Les aventures de Brick Bradford

I remember Brick Bradford when the series was shown at Saturday morning pictures at the Regal cinema in Purley, Surrey, England back in 1952. My friends and I thought it was exciting stuff and would shout and whistle the whole way through especially when the plot got too silly. Every episode ended with a cliff hanger and we would have to wait a week to find out what happened or how our hero has managed to avoid death. In one particular episode a lit fuse is thrown into an open barrel of gunpowder, there is a massive explosion that must have killed everyone including our hero and then the credits rolled. You can imagine our frustration when we had to wait a whole week to find out how Brick has managed to survive. The following Saturday the episode opened with Brick plucking the flame from the barrel and thus avoiding the explosion we had clearly seen the Saturday before. Well we roared with indignation yelling out " Fiddle ! fiddle" and " Rubbish! rubbish ! " and whistling and stamping our feet. It was all great fun and we loved it.

Gangsters are after Dr. Tymak's (John Merton) secret missile-destroying ray-gun (and sundry other technical marvels) to sell to an unnamed foreign power (hint, hint) and only the brains and fists of heroic Brick Bradford (Kane Richmond) can protect the "Peace of the World". Based on a then popular comic strip, this frugal Columbia Pictures serial is barely watchable. The strip had drifted into science fiction themed adventures so the serial includes trips to the moon and into the past, neither of which are essential to the storyline. The moon episodes are particularly pointless - the budget didn't extend to a 'rocketship', so Brick et al teleport to the moon, which has a breathable atmosphere, a civilisation dressed like ancient Romans and, most inexplicably, a group of exiles from Earth (how they got to the moon, and why, is never explained - presumably rockets to the moon were available as one presumably took the receiver for Dr. Tymak's teleporter to the far-side at some point prior to the story). The trip to the past is simply time-filler - the premise that perfecting Dr. Tymak's marvellous gadgetry requires notes from a 18th century British explorer that are hidden in a pirate's treasure chest is ludicrous at best (the temporal adventure does give us a look at a fine-looking Noel Neill (best known as Lois Lane in the 'Superman' serials) playing a sexy, feisty, skin-clad native-girl). The 15 episodes can be divided into three segments: on the moon, in the past, and back on Earth (all of which appear to take place in Bronson Canyon) and are very different in tone (the moon story is a cut-rate Flash/Buck adventure, the time-travel story is 'jokey', and the final sequence is nothing but repetitive chases and brawls). The cast is adequate for the material that they are given but in general the serial is weakly plotted, cheap looking, repetitive, and many of the 'cliff-hangers' are resolved by finding out in the following episode that Brick and/or his buddies simply weren't killed by the fall, blast, fire etc. Cheap and dumb - for dedicated genre fans and life-listers only. As always, I am amazed at how men in the 1940s kept their fedoras in place during the most vigorous melees.

Dr. Claussen enlists the aid of Brick Bradford and his associates to protect the Interceptor Ray for the United Nations. The ray, invented by Dr. Tymak has the ability to destroy any missile that comes within the large area of the beam it emits. Laydron, a scientific criminal, is also interested in getting the ray in order to sell to a nasty foreign power. Brick and friend Sandy use Dr. Tymak's inventions such as the crystal door transporter to travel to the moon in order to get a mineral needed by the ray, and the Time Top which transports the two back into the 18th century to find a lost scientific secret buried away. The serial is fun no doubt with very original concepts. Its burden is that its separated into 3 different sections. The first 6 chapters concentrate on the moon adventure, the next 3 and a half have the Time Top (the best of the three), and the remaining chapters are back on present day earth and are unnecessary padding of the serial. Richmond is in the twilight of his acting career so the serial concentrates more on the supporting cast, but he still does have the adventurous presence. Vallin seems to have a ball playing Sandy, and much of his dialogue seems ad-libbed. (Brick and Sandy in the time travel sequence does have the feeling of a Hope-Crosby Road picture) I was surprised with Bennet directing there was a lack of good fight sequences. Rating, based on serials, 6.

I'd heard a lot of things about Brick Bradford...mainly that it was the worst movie serial ever made. Now, it wasn't the greatest, but it had some good moments...but it also had plenty of clunkers.

Brick and company travel to the far side of the moon which suddenly has an atmosphere and a lost civilization that other people from Earth have PREVIOUSLY visited. They also travel back through time to the days of the pirates to find a lost scrap of paper with an equation relating to nuclear physics on it.

The first half of the serial has moments like these, while the second half becomes a routine good guys/bad guys shoot-out and capture-everyone-a-thon. Still, Kane Richmond is always fun and Rick Vallin has a lot of good, funny lines. The scripting is a bit above par in terms of tongue-in-cheek humor for Vallin's character.

If you are a serial fan, and can ignore outlandish plot contrivances (hey, most serial fans can =) ), I think Brick Bradford is definitely worth a viewing.