Sunday, July 31, 2011

Classic Serials: Undersea Kingdom (Faster-Paced Version), Chapter Two

(Originally posted November 8, 2008)

And now, Chapter Two of our snappier edit of the 1936 Republic serial Undersea Kingdom.



Actually, it's not as snappy as I could have made it.

The corridor sets on the original Star Trek had bits of pipe that were attached to the wall on both ends. The set designers labeled them GNDN—for "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing."

Well, this week, there was another of this serial's GNDN action sequences. (The city under attack in Chapter One captures our heroes, only to lose them again.) By the time I'd gotten rid of all vestiges of it (something that required juggling a few shots, by the way), Chapter Two was already within spitting distance of ten minutes, and shortening the recap handled that.

I actually added a bit to this week's installment. Undersea Kingdom is notorious for its "cheat" cliffhangers. Crash would face some obviously deadly situation, only to have the next week's recap and resolution make it so that the situation never even happened. I put in a piece of Chapter Three so that Chapter Two now has a cliffhanger that plays fair with the audience.

Yes, I know that this chapter "resolves" last week's cliffhanger by having the "mountain" turn out to be maybe eight feet tall in the back, and strangely free of falling rocks, but at least it doesn't get a Mulligan on what we saw last week.

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