Click images for desktop size: "Cowboy" by Frederic Remington I like serials. All kinds of serials.
The ones I'm thinking about now are the movie serials that lasted for only 2 decades. They got replaced by TV.
They were born out of a need to drag in the kids. Get them into the theaters every week.
They were written for kids with a cynical innocence. They were cool.
They delighted in the obvious. In speed and in straight ahead narrative. Nothing was in there for character development. You already knew exactly what these characters were. Nuances could be added but weren't required. Nuances came from the actor and if they impeded the break neck flow they were cut out.
Woman mainly existed only to be protected. They were unloved, pretty and ineffective. The heroes were cardboard mirrors and reflected only what we wanted them to be.
I like watching serials because they let me feel what it was like to live in the 30's or 40's. They didn't impart information, they gave you the feel, the taste of an era I'll never know.
I'm not the only guy who feels that way. (I've never met a woman or girl who cared or could even watch a serial.)
The first serial I ever saw was "Batman". And I saw it in a theater. They showed all 15 episodes to try and cash in on the Batman TV series.
It was close to four hours long and I was confused by it. Not only by the showing of all the opening credits for each episode but also by the arcane slang and lingo. I still remember the heavily used phrase, "Now you're cooking with gas!"
I was about 9 and the only thoughts I had were along the lines of, "What else would you cook with?"
I liked the villain though. He wore a black satin robe with a hood. That was a definition of cool for me.
I saw the Flash Gordon serials (with Buster Crabbe and Charles Middleton) on KRLA, early Sunday mornings. I was fascinated and dreaded missing an episode.
So as an adult I would jump to see more serials. That's how I met this fellow Vince.
Vile Vince. Without doubt the ugliest man I ever met. Even when he was showered and his clothes
Click images for desktop size: "Casino" by JW McGinnis were clean there was something oily and antagonistic about him. He was fat but still wore a belt about 8 inches too long. I always figured he was trying to fool us into thinking he had just lost a lot of weight.
His teeth were green, his complexion oily and pock marked and he had a huge collection of films. His house was hot house warm and I was afraid to touch anything when I was there. The only things in good repair were the huge projection TV and the bank of VCR's and tape decks. His projectors were state of the art.
He was always trying to sell me porn. But he still had the largest collection in LA of serials and kung fu flics. (The weird chinese movies that were dubbed strangely so that ancient Chinese warriors were given names like Chuck and Danny - as in "Chuck it is time for you to die!" "Try your best Danny my Mantis style has destroyed Bob and Gene and will now destroy you!")
Michael J Fox was there. He was my main competitor for the serials. This was an unfair competition although not as bad as my competition with Bob Towne for Raymond Chandler letters and manuscripts . . . Towne was fueled with movie money. Once a bookseller in Santa Barbara (Aaron Neville) got a huge collection of Chandler letters. Towne TREBLED my bid.
Fox was cool and affable. We talked about serials and nothing else. He never bought up his work but we discussed the weakness of "Captain America" as opposed to the "Spy Smasher" serial, and we waxed euphoric about "The Mysterious Dr Satan".
We agreed that Republic made the best serials. I always thought it was because they had this stuntman, Alan Sharpe, under contract. Sharpe was a demon. Even by the insane standards set by the Thai's and Chinese his stunts were incredible. They propelled each episode with a sense of jaw dropping wonder. In "Captain Marvel" Sharpe would leap off of buildings and cliffs, flinging his body out there so that it honestly looked like he was flying, until they cut to some pretty cheesy special effects . . .
Every fight he got into was remarkable. He was a little guy but he jumped and tackled and fought 3 or 4 guys with an ease that was pleasing to the eye. People were always bashing him with charis and curtain rods, bricks and desks. After one of his fight scenes the entire room was nothing but rubble and splinters. A lucky punch always stunned Sharpe just long enough for the bad guys to get away.
There hasn't been enough written about this guy. He elevated the world of stunt men to make it something spectacular.
So Fox and I would talk and try and manuever Vince into selling us the latest find. I remember
Click images for desktop size: "Hellsing - Anime" fighting hard for a washed out 16mm print of "Undersea Kingdom". I lost. But the creepy thing about Vince was that after Fox would leave he'd sell me a dupe . . .
The hardest thing about serials was figuring out how to watch them. It pretty hard, most of the time, to just sit and watch 15 episodes at once. They're the kind of thing that you want to watch sporadically, so that the credits and the re-cap of the previous episode seem fresh. It was doable with video tape, a bit easier on DVD but still not quite satisfactory.
I've discovered an excellent use for the Apple TV!
By telling iTunes that the serial is a TV show I can set up each serial episode as a TV episode, including naming each episode. But what is totally cool is that iTunes and the Apple TV remember which episodes I've watched! That's more of a problem than you'd imagine. So know more accidentally skipping an episode or watching half of one I'd already seen . . . yes, I'm capable of doing that.

I'm using ecto Beta 43 . . . Its fixed a lot of the bugs recently introduced by previous betas . . .