BRUCE GENTRY (1949)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

BRUCE GENTRY's is said to be the first American film to exploit the image of the flying saucer, which term became common parlance in the United States thanks to a highly publicized UFO sighting in 1947. But though one or two previous serials of the forties had included alien plotters, here the saucers are known to be created by a secret cabal in the U.S, believed to be working for a "foreign power." This means that the saucers-- which can cause planes to malfunction and fall from the sky, or can destroy things by ramming into them-- are the same kind of super-weapons over which serial heroes and villains had contended since the silent era. GENTRY's producer Sam Katzman even worked on such a super-weapon struggle in 1937's BLAKE OF SCOTLAND YARD. The great advantage of super-weapons for the serial format was that, even when the combatants weren't fighting over the weapon itself, they could spend time fighting over some resource needed to power the weapon-- and a lot of this sort of thing happens in GENTRY.

The serial was based on a 1945 comic strip about a troubleshooting aviator, done in the Milton Caniff style and published two years before Caniff himself unleashed his better known feature about a heroic pilot, STEVE CANYON. My impression is that the original strip, like CANYON, included some exotic adventure but no actual metaphenomenal elements. Since the GENTRY strip was not especially popular in its day, Columbia probably acquired the rights at minimal expense. Yet GENTRY the serial spends a lot more time on varied locations than Columbia's 1947 JACK ARMSTRONG, so maybe directors Spencer G. Bennett and Thomas Carr were given a little more money to work with.

The hero (Tom Neal, who did the heavy lifting in the serial JUNGLE GIRL) is chartered to take a government agent on a flight, but first has to rescue the agent from two assailants. During the flight, a mysterious disc draws near Bruce's plane and gives off heat waves that immobilize the plane's controls. Nevertheless, the skilled pilot lands the plane without harm to himself or his passenger. One might expect that the agent would then enlist Bruce against the plotters controlling the discs, but the agent simply disappears from the story. Instead, the head of a private company, name of Radcliffe, hires Bruce to investigate the discs. Radcliffe suspects that the saucers are powered by the rare element "platonium," and there's only one known source for the element. 

But just so Bruce isn't constantly fighting with bad guys over a rare element, the plotters also kidnap a famed scientist, Doctor Benson, to help them with their project. It's through Benson's eyes that viewers meet the men who operate the flying discs, though the leader, known as "The Recorder," only speaks to his men and his prisoner through the vehicle of tape recordings. (Not the most inspired choice; what if someone asks the evildoer a pertinent question?) To change things up, sometimes Benson sends the Recorder's thugs to retrieve items he needs from his laboratory, and that too eventuates fights between the thugs, the hero, and the hero's allies.

Though Bruce is a loner, he quickly befriends a pair of siblings who manage a ranch near the only known source of platonium, and thus is almost certainly the disc-makers' source of the element. Of this brother and sister duo, Frank proves an able fighting ally to Bruce. His sister Nita doesn't provide anything but a little spunky dialogue, but at least she doesn't just sit around making coffee for the guys. The villains are not very interesting characters, though the Number Two man is played by familiar serial-player Tristram Coffin, and unfortunately the revelation of the Record'r's true identity is lame beyond belief. The fight-scenes and cliffhangers are much better done than most of those in the Columbia chapterplays, though none are exceptional. Some serial-enthusiasts didn't like the cheap animation used for the flying discs, but I'd rather have a cheap effect than a super-weapon that remains conveniently offstage for the entire story.

The dialogue flows better than in most Columbia serials. I've mentioned some salty lines given to the Nita character, but there's a little more attention to individual character overall. In the opening chapter, Radcliffe's secretary Louise (unbilled) decides to bring Bruce to her employer by getting a couple of men to menace her so she can play damsel in distress for Bruce's benefit. This was a rather loopy plan, but at least it wasn't boring. Unfortunately Louise only appears a few more times in the serial, flirting with Bruce in the office but nothing more.

The oddest thing about the script is that various people are aware of Bruce's existence even though he's not famous for any great deeds that we know of, like, say, Flash Gordon. Louise seems to know his ladies' man reputation (though we see no evidence of it), a cop knows Bruce from his ID alone, and a newspaper headline addressing the flying discs proclaims that "Bruce Gentry is on the case" or words to that effect. Given that the comic strip wasn't all that well known in its day, maybe the writers were told to pump up the hero's reputation to enthrall audiences, even though viewers aren't told why he's so cool. But good locations, a strong performance by Tom Neal, and a few quirky moments put BRUCE GENTRY firmly in the range of the middle-range of quality serials.