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.

The character of The Green Hornet first appeared on WXYZ radio, Detroit, Michigan on January 31, 1936, and was created by station program manager/co-owner George W. Trendle (who also created The Lone Ranger) and, was like that station's Lone Ranger, primarily written by Fran Striker, at least in the early years of both programs. And Trendle's creation from the word go, but Striker was the one who came up with the gas gun and "Black Beauty."

Trendle created Britt Reid/The Green Hornet as the son of Dan Reid, the boy who called The Lone Ranger uncle. (Actually, Dan Reid was a Junior as his father was Dan Reid the first, a Texas Ranger Captain who was killed in the ambush at Bryant's Gap, by the Butch Cavendish gang, along with the rest of his Texas Ranger troop, with the sole exception of his younger brother John Reid, who became The Lone Ranger. Dang right, The Lone Ranger had a name.)

The Green Hornet, like his predecessor kinsman, fought crime wearing a mask; he carried a gas gun while Uncle Lone had a six-shooter and silver bullets; he drove the fastest car on radio, "Black Beauty", while his great-uncle rode Silver, the fastest (and whitest) horse on radio. The latter had Tonto, a native-American (and Indian on the radio) who had saved his life when his band of Texas Rangers were ambushed...while the Hornet's sidekick was Kato, a Filipino who doubled as his valet, and was a college graduate who knew all the secrets of Oriental in-fighting, a master chemist and he could drive "Black Beauty" anywhere, anytime at any speed. (One of the great non-true urban myths has it that Kato was introduced on the program as being Japanese, and had to change his country-of-origin in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Not so. Kato was Filipino from day one in 1936 on the radio program. But it has been told so much---it started as an WWII joke with comedians---that only those who were there in 1936 or take the time to research the radio program and its scripts know it isn't true. Surprised somebody hasn't posted that myth on the IMDb site, somewhere.)

And, while The Lone Ranger had the "William Tell Overture" as the opening-and-closing theme music, the Green Hornet opened (and roared through his crime-fighting duties)with "Flight of the Bumble Bee" as the main piece of music. And over the Lone Ranger theme music, a voice intoned: "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-Yo Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!" And over "The Flight of the Bumble Bee" a voice said: "With his faithful valet Kato, Britt Reid, daring young publisher, matches wits with the underworld, risking his life that criminals and racketeers within the law may feel its weight by the sting of The Green Hornet." Granted, a bit wordy but it served the purpose. And, the follow-up intro to The Lone Ranger was more than a bit wordy as Fred Foy would add: "With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.......37 more words....followed by.. From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again.!

For their 1940-41 serial schedule, Universal Pictures Corporation announced to their exhibitors that their four serials would include..."The Lone Ranger -The greatest serial property in show business history!" (They sure did---in trade ads and on the inside front cover of the press book of "The Phantom Creeps" You can look it up. We don't have to...it's on our desk) Well, the description blurb was true---Republic had already cleaned up on The Lone Ranger in 1938 and 1939---but WXYZ, Trendle and Universal couldn't agree on the terms. meaning Trendle wanted more money than Universal wanted to pay. Pity. A Universal Lone Ranger serial would have made an interesting companion to Republic's two offerings. And don't knock Universal for promising something they couldn't deliver; in the same 1940-41 schedule Republic announced a Superman serial. That fell through, also, but Republic made up for that, in spades, with "The Adventures of Captain Marvel" in 1941. (Republic used the intended Superman script, anyway...as "The Mysterious Dr. Satan" with "The Copperhead" character filling in for old Supe.)

But Universal did acquire the rights to make two serials based on Trendle's "Green Hornet" character and, relative to serials---which should only be judged by other serials and not every genre and budget that comes down the pike---both are easily in our top-third.

This one was Universal's 45th sound-era serial and they slipped it in between "The Phantom Creeps" and "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe."

Edit: Despite what the cowardly "reviewer", who will not respond to e-mails, says in his snarly, mad-dog attack review, in which he put my name in the subject line I stand by every comment I made. But his attack is typical of the snit-fits he tosses out on the Contributor's Help Board. Edit: It appears the attacker has just corrected his incorrect assertion, with a slithering and cheap "for what it's worth" squirm. Now, take my name out of your slanderous subject line.

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.

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.

This is not so much a user comment but corrections to Leslie Howard Adams's commentary, as they do need to be made.

1): "John Reid...became The Lone Ranger. Dang right The Lone Ranger had a name." As long as George Trendle and Fran Striker were in control, first names for the Lone Ranger and his ill-fated brother were never given (they sold that property to Jack Wrather in 1955). In the 1960s, both a "Houston Chronicle" (TX) newspaper obituary for Striker and a Gold Key comics adaptation of the origin called THE SURVIVING BROTHER Dan. "John" and "Dan," as are now so familiar--and I therefore do not fault Mr. Adams significantly for accepting them--do not appear to predate the 1970s, perhaps beginning in the awful 1981 big-budget movie version.

2): "One of the great non-true urban myths has it that Kato was introduced on the program as Japanese, and had to change his country-of-origin in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Not so. Kato was Filipino from day one in 1936 on the radio program....Surprised that somebody hasn't posted that myth on the IMDb site, somewhere." It is an incontestable fact that Kato WAS initially described as Japanese on the radio show, as I have audio recordings of early episodes to prove it. What IS widely believed but untrue is the part that has the change being made as of Monday December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor. Jim Harmon in his book, "The Great Radio Heroes" (Doubleday, 1967, p.223--and I have photocopies of the pages of the entire Green Hornet chapter right in front of me) wrote, "It's a good story that Kato became Filipino the day after Pearl Harbor. Even some of the people on the show tell it. It isn't true, however. Kato was described as being a Filipino of Japanese ancestry as far back as 1940." This has apparently been misconstrued by many as saying he was NEVER indicated to be Japanese. These people presumably had it related to them second-hand as it is simply not open to that misinterpretation; Harmon is saying nothing about the character's status prior to 1940. The odd result is that one urban legend has been replaced, at least in some minds, by another. I repeat, my audio recordings prove conclusively that early on, Kato was said to be a Japanese (Harmon's intent, incidentally, seems to have been to suggest that the change was made by increments, first adding Filipino to the already existing Japanese, then SUBSEQUENTLY dropping the public-relations-wise problematical original; however, none of my original episode recordings give this dual ethnicity, just one, the other, or nothing more specific than "Oriental" if even that). For Mr.Adams's information, this so-called urban legend HAS been on this title's "Trivia" page for some time, and I recently modified it to remove the "Pearl Harbor" myth-information and add the note that this serial got there first in 1939--note the opening credits' copyright notice--and made him "a Korean."

If Mr. Adams wants to dispute any of this, I invite him to start a thread on this title's message boards, as THIS is not the appropriate venue, but his comments needed to be addressed where they were made.

I update to make an admission: Filipino was indeed said at least a few times in 1940 (and presumably consistently from then on), although these were just passing references in dialogue, not as part the standard opening, where it appears to have been very rarely heard (for whatever that distinction might be worth, if anything). In the only episode recording I have in which this occurs, it is clearly not the intro originally heard on the episode: It also says "...public enemies who try and destroy our America," even though this change--from "...even the G-Men cannot reach," at FBI objection--had yet to be introduced; the intro is read by a different announcer/narrator than the one heard throughout the remainder of the episode, further corroborating the switch. Just to make the information here completely accurate (I am as ready to correct myself as I am anyone else).