Tuesday, May 15, 2012

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK


THE HURRICANE EXPRESS
1932

If you had been a Saturday movie-goer during the decades of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, chances are that alongside a super action cowboy movie, you saw a weekly chapter of a movie serial.


The movie serial, also known as chapterplays, got their start in the 1910s with the likes of Pearl White in THE PERILS OF PAULINE, but really flourished in the roarin' twenties and maintained their popularity through the mid-fifties, when television finally took its final toll on the "weeklies."


Week after week, audiences were drawn back to their local movie houses to see if the hero or heroine escaped the cliffhanger which had ended the previous week's chapter. Of course, they did survive and battled the diabolical villain through 12 - 15 chapters before finally bringing the ruffian to justice, either by death or capture.

TARZAN THE FEARLESS
1933

THE MIRACLE RIDER
1945

FLASH GORDON
1936

DICK TRACY
1937

RED BARRY
1938

DRUMS OF FU MANCHU
1940

THE GREEN HORNET
1940

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL
1941

PERILS OF NYOKA
1942

KING OF THE ROCKET MEN
1949

GHOST OF ZORRO
1949