REVENGE! (1971), THE HOUSE THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1970)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) poor, (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: (1)*metaphysical*, (2) *psychological*


I happened to screen close together these two 1970s telefilms, whose only other common bond is that they star acclaimed Hollywood actresses in their mature years, and that they share marvelous phenomenality.

REVENGE! recalls the 1960s vogue for featuring older actresses in horrific roles, what some wag once styled as "granddame guignol."  Indeed, the vogue would continue throughout the 1970s, and Winters had already made her first contribution to that corpus of films in the same year with WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?

In Joseph Stefano's brisk script, adapted from a suspense novel, Winters' character Mrs. Hilton is out for "revenge."  Her knocked-up daughter committed suicide thanks to her rejection by the baby's father.  Mrs. Hilton, who happens to own a house once used by an earlier owner to confine his mad wife, gets the idea to visit vengeance upon her daughter's seducer. 

However, the mad lady captures the wrong person: innocent businessman Frank.  Confined to a basement, Frank denies being the guilty party.  Fortunately for him, Mrs. Hilton dearly wants a confession and apology, though it's not clear whether she plans to kill him anyway.  Thus she keeps Frank alive, long enough for his wife Diane to miss him.

Becoming frantic at her husband's unaccounted disappearance, Diane ultimately seeks the aid of psychic Mark Hembrec (Stuart Whitman).  However, in the story's most devious twist, Hembrec is a fake psychic, but Diane's turmoil unleashes real powers in herself.  She guides Hembrec to the Hilton house without even consciously identifying it as the place of her husband's captivity.  After that, the film plays a waiting game: will the two investigators tumble in time to save Frank?

REVENGE is a taut suspense-flick and nothing more.  There's potential for some metaphysical speculation once Hembrec the Faker is convinced that psychic powers do exist, but nothing comes of it.

THE HOUSE THAT WOULDN'T DIE was adapted by one Henry Farrell from yet another original novel.  Farrelll's credits were pretty strong in the "granddame" department, as he contributed to WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, HUSH, HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE, and the aforementioned WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN.  The director this time out was the well-seasoned John Llewellyn Moxey, who delivers a strong spooky atmosphere.

Granddame though Barbara Stanwyck was at the time, she plays a straight heroine-type, one Ruth Bennett.  Ruth's own aunt dies and leaves her an old house dating from the Revolutionary War.  Ruth plans to move in and invites her adult niece Sara (Kitty Winn) to come along.  Little is said about Sara's family but given that Ruth and Sara have a close mother-daughter relationship, it appears Sara's own mother is dead.  While Ruth and Sara look the old place over, they make the acquaintance of two locals, both aged appropriately for each woman, young Stan (Michael Anderson Jr) and mature Pat (Richard Egan).

Then, after a little prefatory spooky stuff, a spirit possesses Sara, who attacks Ruth.  Sara later recovers without knowing what happened.  Ruth wants to know what happened to her niece, and begins researching the past of the house.  Pat also gets possessed, giving Ruth a brutal kiss and later getting into a fight with Stan.

With the appropriate research in hand, the victims reconstruct the house's history: that there had been a family in which a father murdered his daughter and her lover for having defied his wishes.  The daughter has been possessing Sara, while the cruel father has been inhabiting Pat.  There's no mention as to why the spirit of the lover doesn't show up. Maybe because it's not his dwelling-place?  There's a strong climax in which Ruth is finally able to lay to rest both unquiet spirits.

In contrast to REVENGE, there's a slight degree of mythicity here, suggested by the implied Freudian family romance in the story.  I have not read the novel on which the film is based, but even the bare outlines of the ghost-story seem to suggest paternal jealousy of the young couple, though there's a little diversionary material in that the murdered lover and the father took the opposite sides in the war.

Aside from this aspect and Moxey's sure hand with the supernatural, Stanwyck's gritty attitude is the best aspect of HOUSE.

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932), RUN FOR THE SUN (1956)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *good*, (2) *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

One of the most interesting manifestations of the "bizarre crimes" trope is the one spawned by Richard Connell's 1924 short story, "The Most Dangerous Game," that of the obsessed hunter who chose to hunt the "most dangerous game," his fellow human beings.  In its basic conception it sounds like the sort of thing the Marquis de Sade might have conceived, insofar as it presupposes a powerful man's intrinsic right to use other men for his pleasure.

Yet prior to conceiving my theory I never knew why so many fantasy-film concordances included it.  The idea didn't violate any aspect of natural law, nor did it have the spooky tone of the non-fantasy horror films.  In substance it seemed more of a naturalistic suspense-thriller.  At best I assumed that the compilers considered the villain some sort of psycho, like author John McCarty, who included MDG in his book MOVIE PSYCHOS AND MADMEN.

However, I think my trope "bizarre crimes" explains the metaphenomenal tone of the story and some (though not all) of its adaptations.  Both in the story and the 1932 film, the villain Count Zaroff might be called mad, but he never shows the frenetic quality one associates with the "psycho."  Zaroff seems utterly convinced that he should have the right to hunt humans, so that in tone he comes closer to daring criminals like Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, who want to create dazzling new crimes simply for the sake of so doing.

Direction in the definitive (so far) 1932 film is credited to both Irving Pichel and Ernest P. Schoedsack.  It was the first metaphenomenal film either man directed, and its fast-paced, intense style looks forward to a simiilar quality in 1933's KING KONG, directed by Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper.  Leslie Banks gives Zaroff the same brooding quality one finds in horror-performers of the same era, but whereas most goodguy-protagonists in horror films are weak sisters, Zaroff finds a formidable match in the form of fellow big game hunter  Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), in spite of the fact that Zaroff also has one of sound cinema's first "mute servants" and a pack of dogs on his side.  Zaroff has two other guests on his isolated island-paradise, Eve and Martin Trowbridge. The latter, an annoying comic drunk, exists to be the first victim (or at least the first one the audience sees) of a Zaroff hunt.  Later Eve becomes the "prize" which Zaroff plans to claim once he's finished off Rainsford.  As Eve, Fay Wray, a few months away from film immortality as "the girl in the hairy paw," doesn't get a lot to do, but she does show courage in choosing to be hunted alongside Rainsford.  The exciting climax necessarily expands on the too-brief battle of Rainsford  and Zaroff in the original short story.

The 1956 RUN FOR THE SUN, however, never exploits the bizarre nature of the villain's crime to the same extent as the 1932 film.  Indeed, SUN is barely a remake of the original concept, for it's been retooled extensively to place more emphasis on a pedestrian romance between nature-writer Mike Latimer (Richard Widmark) and Katie Connors (Jane Greer).  Indeed, their budding romance consumes about thirty minutes of film-time before the two of them crash land in a remote section of Central America.  There they meet a courteous-seeming recluse named Browne and his coterie of armed men-- only to suspect that something's wrong when their downed plane disappears.  It soon comes out that Browne and one of his men-- his brother-in-law, in fact-- are ex-Nazis who have fled Europe to avoid prosecution, and they don't want anyone knowing where they are. 

However, Browne has none of the Promethean evil of Zaroff; if anything, he's tormented by the loss of a lady-love.  He professes no Nazi philosophy, having been mostly a fellow-traveler, though there is a mention of Nietzsche amid his reading-material.  However, when he does get around to hunting Mike and Katie, it's simply because they're trying to escape him, not because he has the outsize idea of being a Hunter of Men.  Because SUN lacks any grandiosity to its "bizarre crime," I assign it, and the film, the status of "naturalistic."

ADDENDUM (9/16): I don't know why I failed to gauge it properly, but the 1932 version of MOST DANGEROUS GAME is without a doubt a "combative drama." Heck, Rainsford even defeats one of Zaroff's men by breaking his back with a wrestling-hold-- and you don't get much more spectacular than that.

CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD (1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I've seen my share of Jerry Warren productions-- both those in which he directed original (so to speak) films and those in which he purchased other director's films, cut them up and inserted a few scenes he'd directed with American actors.  Everything I've seen has been thoroughly mediocre but no more so than a lot of films in his time period.

CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD, which I recently screened for the first time, baffles me.  I've seen a fair number of low-budget affairs whose makers seemed to be speaking their own private storytelling language-- usual suspects including ROBOT MONSTER, GLEN OR GLENDA, etc.

CREATURE doesn't seem to have its own private language, but it seems just as incomprehensible.  And this seems odd, since in every way it looks like a typical mad-scientist film of the period.  In this case, it involves Martin Malthus, a modern-day (circa 1960) scientist who foolishly brings back the "walking dead" of his ancestor John Malthus.  The ancestor was executed at the close of the 19th century for trying to create an elixir of immortality with the blood of murdered maidens, so no one, except perhaps Martin, is surprised that as soon as he's revived he picks up just where he left off.

Now, since CREATURE was largely derived from a Mexican original (apparently lost) entitled LA MARCA DEL MUERTO, the way the film jumps illogically from scene to scene *may* be entirely due to the way Warren cut the film.  I don't imagine Warren did the original footage any good.  Nevertheless, some of the senselessness seems implicit in the original film.  In one of the few detailed online reviews of CREATURE, the site BRAIN EATER describes how young Malthus finds his way into the lab of old Malthus:

Wait a minute: that reminds me. The police! They arrested Malthus, and got him hanged for his crimes. But it seems they never discovered his lab! When Malthus, Jr. gets there, it's exactly as his grandfather left it, complete to the withered corpse strapped to the table. Either the police couldn't be bothered with removing the body, or collecting any of that pesky evidence; or else they arrested, convicted and executed him for something entirely different.
 

Similarly, the very ending of the film-- almost certainlty the work of original director Fernando Cortes-- culminates in the usual "burning laboratory" where Young Malthus fights Old Malthus to protect some babe from being bled to death.  With the babe in tow, Young Malthus escapes the burning lab, and to make sure the old creep buys it, he pulls the door closed after him.  Fair enough, you're thinking...

...Except that the inside door, which comes with a heavy bolt-latch, LOCKS ITSELF after Malthus has gone through it.  Brain Eater remarks that maybe the latch has been closed by the hand of God, and in truth one does see a couple of pointed visual highlights of crucifixes.  But I think a more likely expectation is that Cortes, like a lot of quickie directors, just thought it looked neat.

I've nothing much to say about this one.  I like Mexican horror movies of the period, but most of them are enjoyable for the way they put their cultural spin on the old horror-tropes of Universal Studios.  Warren may be mainly responsible for how dull and incoherent CREATURE is, but I suspect the original aided and abetted the crime.

I find myself wondering who came up with the name "Malthus" for the two doctors.  The best-known "Malthus" in history is the 18th-century English scholar who became famed for his population studies.  I can't see much connection between him and a horror-flick about living dead men, except that the bad guy gets rid of a lot of the "population."

SLIGHT DOWNSIZING

With the completion of my reviews for September, I've completed a full year of my current regiment, which, as announced in October 2011, was to supply a "month's-worth" of reviews for metaphenomenal (or somewhat related) works for each ensuing month.  Assuming I didn't miscount, each month should review as many movies (or TV compilations) as there were days that month.

But it is somewhat of a strain, since I manage two other blogs, one of which I've barely worked on these past months.

Having achieved my "personal best," then, I'm downsizing the frequency of reviews.  I've seen some blogs that confine themselves to posting once every weekday. I may not do a post on every weekday, but at present I'm planning to do as many reviews a month as that month has weekdays.

In addition, this will help me to quell the insane completist part of me that wants to chime in on every single metaphenomenal film/teleseries I see, regardless of whether there's really much to say about them.  Just as one's body can always devour calories far more easily than it can exercise them away, one can always see more sheer *stuff* than one can find time to review.  As much as I like the idea of doing my own compilation of What's Metaphenomenal and What's Not, I probably never will.  At best this blog is, like many such, a diary of thoughts theoretical and otherwise.

CARRIE (1976), CARRIE (2002)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

 

Though Stephen King doesn’t regard CARRIE as his best novel, it manages to sustain a better-than-average level of mythicity while remaining admirably concise—two things one can’t say about too many of King’s early works, and possibly not about any of the later ones.

As many before me have commented, Carrie White’s story follows the basic pattern of the “outcast from normal society,” with a specific emphasis on the outcast who obtains marvelous powers to strike back against that society.  Carrie, unlike her antecedents—the witches who gained power from devils or from pagan gods, depending who you ask—gains her power from a natural mutation that gives her the power of telekinesis.  In addition to being alienated from her high school society, by dint of being the butt of jokes from boys and girls alike, she’s just as alienated in her home life.  Her father left her mother long ago, and her mother Margaret—a righteous religious proselytizer—subjects Carrie to verbal and physical abuse, tacitly resenting her both as the seed of her father and for being younger and more vital.

Though boys are seen to taunt Carrie as well, King’s narrative—as well as both film-adaptations—emphasizes the greater cruelty of the “gentle sex.”  Her mother cruelly keeps Carrie ignorant of feminine biology, so that during her first period she thinks she’s bleeding to death.  This takes place in the school locker-room, so that all the girls relentlessly torment her for her ignorance, and possibly as a symbol of their own feminine vulnerabilities.  This trauma causes Carrie’s mostly dormant psychic powers to manifest.  As most film fans know, Carrie is then subject to a terrible prank that makes possible the fantasy of many high-school nerds: the complete destruction of the society that torments the nerd, as well as the oppressive parent-figure.

Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation remains thus far unchallenged as the best cinematic adaptation of the book.  His use of intrusive directorial techniques—particularly his famous use of “split screens” during the tumultuous climax—has been criticized, but I find that he shows good judgment as to when to dispense with flat depictions of consensual reality. De Palma dispenses with many fine details of the book, though rarely at the expense of the characters, and he “amps up” some scenes, such as the death-scene of Margaret White, who is literally “crucified” by a host of telekinetically hurled knives.  Star Sissy Spacek was just then coming into her own as one of the major female stars of the period, and for most viewers, her performance defines Carrie as the intelligent underdog outmatched from the start by the greater collective evil of society.  And of course, the “gotcha” coda—which resembles nothing in the King book—was so widely imitated that it’s arguable that CARRIE put an end to any lingering expectation that a horror-film could ever “return to normalcy” at the end.

The 2002 telemovie version of CARRIE, aside from one huge flaw, is a worthy adaptation in its own right.  As is typical of television productions all events are depicted in a straightforward “meat-and-potatoes” visual style, but director David Carson does make good use of close-ups to deliver emotional intensity.  Amanda Bettis delivers a Carrie just as well nuanced as Spacek’s version, and one arguably closer to the book, in that Bettis’ Carrie looks more like a downtrodden homebody in attitude and dress.  By contrast, at times Sissy Spacek was allowed to be a little too glamorous to be believable as an “ugly duckling.”

With a longer running time, the 2002 version also uses more of King’s book, particularly the framing sequence in which police detectives try to make sense, after the fact, of the events that led to the holocaust.  Another good scene from the book, though irrelevant to the main character as such, deals with the attempt of chief nasty-girl Chris Hargensen (Emilie deRavin) to retaliate against her righteous gym-teacher by siccing her daddy the Bigtime Lawyer on the school.  For the most part all the principal characters are well-acted, and I’d argue that Jesse Cadotte as the vicious Billy Nolan easily outdoes John Travolta’s performance.

There are small flaws.  In this version Margaret White’s extreme Christianity, while still present, seems toned down.  Entirely absent is King’s critique—operatic though it may be—of mainstream Christianity’s focus on repressing sexuality.  In the book this ethos has the depressing result that even a married woman like Margaret White feels horribly guilty about having enjoyed sex, and so projects the same guilt upon her daughter.  But you wouldn’t know it from the 2002 version.

The huge flaw I mentioned earlier is the ending.  Though Carrie still trashes the entire school and executes her mother when the demented woman tries to kill her daughter, Carrie doesn’t die as she does in the book and the initial movie.  Sue Snell, the character who made it possible for Carrie to go to her prom, intervenes to get Carrie away from town.  According to comments on IMDB, Carrie survived because some geniuses thought about spinning her off into her own series.  Fortunately, the telefilm didn’t enjoy ratings good enough to greenlight a series.  But anyone watching this version should be prepared to be deprived of the expected “death-of-the-monster” scene.           

 

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012), HANNA (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *drama,* (2)*adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: (1) *sociological,* (2) *psychological*

HUNGER GAMES and HANNA might be deemed by some as adventure-films, since both feature young female protagonists ably defending themselves against assorted forces.  But, to dwell a little on my own critical terminology here, they show radically different narrative emphases that mark the former as a “combative drama” and the latter as a “combative adventure.”

 

 

HUNGER GAMES, adapting the first of a successful series of young adult books (none of which I’ve read), builds its future-Earth with admirable low-key detail.  In this distant future, a city full of wealthy sybarites dominates the surrounding rural districts following a failed rebellion by the districts.  As a means of keeping the workers enslaved, the authorities—represented in large part by President Snow (Donald Sutherland)—hold yearly “Hunger Games.” Each year two young people are selected from each district, turned loose beneath an artificial dome, and ordered to kill one another until only one remains.  The custom, as Snow explains, is designed to keep reminding the plebes of their enslavement and yet also give the districts hope that some local boy—or girl-- may win the prestigious games.  The comparison to the Roman “bread and circuses” is inevitable with this well-traveled concept.  Here the ritual nature of the combat also compares well with the story of the Minotaur, in which young people were sacrificed to the maw of a ravening beast—save that one young victim is supposed to survive, while the ravening beast is the hunger of the "haves" to gobble up the lives of the "have-nots."

 

 

Though there’s nothing new in this basic setup, most films in this subgenre spend next to no time building up the “real life” of the protagonist. At most such films spent a minute or two showing the protagonist working his garden with his happy family before the local storm troopers come calling.  HUNGER spends roughly ten minutes showing the bucolic way heroine Catness (Jennifer Lawrence) lives-- washing clothes, mining, hunting small game.  Thus, that unlike most “gladiator heroes,” Catness’ proletarian life is grounded in a range of experience, rather than being no more than an empty symbol of “ordinary life.”

 

 

A major sociological myth underlying the “gladiator-genre” is to show whether or not the “country mouse” can survive the blandishments of the “big city.”  Once Catness and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson)—the other selectee from her district—are chosen for the Hunger Games, they go through a certain amount of gladiatorial training, but their greatest hurdles relate to “pleasing the audience.”  Because the Games are broadcast on television, audience-members who favor a given gladiator can send gifts that help the fighter out.  Thus, no matter what Catness and Peeta think about the games and their instigators, they must at all times put on a polite face and act as if they’ve been given a great privilege.  It’s possible that this aspect of the story may’ve had a strong resonance with the young adult audience, well acquainted with the need to dissemble in the face of authority.  The handlers assigned to Catness and Peeta even convince the youths to play up a possible "star-crossed lovers" schtick to amuse the audience.  It's not clear whether Peeta initiates this approach because he actually has feelings for Catness or because he's exploiting a publicity angle-- an ambivalence which provides no end of irritation for the young female.

 

Once the Games begin, the film continues to emphasize “pathos” over the sort of combative set-pieces seen in, say, 2000’s GLADIATOR.  A chaotic bloodbath, seen only in quick cuts, erupts at the first in a struggle for the best weapons provided by the Games-masters.  Catness wisely avoids the conflict and seeks shelter in the forest.  She’s pursued by a team of hunters—who presumably are only teamed up until they can stab one another in the back—among whom is Peeta.  After a hectic series of chase-and-pursuit scenes—one of which includes Catness allying herself to a younger girl—Catness eventually bonds with Peeta again after he proves his loyalty by protecting her at a vital point.  The two enjoy a romantic liaison despite being televised, much to the heartbreak of Catness’ boyfriend back home.

 

Even to the end, when Catness and Peeta engage the last few hunters, the action always remains hectic and breathless. Catness’ particular skill, that of archery, isn’t exercised that much, save briefly at the very end, to liberate Peeta from a hunter’s clutches.  In keeping with the demands of a drama, the emotional turmoil of the characters always takes precedence over the action.  Catness and Peeta turn the Games on their head by becoming so popular that the Games-Masters must break their rules and allow them both to live, thus setting up forthcoming sequels.

 

HANNA is exactly the opposite in its balance of turmoil and action, though it also deals with a young female protagonist caught up in life-or-death conflicts.  The story, taking place in a present-day milieu, is only nominally *marvelous* in that Hanna (Saorise Ronan) has been genetically engineered to become a super-competent fighter with implicitly above-average strength.  The C.I.A., who engineered this genetic experiment, loses Hanna to rogue agent Erik, who raises her in selusion deep in the snowy wilds of Finland.  However, Erik-- who poses as Hanna's father but will later be revealed to be unrelated to her-- knows that he can only keep a feisty teenager confined for so long.  He allows Hanna to choose whether or not to return to the greater world, albeit with the knowledge that she’ll instantly be pursued by the organization—particularly the former head of the operation Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett).  Marissa, though not technically related to Hanna, functions here as a “bad mother” against Erik’s “good father.”

 

The “Freudian family romance” suggested by this setup isn’t pursued in any depth, though Hanna does also have issues with her father once she finds out her true backstory.  The film makes several references to fairy-tale motifs, but though they add to the visual appeal of the film-- particularly an end-sequence involving a "Grimm Brothers amusement park"-- the script doesn't develop the motifs with any great depth either.

 

Though Hanna is in considerable turmoil at times—not least because she’s the typical “girl who never had a normal life”-- the emphasis of the story is on her daredevil acts.  To be sure, HANNA is not as replete with huge set-pieces as, say, the 2010 Angelina Jolie vehicle SALT.  But in my opinion the audience has been cued to anticipate not “what will Hanna FEEL next” but rather “what will Hanna DO next.”

 

The mythicity of both stories—dominantly sociological for the first, dominantly psychological for the second—rates only fair in that they evoke strong symbolic patterns but don’t take them to an exceptional level of development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DICK TRACY (1937)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

The DICK TRACY strip had been running about six years when Republic Studios launched the first film adaptation of the popular comic.  In those early years Chester Gould’s chisel-jawed police detective usually fought ordinary gangsters.  Such crooks looked ugly or brutal, but they were rarely as freakish as the antagonists of the late 1930s and early 1940s with whom the hero’s mythos became inextricably associated.

This 1937 serial seems to be the first work to pit the hero against a foe of marvelous metaphenenomenality; e.g., a villain, variously called “the Spider” or “the Lame One,” who demonstrates an apocalyptic level of power by destroying a huge suspension bridge with a futuristic “flying wing”—a device later re-used in the Republic serial FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS.  The Lame One also harnesses the talents of a hunchbacked mad scientist with the devilish name of “Moloch,” whose specialty involves operating on honest men to turn them into criminal pawns.

However, the Lame One only displays his world-beater status in the first couple of serial-episodes, after which his criminal forays take a decidedly mundane turn.  The majority of the serial’s episodes are constructed as mundane crime-adventure until the serial reaches the wrapup point, where it veers back into weirdness.

Though the serial couldn’t be expected to duplicate Tracy’s bizarre villains, it doesn’t bother to capture anything of Gould’s hard-nosed character.  This Tracy-- essayed by Ralph Byrd, who would play the character six more times in film and television—is just a standard colorless serial-hero, transformed from a city policeman to a G-man based in San Francisco.  Similarly, his spidery foe is just a typical masked menace, who doesn’t even have a clear raison d’etre but simply sends his goons about on assorted criminal endeavors until Tracy rings down the curtain.  Once or twice the Lame One achieves a slight frisson with his auditory motif—his lame foot makes a dragging sound as he approaches his victims—but he doesn’t have a physical appearance striking enough to rate with the best serial-malefactors.  In truth, his henchman Moloch—gleefully evil as played by John Picoori— is more memorable than the main villain.

There’s a very minor subplot in which Dick Tracy’s brother Gordon—entirely a creation of the serial—is the first to be transformed into a criminal.  But since Tracy never witnesses his brother running around committing crimes until near the serial’s end, there isn’t a lot of emotional impact to the transformation, except when Moloch threatens to wreak the same change on Dick Tracy.

One aspect of the serial strongly resembles the strip: a heavy use of bucolic/baggy-pants humor, as provided by a comic relief detective (Smiley Burnette) and by a crochety old prospector. Neither is likely to seem funny to modern audiences. Fortunately, some later adaptations of Dick Tracy—particularly the 1950-51 teleseries, also starring Byrd—would capture more of the overall tone of the classic comic strip.