The Green Hornet

In 1936, 'The Green Hornet' was created for the radio. Only four years later, Universal Studios made the first movie serial version of the crime fighter and I saw it mostly in order to see pre-stardom Alan Ladd before his break out films of 1942 (such as "The Glass Key" and "This Gun for Hire")....but ended up enjoying the serial in its own right.

Now I should stop for a moment to talk about serials. These installment films were very popular in the 1930s-50s and normally had to do with crime fighting, such as the Batman, Spy Smasher, Captain Marvel and other serials. A few were westerns or sci-fi. If you see them today, you'll notice a few things about all of them....death-defying escapes that are often utterly ridiculous and a lot of repetition. Audiences of the day didn't mind seeing the heroes appear to die at the end of one chapter...only to see that they actually survived miraculously (sometimes with film footage that completely contradicts what you saw the previous week). And, seeing the inconsistencies wasn't easy in the day because folks were never intended to see them all in one sitting! And, as far as repetition goes, this is because each episode needed to summarize each week in case a viewer missed a chapter or to jog their memories. They were never intended as high art and they were usually made by second and third-tier studios, such as Monogram, Republic or Universal.

When the story begins, police officials meet with Britt Reid (Gordon Jones), the publisher of 'The Daily Sentinel'...the town's newspaper. They are concerned about organized crime and Britt seems to care little about their concerns. Of course, he is the hero of the tale...so you know that he's only pretending to be a lazy jerk. In reality, his way of dealing with it is to don the guise of the Green Hornet, accompanied by his man-servant Kato* (Keye Luke)...and his hot rod car.

Soon you learn that one of the activities of this organized crime ring is graft in public works projects. The mobsters use substandard equipment in building dams and other dangerous projects...and when one of the workers threatens to go to the police, he dies in an 'accident'! So, Britt is out to get the goods on these gang activities as well as figure out who's behind this evil. And, it turns out that there's one big baddie...and his 12 evil disciples...and they are up to all sorts of crimes in addition to the dam project.

Because this is a serial, you really cannot compare it to a normal film. Sure, it's cheesy at times...but all serials are...so I cannot deduct points for this. And, compared to other serials, it's a pretty good and exciting one. Decent action and worth seeing.

*In the serial, Kato is a Korean by birth. However, on the radio he was originally Japanese. Why the change? Well, although the USA and Japan were not yet at war against each other, tensions between the two nations over the Japanese invasion of China made having Kato being Japanese a public relations problem...so they changed him to Korean.

Through thirteen chapters in this serial The Green Hornet manages to discover and eliminate a number of various criminal enterprises that are plaguing his city. Playing The Green Hornet in this version is a younger and leaner Gordon Jones who was best known for being Mike the Cop on the Abbott and Costello show. Keye Luke plays his sidekick and chauffeur Kato who because of the impending war was changed from Japanese to Korean for this serial.

Not that this serial is all that much better though it is a cut above most of them, but one of the things that struck me was that each chapter stood more on its own than you would normally have. The premise here is that the various rackets are controlled by a city syndicate of twelve and the Green Hornet as himself and in his real identity of Britt Reid, millionaire publisher of a crusading newspaper the Sentinel, systematically exposes each racket in each chapter and eliminates the head through death or imprisonment.

The obvious comparison is to Batman, but The Green Hornet relies a whole lot less on gadgetry than most superheroes. His car, 'the Black Beauty' is really a souped up hotrod, nothing unique about it in any other way. He's not got the variety of gadgets that Batman or most of his other peers seem to have.

He even has a gas gun that shoots small gas pellets and when they hit the target they merely disable. Fran Striker who created The Green Hornet also created the Lone Ranger and the Ranger's creed was always to shoot to wound. Modern technology has given the Green Hornet a weapon that will do nothing else. In fact The Green Hornet is the grand nephew of The Lone Ranger.

A cut above maybe, but The Green Hornet is as dated as all those other serials that the Saturday afternoon kids used to enjoy.

Let me tell ya - In spite of its many-many flaws, its b-grade visual effects, its laughable dialogue, etc., etc., etc. - This vintage, b&w serial from 1940 (presented in 13 thrill-packed episodes) was still definitely about 10 times more entertaining and exciting to watch than was the likes of (that doofus) Seth Rogen's disgustingly dismal and completely contemptible feature film adaptation of the Green Hornet character in 2011.

I really liked Gordon Jones as the Britt Reid/Green Hornet character. It certainly didn't matter to me that this character had no superpowers to speak of. I found that the Hornet's bare-knuckle brawling with the bad guys was satisfactory enough for me.

*Note* - Prior to becoming an actor, Gordon Jones (a real beefy dude) was a promising football player known as "Bull" Jones. Jones was 29 years old when he played the Green Hornet character. He died in 1963, at the age of 52.

'The Green Hornet' is, overall, a pretty good serial. Certainly it is a darn sight better than the superhero movies made since about, say, 2005, when suddenly Batman was willing to confess his true identity to a deputy DA just because he has the hots for her, or since 2006, when we learned that Superman was a dead-beat dad and a stalker (and don't get me started on the Fantastic Four or 'Spider-Man 3': blech!). 'The Green Hornet' features a hero unencumbered by ridiculous modern angst and subplots, who is good in a fight, yet is only able to perform feats that actual human beings could conceivably perform.

This serial has a good plot, or rather a series of good plots, that are much more grounded in reality than most other serials. It does not involve super-powers, magic, outer space, or super-villains. It's about crime. I myself enjoy the demented hallucinations of 'Flash Gordon' or 'Atom Man Vs. Superman' as much as the next person, but I like crime stories too.

This serial has decent fight scenes, not dazzling like 'Spy Smasher,' but nothing like the painfully ridiculous fights in Columbia's two horrible Batman serials. The cliff hangers are generally good, with the average amount of 'cheating' to resolve some of them. There is a good sequence with the Hornet jumping from his car onto a moving train, and who doesn't like that? To predict if you are going to like this serial, a lot depends on if you like the Green Hornet as a hero. This serial is very faithful to the original radio show, even to the extent that whenever actor Gordon Jones puts on the Green Hornet mask, his voice is dubbed in by Al Hodge, who played the Hornet on radio and later went on to be the best Captain Video on TV.

I like the Green Hornet because he has a super cool gas gun to knock out crooks (the special effect for this action works well here) and has a super cool souped-up car to chase crooks. Also, instead of wearing tights, he wears a suit and a hat, which looks a lot classier and certainly less sissy than superhero tights.

But now a word about Kato: in this version of Green Hornet, Kato is the one who invents the super cool gas gun and high powered engine that powers the super cool car. In real life, a guy that smart would have patented those things and gotten rich from them. Or if he got into the crime fighting business, he might have kept the gas gun and super motor secret so as to avoid them falling into the wrong hands, but certainly he would have invented other things and gotten rich from them.

Also, besides being a scientific genius, Kato is the one who knows martial arts. The Green Hornet is pretty good in a fight, but a Judo expert would outfight him every time.

What I am getting at is that Kato should have been the main hero, and the Hornet should have been his sidekick. My guess as to why the Hornet was dominant is that is something to do with the fact that Kato was not a Caucasian and Hollywood has been known to, from time to time, exhibit a little institutional racism.

To the credit of the writers, however, at least Kato was portrayed as smart, tough and valiant, rather than being a subhuman idiot or a satanic sadist (many non-Caucasians were represented thusly by Hollywood at the time). There are several instances in this serial when Kato saves the Hornet's butt.

Keye Luke, who played Kato in this and the 2nd Green Hornet serial, was a good actor who, while he never became a household name, worked steadily on a multitude of roles for about 50 years. He played Number One Son in many Charlie Chan movies, and had small to medium-sized roles in scores of other films. He was a constant guest star in TV shows of the 1960's, ranging from 'My Three Sons' to 'Star Trek.' But my favorite role of Keye Luke's was his excellent portrayal of Master Po, the all-seeing yet blind teacher from TV's 'Kung Fu.' IMO, he was the coolest person on the show. Strangely, the original concept for 'Kung Fu' would have had Bruce Lee playing the hero. Unfortunately some twit in Hollywood decided to hire David Carradine, who was pretty good, but still Lee would have been cooler. Bruce Lee, of course, besides being a martial arts movie superstar, played Kato in the underrated TV version of the Green Hornet.

I recently watched the 1940 serial edition of "The Green Hornet". As someone who has not watched very many serial movies, I found this film series to be fun and extremely well made for its day. The movie is about four and a half hours long, but is divided into thirteen chapters, each twenty minutes in length. I myself watched a chapter every few days over the course of a month or so.

"The Green Hornet" tells the story of the eponymous radio suspense character from the 1930's who is essentially a mild mannered newspaper editor who takes it upon himself to fight crime in disguise. The character is not exactly a vigilante, at least not in the violent sense, as the Hornet is constantly portrayed as a hero rather than an antihero. Still, his standing outside the law causes him to have run ins with both crooks and the police.

There is definitely a vibe to this film that fits into a "noir" genre, as the plot centers on an elaborate scandal. However, the film maintains a lighthearted vibe overall, as this is ultimately a superhero series, so to speak, rather than the kind of existentialist commentary one might expect from film noir.

The best thing this serial has going for it is its elaborate settings and fight scenes. Railroad scenes, flight scenes, train wrecks, auto wrecks, plane wrecks, flooded mines--this one has it all. And of course, each chapter ends with a cliffhanger made to keep you on the edge of your seat.

All that said, I've given this movie 7/10 stars. It's certainly well made and a delight for its day and age, and for its genre. However, it is quite a long series and by the end you're kind of ready for it to be over with. Still, the final chapter is perhaps the best of the series, and makes it all worth the watch.