Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere

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Movie
Original title Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1951
length 287 minutes
Rod
Director Spencer Gordon Bennet , Wallace Grissell
script Royal K. Cole , Sherman L. Lowe , George H. Plympton , Joseph F. Poland
production Sam Katzman for Columbia Pictures
music Mischa Bakaleinikoff
camera Fayte Brown
cut Unknown
occupation

Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere is a 15-piece American science fiction - Serial of 1951. It takes in international film history a special place because it is the only Serial after the presentation of a television series originated, Captain Video and His Video Rangers . Although a black and white film , some were sequences in Cinecolor red and green colored to visually the strangeness of the fictional planet to suggest Atoma and Theros.

action

The intro of each episode is identical to that of the television series:

Fighting for law and order, Captain Video operates from a mountain retreat, with secret agents at all points of the globe! Possessing scientific secrets and secret weapons, Captain Video asks no quarter, and gives none to the forces of evil.

Vultura, "the Red Dictator of Atoma" (Davis, p. 230), together with the earthly traitor Dr. Tobor conquer the universe. On the way to universal rule and the conquest of the earth, however, the peaceful inhabitants of the planet Theros are to be enslaved beforehand, which is declared as a struggle for liberation. Captain Video, the Video Rangers and Ranger Rogers supported a guerrilla movement on Theros that was resisting the nuclear "liberators". After all, Vultura is killed when a machine explodes. The Therosers are free and the earth, including the rest of the universe, is saved.

Production notes

With the serial, Columbia wanted to build on the popular success of the television series, although the format of the series was already out of date, precisely due to the competition from television. However, much better trick techniques could be implemented in the film than in the live television series. In addition, unusual for a serial, animation was used, for example for flight scenes of spaceships .

As in the television series, the youthful video ranger has no proper name as the hero's sidekick . The actors of the parallel television series and the serial are not identical. For the serial, Columbia reactivated four robots from the serial The Phantom Empire from 1935, which already looked involuntarily strange at the time. The costumes do not have a particularly futuristic note: the inhabitants of Atoma are dressed like Vikings , the Therosians like Arabs .

criticism

Palpably silly, innocent and earnest, it is by far the best of Columbia's three science-fiction serials… But one thing about “Captain Video” is that it often looks and sounds like a vintage Republic serial. The sci-fi elements interspersed with the cheap thugs and vintage cars could almost make the viewer forget this is a Columbia / Katzman product…

Davis, Classic Cliffhangers , Vol. 2, p. 234.

chapter

  1. Journey into Space
  2. Menace of Atoma
  3. Captain Video's Peril
  4. Entombed in Ice
  5. Flames of Atoma
  6. Astray in the Stratosphere
  7. Blasted by the Atomic Eye
  8. Invisible menace
  9. Video springs a trap
  10. Menace of the Mystery Metal
  11. Weapon of Destruction
  12. Robot Rocket
  13. Mystery of Station X
  14. Vengeance of Vultura
  15. Video vs. Vultura

Lore

  • The serial was edited on DVD in 2005 including the sequences colored in Cinecolor.

literature

  • Alan G. Barbour: CLIFFHANGER. A pictorial history of the motion picture serial , 3rd ed. Secaucus, NJ (The Citadel Press) 1984. ISBN 0-8065-0669-5
  • Hank Davis: Classic Cliffhangers, Volume 2 1941-1955 , Baltimore, MD (Midnight Marquee Press, Inc.) 2008. ISBN 978-1-887664-82-0

Web links