User reviews

The original serial, The Lone Ranger (1938) is one of the better early Republic serials. While I usually dislike feature versions of serials (basically for the same reason I have a disdain for Reader's Digest...you never know what they cut out if you haven't watched the whole serial, and if you have, you get really annoyed), this one was pretty watchable.

I have the DVD version and the movie was very enjoyable, but naturally the characterization was somewhat nonexistent. This is especially true for the five people suspected of being the Lone Ranger. One never really grasps anything but a single character trait from any of them (if you are that lucky), which is sad, considering we are talking about such serial stalwarts as Lane Chandler, Herman Brix and especially Lee Powell.

I rated this movie a 7 because I believe the flaws were outweighed by the action and the basic story...it is the Lone Ranger, after all.

If you would like to watch the best feature condensation of a serial, I would suggest you take a look at The Lost City, with Kane Richmond.

It was kind of Republic to add a wraparound narrator to the story. Cutting down from nearly four and a half hours to just over one could have left it a mess to try to follow. However, it's odd that they only made this an hour long. They could have just as easily put in another 30 or forty minutes. It could have used some more action, something that the studio is famous for. Fun, nonetheless.

I am commenting on your statement that Earl W. Graser did the Lone Ranger's voice in the serial. If you check Bill Witney's book "In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase," you will see that he credits Billy Bletcher as being the voice. After all, Witney was the director of that film and he should know. Witney said that they didn't want to use the voice of the actor who was to be the Lone Ranger, because the kids would know who the Ranger before the last chapter. I don't know if they had Lee Powell picked as the Ranger at that point. The Ranger's eye mask had a mesh that covered the mouth so you could not see the lips move. Yak Canutt who wore the mask for the action scenes, liked to spit tobacco and occasionally forgot he was wearing a mask that covered his mouth. When he would go to spit, the tobacco juice came back in his face. Witney said "We were glad that the censors weren't on the set when that happened." Witney says that five voice actors were used before they decided on Billy Bletcher. Bletcher was about five foot tall and weighed 200 pounds. When he delivered the Hi Yo Silver line, the sound would reverberate through the Alabama Hills. While Earl Graser was known to radio audiences as the Lone Ranger, it was Brace Beemer's deep voice that fans remember and also this was Clayton Moore's inspiration for doing his role.

This condensed movie serial has its moments (it is, after all, The Lone Ranger), but I found the characterization to be almost nonexistent and the plotline too meandering. What was even worse, they completely ignored the standard history of The Lone Ranger and instead set up a contrived mystery of trying to guess who the real Lone Ranger was out of five suspects (and none of those five was John Reid, the Ranger of radio and TV). A framing story was used to skip past the deleted serial scenes, so it wasn't completely confusing, but some of those scenes sounded pretty exciting and I hope I can see the complete serial someday.