MovieChat Forums > Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) Discussion > Was it shot to be 15 chapters?

Was it shot to be 15 chapters?

posted 17 years ago by tbrittreid
12 replies | jump to latest

I bought the Republic label's VHS of this great serial in the mid-90s, and have consequently watched it several times over the last dozen years, and have noticed something. There are three points that look just like places in the features edited from Republic serials where the chapter-ending cliffhangers were. One is with Betty Wallace (Louise Currie's character) unconscious in a car in the back of a runaway truck, another is Billy Batson succumbing to automobile exhaust in a closed garage, and the last is when an explosion brings a mountainside down on Captain Marvel. I can't help but suspect that this was shot to be 15 rather than 12 chapters with these the other three cliffhangers, but then got recut, except that the sequence of the ship getting caught in a storm on the return trip to Siam had struck me on first rental back in the 80s as totally disposable. It includes the cliffhanger linking chapters 10 and 11, and ends with a dissolve to the cast in a hotel room in Siam. So if there had been a decision to shorten this serial, I'd have expected that to have been the first cut. Of course, I've no idea what the rest of this hypothetical footage looked like. Anybody have further info on this point?

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Forgotten_Hero 17 years ago

I don't think it was. I think some of those instances were just of him with his life on the line and that they weren't intended to be cliffhanger finishes.

[–] tbrittreid 17 years ago

With all respect, an opinion to the contrary doesn't really dissuade me, especially with the landslide sequence, in the middle of Chapter 11. That one really looks like a re-edited chapter break. I'll concede that the other two, judged strictly on their own terms, could well be what you suggest, but that last, with the shot of the landslide from Marvel's P.O.V. (it looks like the camera had to have gotten buried!), is too hard to get away from. Did Republic ever release a 13 chapter serial? I know Universal had a few, and Rep.'s Robinson Crusoe on Clipper Island was an apparently unique 14 chapters long, but I don't know of another from Rep. that wasn't either 12 or 15 (and I know of only two of the latter, Mysterious Doctor Satan and The Purple Monster Strikes). If they did have one at 13, then maybe that was the intent here.

[–] Forgotten_Hero 17 years ago

I can't prove the contrary just by offering an opposing argument. I was simply offering an opinion as to how I saw it. As for the landslide, it was used as a cliffhanger in Zorro's Fighting Legion, which came out two years earlier, and possibly something else before then. Even so, there isn't enough action or plot development between that and the volcano eruption for it to have been split into two chapters. Obviously there would have been extra material that was cut out, but I'm almost positive that was meant to be a false cliffhanger. In the Buck Rogers serial I just finished, there were at least two occasions I remember in which they escaped from one death-defying situation only to fall into another just before the show ended. I'm all but certain that failed trap was just in there to build up to their larger trap in which they set off the volcano and cause an earthquake.

[–] donsnyder10 15 years ago

All Republic serials were 12 chapters. Columbia, which in my opion were the worst, were 15 chapters.

[–] tbrittreid 15 years ago

Mysterious Doctor Satan, The Purple Monster Strikes and at least one of the four Dick Tracy serials were 15 chapters. Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island was fourteen chapters! You see, in the nearly two years since the previous posts, I've learned a few things. Also, something else has occurred to me: at the second of these three cliffhanger-like moments, we've lost some plot points! Prior to Billy in the garage, Betty had wounded the Scorpion's hand, but the only suspect who showed an injured hand was soon cleared. How the real Scorpion had no injury in this scene is never explained. Shortly after Marvel escapes from that garage and reverts to Billy, the scientist with the bad hand arrives (the garage was at his home, and this occurs in the immediate aftermath of the meeting in which hands were shown). Batson confronts him with the implications about his hand injury, and the scientist, saying he can explain, suggests they take the conversation inside. The scene cuts to indoors, and it is immediately obvious they have been talking for some time--Billy says, "I can believe your explanation of your injury, Doctor, but why were the Scorpion's men waiting for me here?" (That may not be verbatim, but it's damned close.) So on both sides of this cliffhanger-like moment, we've lost explanations of important events. As for the other two, after freeing Betty from the truck there could have been attempts to impede Billy's drive to the airport while other Scorpion men wired the bomb into his plane, and all sorts of things could have happened with the natives and/or the tombs around the later one. Just because the landslide/P.O.V. shot was stock footage (as pointed out by Forgotten Hero) doesn't mean Republic's intent was not to use it as a chapter-ending cliffhanger again. The flooding tunnel cliffhanger from Daredevils of the Red Circle's first chapter was reused as such in G-Men Never Forget, with Clayton Moore replacing Charles Quigley in front of the rear-projection screen. So no, my feelings about Captain Marvel's original chapter count remain in place.

The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!

[–] wasass 14 years ago

MOST Republics were 12 chapters - however, there were 15 chapter serials in the 1930s and 1940s - the Dick Tracy's are 15 chapters, as is the Lone Ranger and several others. Republic DID shoot 13 chapter serials in the late 1940s, but by the end reverted to 12 chapters as the norm.

[–] grendelkhan 13 years ago

It is unlikely that Republic would shoot additional chapters, but not release them. Their budgets were too small to waste film like that. They would need to recoup their investment in the theaters. It's possible that they were scripted but excised before filming. Given that few people were able to catch every chapter in the theater, it might be assumed that the audience wouldn't notice the jump. However, I have never come across any interview or article that indicates this serial was ever intended to be more than 12 chapters.

[–] tbrittreid 13 years ago

Well, I certainly admit that Republic couldn't have made a habit of it, as unlike Columbia's and Universal's Saturday matinee units they weren't a division of a major studio but merely the biggest thing on Poverty Row. BTW, I've come up with an explanation for the Scorpion's wound to be gone without a trace at that meeting: He'd found that the Scorpion device could produce a healing ray in the proper arrangement and that he had the number of lenses necessary to do it! They cut it out because the explanation would have completely eliminated that scientist from suspicion, and they wanted to leave a little bit as long as he was alive.

The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!

[–] Scarletfire-1 13 years ago

Republic made a bunch of 15 chapter serials, and it wasn't uncommon to have a mid-chapter escape or action sequence that would be similar to the situations used at the ends of each chapter.

Columbia and Universal were not major studios at that time. Each of the three companies made about 60 or 70 serials. Mascot Pictures made a couple dozen before mergeing with other companies to form Republic. A couple dozen more were made by independant producers in the early '30s. Here is a listing of all the sound serials:

http://users.erols.com/scarletfire/Barbour%20serial%20list%20with%20co rrections.pdf

Hope this helps.

[–] ghostradioinfo 13 years ago

tbritreid,

You have an interesting theory. But, right now, that's all it is. A theory. I've read lots of stuff about this serial and never found any reference to it being scripted and shot as a 15 chapter serial. But that doesn't mean it wasn't.

But the burden of proof is with you. Go gather the evidence. And report back. Because a hunch based on one action scene isn't even close to proof. I don't even find it especially suggestive.

But you may be right. And everyone else wrong. All you need to do is find the proof.

[–] tbrittreid 13 years ago

ghostradioinfo: Because a hunch based on one action scene isn't even close to proof. I don't even find it especially suggestive.

It's a deduction not a "hunch." It's from not one but three "action scenes," all of which reek of being chapter-ending cliffhangers edited to play straight through--as seen in feature compilations and as clip-show chapter flashbacks--and two glaring and related plot gaps in the immediate vicinity of one of those scenes. I've never encountered plot gaps of this sort in a Republic serial otherwise (logical lapses, yes, but not gaps of this sort), and the only other instance of such cliff-hanger style moments not ending chapters is in their The Masked Marvel. There the obvious reason for the cutting is that two of those three moments imperiled the title hero not as such but in his true identity, which was kept secret from the audience until the serial's final shot (but I'm not nearly as suspicious that this one actually was shot at 15 chapters as I am Captain Marvel). And I am sick of being handed unsupported disbelief and...

But the burden of proof is with you. Go gather the evidence. And report back.

But you may be right. And everyone else wrong. All you need to do is find the proof.

...when I've asked "Anybody have further info on this point?" in my original post. This is by no means the first time it has happened to me but I see it done to no one else. They get answers, sometimes from me if I have evidence one way or the other, or have seen flaws within their reasoning. They do not get told by others that disbelieving them out of their lack of supportive documentation constitutes a stronger position when these others produce no direct evidence to the contrary, only generalities and, again, their personal disbelief (your "And everyone else is wrong"). Besides, your saying "one action scene" when there were three, and ignoring the pointed out pair of plot gaps in the immediate vicinity of one of them indicates a lack of desire to be fair about this anyway.

The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!