I Love 'King of the Rocket Men'!

Image by Kevin H. via Flickr

No, Jeff King isn’t going bankrupt. However, he did survive a re-cap chapter just in time to be trapped in a car being driven by remote control and filling up with gas. I think bankruptcy would be an improvement to that as we head into our next exciting chapter of King of the Rocket Men!

You know something I’ve never understood? Why pull a gun to force someone to commit suicide? Especially when said suicide isn’t exactly trying to hide that it was in fact murder. You have the gun, just pull the trigger already?

On Todd Gault’s website, Serial Experience (which I frankly should start reading) he reviewed King of the Rocket Men. Of the actors involved he wrote:

The casting is really different. A lot has been made of the fact that Tristram Coffin, an actor who specialized in playing villains in serials, was cast as the heroic lead. He does a great job in the role and added a certain amount of suaveness to a mostly colorless character. He showed that scientists could be brilliant, tough, and sophisticated. Mae Clarke, who was a long way from having James Cagney smash a grapefruit into her face in “Public Enemey” (1931), is given little to do. She tries hard to make an impression but she is made to look so unglamorous and plain that she fades into the background.

Don Haggerty has to be the only person ever to be cast as a thug in a Republic serial and actually look like one. There is no growling or snearing in his performance, because he doesn’t need to. When he makes a threat, he looks fully capable of carrying it out with little thought or emotion involved. House Peters, Jr. is given almost as little to do as Clarke is, and he makes even less of an impression than she does. Although I have to admit he does look pretty jaunty during one scene where he is smoking a pipe while talking with Coffin.

One of the most interesting casting choices never gets mentioned in reference books, James Craven’s kindly scientist. An actor who for years toiled in serials playing scheming, sniveling villains. Even when he started out as a good guy in “Purple Monster Strikes” he wasn’t on screen ten minutes before he became evil. Yet here he is playing not only a good guy, but a heroic one. When it looks like Jeff is going to be exposed as Rocket Man in Chapter Six, Millard doesn’t hesitate to put on the rocket suit and fly to the rescue. Craven does a great job in the part, almost as if he relished playing a hero for a change.

He also notes that the use of the Rocket Man helmet makes it easier to hide the fact that the “flying” Rocket Man is actually a dummy on a wire since you can’t see his face, unlike The Adventures of Captain Marvel.

Next week, the final chapter as Rocket Man (we’re assuming he survives this episode since he’s the hero and all, unless Burt is going to take up the role) learns to surf and fast to catch the “Wave of Disaster” at this website next week.

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Posted by on August 13, 2011 in Saturday Night Serial and tagged , , , .

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About ShadowWing Tronix

A would be comic writer looking to organize his living space as well as his thoughts. So I have a blog for each goal. :)

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