Better Late Then Never

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Foreward...In a film made decades ago a fearless fighter and his young protégé are out fighting evil in 1939 when their zeppelin lands and freezes in snow-covered mountains. There the two bodies rest in a state of suspended life due to a newly invented gas thus preserving life for centuries. in the 25th century these two bodies are found, life is restored, and Buck Rogers and his faithful sidekick Buddy wade join forces of the Hidden City as it fights for its life again the cruel killer wade and his evil forces of reckless racketeers. That is in a nutshell the premise behind this serial and its not entirely a bad one. The story definitely has some strong aspects to it and we get to see some inventive science fiction as well, but Buck Rogers is NOT Flash Gordon nor is it ever really close to that. First of all let's see what we do have in common: a basic story that pits the few good against the evil majority, a fearless, indestructible hero both played by Larry Buster Crabbe, an evil villain bent on world and extra-world domination, and cheesy special effects. The major differences are not so much in the story but in its execution. Flash Gordon was a big budget affair compared to this. Here the sets look so much cheaper and the effects so much, well...cheaper. The acting too is excruciatingly bad as Crabbe is one of the best actors in the film, and that isn't saying too much as he says lines looking like a silent screen actor arching eyebrows, etc... Jackie Moran is the most fun as his sidekick Buddy, but everyone else ranges from acceptable(C. Montague Shaw as Professor Huer to terrible Anthony Warde as Killer Kane to one of the worst acting performances seen in a long time - Philson Ahn as Prince Tallen - boy he could use some presence. I wanted to pinch him to see if was really alive. The direction is crisp and their is only minimal use of flashback sequences, but the musical soundtrack really bothered me as Franz Waxman's score from The Bride of Frankenstein was repeatedly used throughout and used to ill-effect very often. Don't get me wrong - Buck Rogers is a fun serial. It has some cool action scenes, an inviting story, and cheesy effects like the spaceships sputtering about like a listless firecracker, but it is in no way close to Crabbe's previous serial Flash Gordon - perhaps the greatest serial ever made. One other note: Constance Moore playing Wilma Deering has virtually no personality and, as far as I recollect, is the only female in the entire production. Interesting.

Buck Rogers as rendered in this serial is a far cry from the comic strip. Somehow, the producers & director managed to create what amounts to a pale shadow of the original strip. The sets used in the 1939 Buck Rogers series are painfully and obviously recycled from the prior Flash Gordon series. Not only that, but some of the film sequences seem to be recycled shamelessly (e.g. the sequences of the underground subways).For anyone who wonders about the genesis of the homo-erotic themes of Batman, though, look no further! Buck and Buddy do seem to be the prototypes of the now common comic book stereotypes. I am not certain whether this was intentional or not. Possibly the director merely had in mind an appeal to the pre-adolescent social constructs of a bygone age? Buddy still looks like he's the "boy wonder" of this series, though, while the Buck Rogers films date back to 1934 or so, several years before the Batman debut (1939). There must be a master's thesis waiting to be written here.

"Buck Rogers" (Episodes 1-12, 1939): This stuff is interesting to me for more than its comic book/kitsch style, weak acting, poor production, low grade special effects, lame story, and bad costumes. In 1938 & 1939, audiences were treated to Serials before the main movie at their local theater. Each section of these ongoing stories was about a half an hour in length, and a new one was shown each week. To see all 12 episodes (the entire story) you had to attend the movies 12 weeks in a row. Did you know the good guys would win? Of course. Did you know that at the end of each week's installment, there would be a "cliffhanger" moment leaving you wanting more next week? Of course. The Great Depression was still on, and television was invented but not yet available except to a few rich people in New York City. Once a week, especially on the weekend date nights and Saturday matinees for the kiddies, the Movie was IT...A SPECIAL experience to be savored for a nickel or dime. You got the NEWS, a CARTOON, a SERIAL installment, and THE MOVIE, plus some "private" time with your date...IN THE DARK, IN AIR CONDITIONING!! What a deal!! When I look beneath the surface of this serial (I go back and forth whether I like the characters in Flash Gordon OR Buck Rogers better, both having the same Space/Future theme, but I definitely prefer the décor and the hidden symbology of Buck) I see, as always, a "future" depicted by what we ARE at the moment, in our own time - considered the most "modern" of styles available to us. The cities, room sets, machines, costuming, transportation, and tools expected to be available to us in the future, are all shown in the Middle Art Deco style of America – Zig Zag, Geometric, Jazz, Skyscraper – applied (slathered) to everything from a pair of shoes to a rocket ship and an entire city. And, since the most modern symbols of the 1930's were our very own skyscrapers - with their skeletons of riveted steel - everything in the future is made of…riveted steel, even if it should float. Wonderful and silly. The city designs are direct ripoffs from various buildings of the 1933 Chicago and 1939 New York World's Fairs. The costumes are a mix of para-military horse riding jodfer outfits, and objects that can serve as both helmets OR trash cans for example...trash cans with lightning bolt wings, anyhow. Radio microphones FLOAT (on a fishing line) for some reason, but their speakers still look like turn of the century wind-up record player speaker horns; doors are toothy, biting jaws that open and close with intimidating chews; every object of any importance has a few vacuum tubes or power line insulators on it, along with the rivets; the powerful rocket ships snap, crackle, pop, fizz, and smoke like a used Desoto pouring sparks out its tail pipe, but somehow they get from planet to planet in minutes. Fight scenes: Buster Crabbe's (Buck's) stand-ins do all the work – and you KNOW they're stand-ins because you can SEE them fighting, and they look NOTHING like Buster/Buck. "Hey look, some OTHER guy's fighting now! Oh wait, he's Buck's stand-in!" Then we have the Zoggs – a dark skinned race of dolts, with large spirals of forehead flesh that hang in their eyes, serving as the gophers and laborer/minions of governments. Bad guys wear tight black uniforms. And here is where we get glimpses into the world of 1938/39, when Hitler, like the "Killer Kane" maniac leader in our story (a name that would have been recognized as the powerful "Citizen Kane" character who represented publisher William Randolph Hearst), who was attempting to take over the world, the solar system, the universe...controlling the minds of everyone. The good guys are working on alliances, some are ready to roll over for Killer Kane, others want to fight, and politics & leadership councils are being put to use as everyone decides who is on which side. In Buck Rogers, the American/English Caucasians/Earthlings are joined by the Chinese/Asians Saturnians and the Russian/Caucasians (of some other planet) to fight the power-mad German/Aryan race. The parallels were simple enough for all of that movie audience to "get". (The Japanese/Asians Aliens were not in the mix directly, but the audience would've known that the alliance with the Americans meant China, who was being attacked by Japan.) On and on the serial goes... battles, spying, espionage, meetings, weapon races, disguises, and science dedicated to winning wars not curing diseases. It was low-grade info-tainment – mild propaganda on a weekly basis – expressions of contemporary concerns and fears, which reached so many millions of Americans every week. Those hidden in the top back rows of the balcony didn't notice.

This serial only proves that Buster Crabbe is definitely the king of the Saturday morning serials. He played two of the most memorable characters in comicdom, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The main difference is the fact that Flash Gordon is more of an adult strip while Buck Rogers was more of a kiddie strip. In comparing the serials, Buck Rogers had as much action as the latter two Flash Gordon epics, however there was not as great a chemistry between Crabbe and Constance Moore as Crabbe had with Jean Rogers. All that aside though, on its own merit, its a great serial.