Planet Outlaws

Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) takes off in his airship in 1938, only to be flung into the future year of 2500! Now, Buck and his trusty cohort, Buddy (Jackie Moran) must assist mankind in the battle against eeevil uber-criminal, Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) and his army of bucket-headed human robots!

Absolutely absurd, yet tons of fun to watch, PLANET OUTLAWS is the 1950's feature length, condensed version of the original serial from the 1930's.

Contains wobbly, acrobatic aerial dogfights, big-big ray guns, "advanced" solid state / analog technology, gravity belts, life on Saturn, amazing hats, lots of capes, and dubious underground fortresses.

Sit back and enjoy the irony of an ancient film about the still-distant future...

This film is a condensed version of the 1939 serial starring Larry 'Buster' Crabbe as 'Buck Rogers'. I assume that when television came along, studios often edited down the serials into a movie-length version for viewing at home. I know they did that with one of Bela Lugosi's serials, "The Phantom Creeps". Unfortunately, this is NOT a super-successful idea, as the resulting film seems a bit choppy and episodic. Plus, by 1953, the special effects and stories of Buck Rogers seemed incredibly dated! In fact, you just have to see how incredibly awful the space ships are--they're so bad they are tough to describe in mere words--and you might find yourself laughing at it!

As for the story, in many ways it's just "Flash Gordon" (also a Crabbe serial) all over again but with a few changes in the plot. Here with Buck Rogers, he arrives in the future instead of the present day like Flash Gordon. It seems that Rogers and his sidekick were in a dirigible accident and got frozen--and just happened to successfully unfreeze 500 years in the future. Oddly, despite having no idea about this ultra-modern world, Rogers magically could out-fly and out-do everyone of the 25th century!! What a guy! Once he's no longer in Popsicle form, he joins the resistance--a group trying to overthrow the gangsters running the planet. So, for help, Rogers and his pal try appealing to the residents of Saturn--and this backfires so badly, the Saturnians offer the gangster boss (Killer Kane) their help! Oooops! Will Buck manage to fix things or will his 'help' result in the complete obliteration of the opposition?! Tune in and see for yourself.

Overall, the film is incredibly dated and manages to both be interesting as a curiosity AND dreadful and boring at the same time. I think the longer you watch it, the more dreadful it becomes, so in hindsight I think it might be good that they did distill the serial after all. A curiosity and interesting for some, but amazingly hard viewing otherwise.

Final words from this edited version of the 1939 serial, as the added on narrator warns the viewers of the threat of evil dictators. In this case the one in the film is Killer Kane but was obviously a thinly veiled allusion to Hitler when the serial was originally made.

The whole film is a grim allegory to the Nazi regime, right down to the mindless slave labour of Killer Kane's 'Robot Battalion,' fitted with a mind controlling helmet, they work till they die. A terrible reminder of the Nazi death camps.

Re-edited and released again in 1953, with an introduction and voice-over to explain the plot, it now returns as a warning against the then perceived 'Red Menace' of Starlin's Russia.

The editing is choppy at best but does get rid of a lot of the padding and recapping of the plot that make the old serials rather slow and boring to watch for today's modern audience. What we're left with is mainly the action which is somewhat simple by today's standards but was probably exciting at the time it was made.

The whole film is as corny as a box of Kellogs and with Buster Crabbe in the lead role, this is really a Flash Gordon story in all but name. Playing Buck Rogers who finds himself suspended in time and reawakened in the 25th century, Crabbe's easy going charm helps carry things along. As he quickly acclimatizes to his new environment and leads Earth's forces against the named 'Planet Outlaws' led by the aforementioned, Killer Kane.

It's strange viewing this from today's perspective, as in this future world there are no computers, mobile phones or even radar! The spaceship pilots have to look out the windows to see what's happening. Plus it seems the ships of the future only have one seat in them and everybody else stands. It all seems very primitive when compared to today's mega-budget special effects films but that's been rather unfair.

This is more something to watch as a reminder of how it used to be and seen like that, it's quite enjoyable. Just don't expect too much!

A feature film made as a compilation out of portions from the Buck Rogers sci-fi serial loses much of the original's dramatic structure and makes the ramshackle special effects appear even sillier.

Very edited down version of the famed 1939 Buck Rogers serial.

This lasts 71 minutes and the original Buck Rogers serial lasted nearly four hours! That might be all good and well to those who just want a brief blast (sorry) of the original Buck Rogers but watching "Planet Outlaws" is no way to judge the full complete serial (which is now available for all to see in a fine print).

For starters, the original serial concludes with Buck and his young "Boy Wonder-type" pal Buddy having an amusing light hearted little chat with each other - this is gone from "Planet Outlaws"!

This serial is an important part of screen science fiction history. Granted, it is not as grand as Metropolis or Things To Come (1936) but it is more fun than them. I struggle to think of a pre-1939 space production that has this sense of fun. It is more fun and better made than Flash Gordon (1936).

Flash Gordon (1936) has a studiobound feel while Buck Rogers (1939) has outstanding location filming at Red Rock Canyon. Flash walks around in short pants while Buck has long pants. Other things make Buck a better serial as well.

Okay, some might think I am building up this serial too much. After all it is a show with fireworks blowing out of the back of spaceships, but who cares - it was 1939 after all! 1939 might have been the year of Gone With The Wind to most serious film fans - but give me the FUN of Buck Rogers any day!