postwar Columbia serials. How bad a director was Mr. Bennet? Based on the 3 Bennett serials I've seen, I'd say he was about ½ step above shooting Mexican porno movies in the desert. But who knows, maybe he actually did some Mexican porn… As I said, this is worthwhile to the serial fan, but there are many other serials you should see before this.