When we last left our hero he and the lady reporter Glenda Thomas were about to have their drivers licenses revoked the hard way–by driving off of a cliff. Or were they? Let’s find out in Chapter 3 of King of the Rocket Men.
Ah, the old-fashioned cop-out of “the minute we didn’t show you last time”. A serial classic. And who didn’t see the box of explosives, see how much time was left, and guess what the cliffhanger would be?
The flying effects were done the same way as was done for Republic’s Adventures of Captain Marvel. Easy enough to set up: just set up an internal wire pulley and have it go down the line behind a backdrop or the scenery. With the cameras back then the wires are hard to see, especially if your focused on the action and not looking for it. Sadly, the Superman serials decided to just have the actor replaced with a cartoon sequence of Superman flying off. It might have allowed for a bit more posing but looked a lot less believable.
Next time: will Jeff King escape being blown to bits? And do the bad guys still have the negative? Find out in chapter 4, “High Peril”, at this website next week. By the way, anyone even watching this?
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- Saturday Night Serial: King of the Rocketmen Ch. 1 (bwmedia.wordpress.com)
- Saturday Night Serial: King of the Rocketmen #2 (bwmedia.wordpress.com)
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