Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945)

'Manhunt of Mystery Island' is a 15 chapter Republic serial.  I feel like it's a bit of an underdog as far as cliffhangers are concerned.  Odds are good you won't hear about it in the same breathe as 'Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe' or 'The Adventures of Captain Marvel'.  'Manhunt' probably wouldn't make anybody's 'Top Ten favorite cliffhanger serials' list.  Until today.  Because I rank 'Manhunt' in my top 2 right after 'Jungle Girl'.

Linda Stirling, one of the serial queens of the 1940's, plays the female lead.  Ms. Stirling is probably best known for 'The Tiger Woman' and 'Zorro's Black Whip,' but in my opinion 'Manhunt of Mystery Island' is her best work.  In 'Manhunt' she plays Claire Forrest, whose scientist father has been captured by the legendary pirate 'Captain Mephisto'.  Mephisto is trying to force Dr. Forrest to build a 'radio-atomic power transmitter' a device the evil Captain wants for some unclear but nefarious reason.  So Claire teams up with world renowned criminologist Lance Reardon, and the two pick up her father's trail to the titular 'Mystery Island'.

Mystery Island is owned by the four descendants of Captain Mephisto.  Some believe that the ghost of Mephisto still haunts the island, but in reality it is one of the owners masquerading as the pirate with the aid of a transforming ray.  Hopefully you enjoy seeing Mephisto's transformation, because you get to see is over and over again over the course of 15 chapters.

This story uses the fairly common cliffhanger serial plot device of 'One of these guys is secretly the villain but we don't know which one! Is it you? Whoops, you have a knife sticking out of your back. I guess it must be somebody else.'  But usually the villain is a mysterious hooded figure or just a voice heard over the radio rather than somebody with a transforming machine.

Lance Reardon - played by Richard Bailey - is a little flat or deadpan at times (fairly typical of cliffhanger serials) but he holds his own in a fight, and at time his crime solving abilities manage to convince the audience that he really is a brilliant criminologist.  For example, at one point he finds a discarded envelope, turns it inside out, and uses a mirror to read the impressions left by wet ink.

Claire Forrest spends most of her spare time getting kidnapped so she can be used as leverage against her father by Captain Mephisto.  Though often imperiled, she is rarely shown as helpless.  She's quick witted, resourceful, and fast acting.  When she's captured she usually finds a way to leave a trail for Lance to follow, at one point using thread from her sewing basket to show Lance the entrance to a secret passage.  Tying her up won't keep her out of the action either - in a moment of pure awesomeness she pounces on a discarded gun and shoots one of Mephisto's henchmen whilst bound hand and foot.

Lance and Claire are one of my favorite serial couples.  They work so well together as a team and that's what really makes 'Manhunt' stand out so much in my mind.

While Lance and Claire are trying to rescue Dr. Forrest from the evil clutches Captain Mephisto, Dr. Forrest complicates matters by trying to escape from the evil clutches of Captain Mephisto by his-own-self.  Several of the cliffhangers are actually traps that Dr. Forrest sets for Mephisto that our heroes happen to stumble into.

'Manhunt' uses the island setting very well.  The island mansion where the four suspects hang out has some Scooby Doo stuff going on, complete with secret passages and henchmen spying through suits of armor and pictures on the wall. There's dockside action, speedboat chases, and a network of coastal caverns for our heroes to explore.   Lance and Claire return to the mainland for a couple of chapters as well just to shake things up.

One unfortunate aspect of crime-fighting serials is that they tend to have a re-cap chapter.  In this case it's Lance and Claire sitting around stroking their chins in deep thought trying to figure out which of the owners of the island might be Mephisto in-between back-flashes of exciting bits you've already seen.  Each of the suspects is equally suspicious, so they get nowhere.  Serials where the identity of the villain or masked hero are unknown often have one of these chapters - the only difference is if it's a superhero/vigilante story it's the bad guy and his henchmen stroking their chins in deep thought trying to figure out who the hero is.  Whenever a serial uses a re-cap chapter I suspect them of not having quite enough story for a full 15 chapters.

Another common theme of later serials is using stock footage from other chapter-plays for the cliffhanger endings.  If you watch enough serials you'll see the same endings over and over.  'Manhunt' is guilty of borrowing that flooding tunnel scene from 'Jungle Girl'.

This serial does have some notable chapter ending however.  One of my favorites has Lance dangling out a skyscraper window from the end of a fire-hose.  Mephisto's henchman is inside disconnecting the hose from the wall.  What I like best about this chapter ending is that it has a really clever resolution in the beginning of the next chapter.  Another of the best endings takes place inside a winery.  The bad guys use a wine press as a deathtrap.  This makes for an interesting variant on that 'the walls are closing in on us!' cliche.

If you need a serial recommendation, check out 'Manhunt of Mystery Island'.  It's one of the best.

-Geekboy.

Real life Scooby Doo..?

You may have noticed that I've been posting pretty regularly since mid April of this year (2016).  You may have also noticed if you'd been paying particularly close attention that I usually post of Mondays.  Today is not a Monday. It's a Friday.

"How dare you Geekboy!" you find yourself exclaiming.  "A blog schedule is not something to be taken seriously!"  You take out your vintage style pocket-watch and tap it to emphasize how late this post is.  Also, you say 'schedule' funny, because you're suddenly a cranky middle aged British man with mutton chops.

Truth be told I was on vacation in Virginia with my family for most of this week.  In our many travels we stopped at Grand Caverns, which we soon learned is the oldest touring cave in the US of A.

One of the rooms on the tour is called 'Dante's Inferno'.  Our tour guide told us a cool story about this part of the cave.  She told us about how miners found some valuable minerals in this section of Grand Caverns, and they wanted to keep their cache a secret.  So they started a little ghost story to keep the tourists away.

The miners noticed that their candles would go out when they reached a certain part of the cavern.  It was easy to convince everybody that it was 'Evil Spirits' that blew out the candles, even though it was a natural phenomenon.  You know what this sounds like?

Yep, that's right.  It sounds like the plot for a classic episode of 'Scooby Doo, where are you?'  Buried Treasure of some kind, and a creepy story to keep everyone else away.  The only things missing is the miners never dressed up in ghost costumes, never said "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!" and also, there are no meddling kids.

My favorite part of this tour was where they turned all the lights out.  And I know what you're thinking.  "But Geekboy," you say as you roll your eyes, "They always turn all the lights out."  And they do.  Every single time.  I think it's a requirement of being a cave tour guide.  But our guide did it in a way I'd never seen before.  She lit a candle first, showing us what it would have been like for the original spelunkers exploring these caves in the 1700s.  Then she had one of the kids in the tour blow out the candle.  Normally turning out the lights is like a cheap jump scare in a horror movie.  It's there to get an extreme reaction from the audience.  But this time it wasn't like that.  It was subtle and classy, and when she turned the lights back on we got to see just how much those early spelunkers were missing by exploring these caves in the candlelight.

If you're in the Virginia area, make sure you take in a cave or two.  And if you've seen a few caverns before, feel free to leave your favorite memories in the comments.

-Geekboy.

Old Dark House Mysteries - A Crash Course

 You walk towards the creepy old house (or maybe it's a crumbling castle) in a driving rain.  Thunder rolls in the background.  Perhaps your car broke down and you are seeking shelter from a storm.  Maybe you took the last ferry for the evening and cannot return to the mainland until morning.  Perhaps the bridge has washed out

Are you here as a guest?  Is an eccentric millionaire throwing a dinner party in order to lure all of his greatest enemies to the same place at the same time?  Perhaps you are in the will of your late rich uncle.

Regardless of your reason for entering the spooky old house on a dismal night such as this, you can expect the following to await you within: A collection of colorful guests with diverse reasons for being there, secret panels and passages, a lost treasure or hidden fortune that drives men to kill, and a killer on the loose (often a hooded figure to unmask or perhaps a gorilla with a taste for human flesh).

This is the 'Old Dark House' genre.  Repetitive, cliche, and oft parodied, but undeniably nostalgic.  If you've watched 'Abbot and Costello', classic 'Scooby Doo', or played the board game 'Clue' (or 'Cluedo' in Europe) you'd probably recognize an Old Dark House mystery when you saw one.

Where I live it's been a really wet spring, with rain for a solid week in May, and off and on so far in June.  There was a storm this afternoon.  It's the perfect time of year for this kind of story.

I just recently read John Willard's 1922 stage play 'The Cat and the Canary' which is said to be one of the first, and perhaps most influential, examples of the genre.  I had seen the 1927 silent film, and the 1939 version with Bob Hope, but a silent movie often has minimal dialog, and inflection is lacking.  The Bob Hope movie is a comedy, and I wanted a serious take on the story.  It never hurts to go back to the original source material.  I really enjoyed the play, reading it in a single afternoon, and would recommend reading it if you're interested.

"So, now that I've read 'Cat and the Canary' what next?" you may ask.  I'm glad you did.  I'll tell you.  Here are some Old Dark House movies that I personally enjoyed:

#1: House on Haunted Hill (1959).  This is a later Dark House movie, and I really feel like it dodges and plays around with the cliches.  Also, Vincent Prince is in this one.  'Nuff said right?

#2: And Then There Were None (1945).  Based on the Agatha Christie mystery of the same name.  This suspense story features 10 people trapped on an island.  Soon they are killed off one by one...  This movie is missing several common elements of an Old Dark House picture, such as secret passages and a killer in a mask, but it's still a very influential Old Dark House film.  The climax is different from the original book, however, giving the story your typical Hollywood happy ending.

#3: Dark and Stormy Night (2009).  An independent comedy from the creators of 'The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra'.  This movie spoofs a ton of classic Dark House movies.  Perhaps the most noticeable is 'Cat and the Canary,' because most Dark House stories take so many queues from the classic play.

#4: The Monster Walks (1932).  Been a while since I've seen this one, but it's a good Old Dark House movie of the gorilla suit variety.

#5: Horror Island (1941).  This movie is very Scooby Doo, with a get-rich-quick Sea Captain who tries to con tourists into staying at a 'Haunted' pirate castle and search for buried treasure.  Unfortunately, a 'Real' ghost shows up.

#6: Hold That Ghost (1941).  Abbot and Costello inherit a gangster's haunted house in this classic comedy.

#7: The Gorilla (1939).  Again, it's been ages since I've watched this one, so I forget the details.  But I enjoyed this comical mystery, and should watch it again in the near future.

So, there are a few suggestions for your next summer thunderstorm.  If you're already a fan of classic mysteries, and I missed your favorite Old Dark House story, be sure to tell me about it in the comments.