Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

This early film version of the comic strip "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" which was drawn by Dick Calkins (who appears as himself in the beginning at the drawing board) and published by the John F. Dille company, is a very amateurish 10-minute short with stilted writing, monotonous acting, and laughable special effects done on obvious models of spaceships during the battle scenes. Despite that, those models probably made a mint at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair when they were displayed near the screenings. The publisher's son, John Dille, Jr. portrays the title character with his girlfriend playing leading lady Wilma Deering and magician Dr. Harlan Tarbell, who's also the director, playing scientist Dr. Huer. This is the kind of film that cries out for either Joel or Mike and the 'bots from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" to make their own commentary about the shoddiness of this whole enterprise! I discovered this on the Matinée at the Bijou blog which ran an article about this rare piece of film history. Watch this on YouTube at your own risk!

One look at this ten minute feature, and you know it would never win any awards. The acting was horrific, the script confusing and corny, the special effects terrible even by contemporary 30's standards. But we view this with the advantage (or disadvantage?) of time, and thereby measure it against the accomplishments achieved through the intervening years.

So why bother? Well, perhaps it will bring back a memory or two of sitting in a theater on a Saturday morning 50 years ago and catching the next episode in the serial of Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, followed by an Abbott and Costello short and a cartoon before the main feature, which more often than not was of the same poor production quality. But who cared as we munched on Jujubes and popcorn and, from the balcony, threw our wrappers at our buddies down below.

This Buck Rogers episode was the first one made, and was shown to adoring crowds several times a day at the 1935 World's Fair in Chicago. Of course, sales of Buck Rogers paraphernalia accompanied the showing. But you've got to wonder - were the folks of that depressed era more gullible? Did they not realize those little spaceships were just models circling around at the end of a string? Or is it us that have become naive in our own advanced sophistication?

Ignored for many years, this exciting film of the attack of the tiger men from Mars was enormously influential on future science fiction films. Noted director of early 1950's films, Theodore Sheckler (working under aliases due to his communist party membership), credited the film as "inspirational" and "brilliant beyond belief". The directors of special effects for "Star Wars" claimed to seen the film every day during production. Speaking off the record, one of them said "our goal was to somehow improve on the spaceship models used in the film, but a high bar was set." Effects director Dr. Harlan Tarbell, the noted magician, is still remembered today with the Harlan Tarbell award for special effects given out at the Oscars. Reportedly Tarbell's work was a constant reference in designing prosthetic skullcap makeup for the recent worldwide hit "Avatar", and he is particularly known for his novel use of partially hidden strings to suspend spaceships from studio ceilings.

The film was produced by the father and son team of John F. Dille and John Dille, Jr., whose budding acting career was stopped short of star potential by a fatal accident involving marmalade and a hat. His bereaved father was not able to work again, and spent his later years in seclusion, dedicating himself to invent safer marmalade in his garage workshop. His work is responsible for several patents that guide the industry today, without which tasty marmalade would probably not be in such abundance.