Dick Tracy

This is one of the better serials I've seen...especially of the less glitzy pre-1940 productions. There are few (in fact only one I think) cliffhanger ending that doesn't ring true (the kind where we see the action...and then the resolve shows different actions happening in the next episode). That puts it up real high in my book on just that point.

There isn't all that much care put to keeping the serial like the comic strip. Tracy became a g-man instead of a city police detective and gone are the maladjusted and malformed villains of his colorful rogues gallery. The Lame One, the villain of this chapterplay, doesn't compare to the grotesqueries of The Brow or Little Face.

Ralph Byrd is excellent as Tracy...in fact he IS Dick Tracy. Forget Morgan Conway's forgettable appearances in Dick Tracy's Dilemma and Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball (a horrible film)...and especially forget the primary color extravaganza that Warren Beatty put out. Ralph Byrd does them both in...stolid, straight forward and eager for action.

I would rate this serial right up there with other great chapterplays, like The Adventures of Captain Marvel, The Masked Marvel and the like.

THE FILM & GENRE -- Serial of 290 minutes. Besides the usual futuristic devices, this also has the "flying wing" aeronautical marvel, a hunchback, and a mad doctor. There is also a TV-Movie Feature created from the Serial.

THE VERDICT -- I'm not a big serial lover but this one kept my attention, and the flying wing is impressive.

FREE ONLINE - Yes. The serial for sure. As for the feature, I found one on YT at 102 minutes which matches IMDB DICK TRACY (1990) at 101 minutes. Wiki has a different duration of 72 minutes but I've never seen that.

Now I've never read a Dick Tracy comic. They were before my time. But I had a good time watching this serial. It moved well and wasn't all just crashes and fight scenes.

There are a lot of pretty cool effects considering when this was made. The flying wing was my favourite. It looked like an old Northrop YB-35 with the props in front---and was obviously supposed to be bigger. Nice model though. Some other notable effects were the zeppelin crash and the shaking Golden Gate bridge.

Some other decent stuff I liked was the speeded-up secret message on the phonograph disc, the mad doctor with the cat (he was cool), the little belt morse code transmitter (reminded me of Batman's utility belt), and Gwen (I liked how she could fly a plane, and do most other stuff the men did---what surprised me is that they didn't have her get captured by the spider gang at some point).

One particularly goofy effect gave me a laugh: At the end of one chapter Dick Tracy's plane crashes into a bridge. The beginning of the next chapter shows the crash and then Dick getting up out of the plane wreckage, brushing off his clothes, and walking off. Pretty hokey there. And it seems Dick was fond of double-parachuting to get out of trouble---sorta funny.

The stories were not bad. There was plenty of plot to keep me interested and it was plausible---except maybe for a couple of the escapes after the disastrous endings of the previous chapter like I mentioned above. Now it seems the spider gang tried its hand at almost every type of crime before finally getting squashed by Dick Tracy. Let's see...there was bridge-wrecking, plane-motor-stealing, counterfeiting (attempted anyway), illegal brain surgery (on Tracy's bro), gold stealing (2 instances of this...the prospector's mine and the ship), and stealing jewellery.

And of course there are the typical fist fights that everyone expects. As usual, everyone involved gets up and walks away unharmed, without even any dirt or wrinkles on their clothes (as per the unwritten code of all serials it seems). Gun battles occur frequently, but no one notable ever gets hit (well Dick got hit at the end of one chapter, but by the next chapter he was miraculously healed). Additionally, there is no lack of car, boat, airplane, and zeppelin crashes.

I really did have a good time with this serial. I gave it an 8 because it had decent stories along with some better-than-average effects. Old movie fans, and anyone who likes serials, shouldn't miss this one.

Superb serial. The only one that matches it in quality is the first Flash Gordon. The production values are exceptional and eclipse many better known B movies. Ralph Byrd is perfectly cast in the title role. The only explanation I can think of for some viewers to rate this any lower than an "A" is that they just haven't seen very many serials. One of the few efforts in this line that actually has some atmospheric touches and, as another commenter has pointed out, the special effects are genuinely good.

Folks who don't really like serials are....well, they're folks who don't like serials (probably don't much like Christmas either). For those who do like serials, this is like a trip to the circus. Good action and WAY better than usual script and acting. As movies go, this probably only deserves a 7 but for a serial it deserves a perfect 10.

I've watched only 4-5 serials, so I don't have a lot to compare this

to, but so far it's easily the worst of the lot. The overlap from

chapter to chapter is too great (too much material repeated in the

new episode that was seen in the previous episode). The acting is

poor, especially Ralph Byrd (if he stood still for a moment, he'd be

attacked by a woodpecker). The "comedy" of Smiley Burnett is

nothing to smile about (he's even worse here than in the Gene

Autry movies). The character with the most brains in this serial is

actually the 12 year old kid, played by Lee Van Atta. And perhaps

most of all, has anybody seen Dick Tracy in this film? I must have

missed him, because no one in this movie even remotely

resembled the comic strip character. Low budget is not enough of

an excuse for low tech here. At least the director could have put a

watch on Ralph Byrd's wrist, & pretended it was radio controlled.

The two low budget jungle serials I watched with Phyllis Coates

("Panther Girl of the Congo" & "Jungle Drums of Africa") were way

better than this, & so was a low budget jungle serial with Clyde

Beatty ("Lost Jungle"). Not that those were great serials, but they

were better than this one, so tells you something about Dick Tracy.

If you'd like to watch a better crime serial, I recommend "The Green

Archer." That & the serial I'm in the middle of now, "Captain

Marvel," are far superior to Dick Tracy. I rate it 3/10.