Zorro, le diable noir

Okay Republic effort, with Curtis likeable as hero (THAT was FESTUS?), Barcroft good as bad guy. The saloon gets torn up in a brawl every other chapter, and some of the thrills IN the chapter are better than the cliffhanger endings, but considering the idea was to use stock footage of other guys in the Zorro suit (including Linda Stirling), DON DAREDEVIL comes off pretty good.

"Don Daredevil Rides Again" will not go down in history as one of the great Republic serials. It's another variation of the time worn Zorro legend where the hero gets to dress up in that black costume, wear a mask and ride a black horse from under that ever present waterfall.

Following WWII with the onset of television and rising costs, the quality of the serials produced, particularly in the 1950s, suffered. This one in fact borrows heavily from Republic's 1944 serial, "Zorro's Black Whip"using extensive footage from that film, so much so that many of the characters are dressed in costumes to match the actors in the earlier film. It also employs many of the chapter ending cliff hangers from the earlier serial. I don't know in how many times I've seen that wagon going over that same cliff in Republic serials. The gangs also shrank from "a cast of thousands" in the 1930s to a boss and a couple of hench men as in this film.

In "Zorro's Black Whip", the Zorro character was a woman so the hero, who wears the same costume, had to be slight of build. So enter Ken Curtis.

The story concerns villain Stratton (Roy Barcroft) discovering a phony Spanish land grant which renders all of the local ranch titles void. So he and his hench men Webber (Lane Bradford) and Hagen (John Cason) begin registering claims on all of the ranches. One of the ranches belongs to Patricia Doyle (Aline Towne) whose grandfather had rode as the Zorro like Don Daredevil to thwart evil in the past.

Into the picture rides Doyle's cousin Lee Hadley (Curtis) who takes up the cause against Stratton. He decides to take on the role of the masked avenger in order to remain anonymous as he fights to defeat the bad guys. Naturally the real land grant turns up and changes hands back and forth before good old Don Daredevil prevails.

The acting, particularly on the side of right is awful. Ken Curtis (who would gain notoriety as "Festus Hagen" in TV's "Gunsmoke) is wooden and down right boring as is Robert Einer as Gary Taylor a neighboring rancher. Towne has little to do except stand in for Linda Stirling (the star of "Zorro's Black Whip"). Reliable Hank Patterson holds up his end as Buck, the reach foreman. Also Barcroft, Bradford and Cason make formidable bad guys.

As a little bit of useless trivia, Lane Bradford's father John Merton played the Cason role in the earlier film.

An old Spanish land grant has been proved a forgery and all of the homesteaders on the land are now forced to move. The real grant is in the possession of Stratton, a lawyer, who plans to use this land grab scheme to accumulate wealth and power. Lee Hadley, another lawyer, plans to challenge the forgery, but where words fail, he wears the disguise of his ancestor, and fights the crooks as the masked hero, Don Daredevil, and goes against Stratton, henchmen Webber and Hagen, and whatever treachery they can throw against Hadley and the rest of the ranchers. Obviously originality wasn't stressed in this serial, as this probably was a good example of how Republic was losing its touch as the 50's and TV era rolled in. The story and script could have been tweaked somewhat to allow some interesting escapades and plot devices while still maintaining the ability to delve into the Republic stock footage vault (which they did a lot in this serial). Curtis is very boring as the lead, and the usually reliable Towne and Barcroft really come off seeming like this was another routine production under contract. There is the regular amount of Republic action, but it could have been improved. Rating, based on serials, 3.5