A 15-chapter space cadet adventure serial that’s every bit as juvenile as I hoped. It’s the sensitive story of two men with terrible headgear who fight over the fate of the world.
On one side is evil dictator Vultura from the planet Atoma. He’s played by Gene Roth, veteran of a pile of old Three Stooges shorts, who makes no effort to portray Vultura as otherworldly or regal in the slightest. Vultura is just a fat guy in an Attila the Hun headdress and you better not get in his way or he’ll blow you up. Or at least he’ll TRY to blow you up. He’s not very good at it. Everybody always gets away.
On the other side is Captain Video, our government agent hero. The motorcycle helmet he wears throughout the entire saga is awful, but it has more personality than he does. That’s normal though for vintage serials, where the hero only has to hold our attention for about fifteen minutes at a time. Captain Video totes around a barely adequate sidekick (the Video Ranger) along with a few crazy “electric guns”. He also jets off to faraway planets and then back to Earth as simply as me riding my bike to the 7-11 down the street.
The most notable thing here is that this is the first and only theatrical serial to be based on a television series, Captain Video and His Video Rangers which aired from 1949 to 1955, live and legendarily low-budget in crude kinescope.
The second most notable thing is the silent movie-style tinting effect used to give a little ten-cent spectacle to the alien planets.
The third most notable thing is that there is no third most notable thing, except maybe that this was produced by Sam Katzman, one of the busiest B-movie mavens of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s.