Brilliant and touching

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This movie serial has been on my mind for years. I finally found it via the internet. What a wonderful find! Not the greatest of acting, just a nice memory from days gone by, from when I was a kid and paying 3d (pennies) old stuff!!, in 1956-7 to go to Saturday morning movies with my brothers and be so excited at having to wait until the following week to see if Jeff King would escape! He always did, but it was never as was portrayed the previous week.... the mind forgets the small details when a week has gone by. Tristram Coffin made hundreds of film and television appearances, none of which were Oscar winners, but he was always presenting himself with a hero presence. As I say, not the greatest acting, but a brilliant step back in time to when all life was really rather innocent. Great stuff!!

This has some of the most convincing flying sequences for its time. The later Superman serial had him "fly" as a cartoon: here, King appears really to fly. I have read that the flying sequences used a lightweight dummy on wires. It looks pretty convincing.Minor spoiler: There was only one "rocket man": the serial title suggests more. (The hero's name is Jeff King) For that matter, the flight controller is marked, "Slow," "Fast," "Up," and "Down." Not bad, but rough if one had to change direction in flight.Naturally, the serial uses the standard formula of a colorful villain who's out to steal a secret, whom the hero has to contend with. Worth viewing, but light entertainment.

This was a fantastic serial with great special effects for it's time. Unfortunately, many who review such fare today do so from feature length versions. One must always remember that these serials were meant to be viewed, chapter by chapter, on a weekly basis. It was the draw that got you back to the theater and a five cent bag of fresh popcorn with real butter, not butter substitute. This cherished specialized cinema of the 1940's and early 50's, produced mainly for kids, was known widely as "Saturday Mornings At the Movies".To understand and appreciate such cinema, one really needs to have the inventive mind of a child, growing up during such exciting times of pioneering new technology. There was no 24 hour television in color or black and white, VCR's, or anything to get in the way of a child's greatest attribute, their imagination. This was the generation that would grow up to make all of these modern day wonders come true.It is also fair to mention that stars like Tristram Coffin, deserved to be remembered for the fine actors they were; despite the limited range of the roles they played. After all, it takes a fine actor to make even a child believe that a man can strap two powerful flaming rockets to his back, attached to a flimsy leather jacket with four simple control knobs in front, and fly convincingly - without being killed. How many of our high paid, so-called actors of today can effectively accomplish such a feat?

"King of the Rocketmen" (which would become the inspiration for "The Rocketeer") was an average serial, with decent special effects being its only strong point, and a good performance by Tristram Coffin. My biggest problem with it is that it seems to be a remake of the "Captain Marvel" serial (one member of a group of scientists is really the evil mastermind after a certain destructive prize. However, I can't tell one from another, and I don't know who ANY of them are, so I can't be shocked or surprised when I find out who Dr. Vulcan is). The dialogue is REALLY lame (for a serial), the fights are static (Coffin's hat NEVER comes off in a fight scene!), and the Rocketman suit is hilariously lame! The ending is pretty exciting though, and it's one of the very few times the hero gets into a fistfight with the mastermind himself. If you REALLY like serials (or like serials that are so bad they're good), give it a shot.I give this serial C-.