Just what I expected

Absolutely the worst movie.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I have fallen in love with serials as of late. You begin with the lengthier first chapter and soon cannot wait - no matter how poor the budget and performers are - to find out who the masked villain is in the last chapter. Well, The Crimson Ghost is no exception except that as far as Republic serials go this one has a slightly better budget then many and slightly better performers as well. Much of this praise can be directly attributed to directors Fred C. Brannon( a regular fixture in films and serials of this ilk), and even more so to William Whitney who worked on like material including the wonderful The Adventures of Captain Marvel. The pacing is crisp, the action plentiful, and the actors right on character. The story concerns a professor of physics creating a Cyclotrode that stops electrical engines in their tracks. A villain known as The Crimson Ghost, who is also a professor at the university(we get this info very early as it is our task to find out which one of the four men is the villain), will stop at nothing to get this so he can build an even larger model and live out his evil plans of world domination/great wealth. The Crimson Ghost created necklaces that he places over people to control them to do his bidding and if one tries to remove it - the victim dies. This serial has loads of action from innumerable fights(okay, maybe too many), electrical fires, gun fights, explosions, and even a tense operation scene. The set pieces are pretty decent as are the special effects. The story meanders here and there and the whole four or five chapters devoted to getting heavy water did get a bit tiresome at moments, but overall the suspense is maintained at a high level. The acting is all workmanlike with leads Charles Quigley as the hero Duncan Richards and Linda Stirling as his devoted pretty Friday doing well enough. The Lone Ranger himself, Clayton Moore, gets to parade around as a key henchman sans mask. He is quite good. How about the ghost himself? Well, I don't think you will be overall surprised who the ghost is despite the clumsy final chapter's resolution, but I will say that his outfit and that skull mask are awesome. I think that mask is easily one of the best of its kind I have ever seen in anything and one can see the influence it had on subsequent productions. If you have not had an opportunity to sit down to a serial, The Crimson Ghost is a good first foray.

Source of the Skull face that was stolen by Glenn Danzig for one of his band The Misfits album covers and t-shirts. The serial itself is so over the top in images and ideas that its become the source of a minor cult and is one of the few non-Flash Gordon serials that my non-serial fan friends know about.The plot has a scientist creating a machine called a "cyclotrode" which will stop atomic missiles from working. It will also stop other things which is why a skull clad villain known as the Crimson Ghost wants it.This action filled serial is a great deal of fun thanks to one of the silliest looking villains in movie history. Taking the idea of a masked bad guy and placing it into the realm of camp you can't help but watch the craziness that ensues. The mask looks great but you can't believe anyone would actually listen to a guy in a mask like that. Helping things along is dialog that is unintentionally silly thanks to the passage of time(The heroine is given a diaphragm from which her orders will come). It plays like the old Batman TV show but with better action and with out the knowing wink to the audience. Frankly if it wasn't so unintentionally silly you would never have heard of this serial or seen its iconic villain, even if it was pretty good on its own terms.Definitely worth a look, after all it isn't often you get to see Clayton "the Lone Ranger" Moore as a bad guy.

In this edition, with all the episodes condensed onto one tape, it's pretty obvious that many of the cliff-hangers are resolved the same way. If the car crashes, or explodes, or goes off a cliff, the next episode starts with the same event, but this time we see a scene where the hero hops out the door just in time. Pretty cheap. Well the Crimson Ghost is a very bad man and I guess wants to take over the world or something. More people will know him as The Misfits logo than this villain and I think they might enjoy him in action. I enjoyed almost the whole serial, but found the end all too sudden, at least in the "movie version" I bought.

very good serial. a lot of suspense and (for the time, hey, even now they will hold up) fast paced fight scenes, and a fast paced story. Buy this serial (but try to find your copy in black and white) and have fun with this classic.