Absolutely Fantastic

A Brilliant Conflict

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I saw the feature film version of this serial. There is very little about this movie that screams Dick Tracy to me.It is a silly creaky spy caper with criminal Nicolas Zarnoff escaping execution by feigning his death through some mysterious drug and Tracy and his fellow FBI agents pursue him.There are regular cliffhangers, at one point Tracy is hanging off a plane, there is stock footage used from an airship disaster but it also looks archaic to modern eyes. The scene where Tracy and his men take a conveniently parked cab when their car has a flat tyre and the cab driver turns out to be a henchman.

DICK TRACY'S G-MEN is another entertaining serial for star Ralph Byrd, who had already played the eponymous hero twice by this stage. I always find a serial is only as good as the chief villain and this one has a fine one in the form of Irving Pichel's Zanoff, a mad scientist who returns from death after being apparently executed at the outset. The rest of the production sees Tracy and his allies going after Zanoff and his men. Plenty of fisticuffs and chase scenes ensue, along with all the cliffhanger climaxes you could wish for, and what's most notable here is the scope of the action, with large-scale events like the airship scenario really excelling. Watch out for Jennifer Jones, later of THE TOWERING INFERNO fame, as a key ally.

Typical of the Hollywood approach to comic strip characters, particularly in serials, the studio acquires the rights to the name so they can advertise it outside the theater, but pays no further attention to the things that made the original successful Here, Dick Tracy is not a cop but a G-man. No Pat Patton, but a sidekick named Steve Lockwood. No Tess Truehart, but secretary named Gwen. Only Junior survives the transition the the screen, spending most of his time with another new character named Mike McGurk, played by Smiley Burnette for comic relief.My guess is that Republic already had a script on the shelf called "King of the FBI" or some such, and just changed the name of the title character. You can see the same approach in the Captain America serial.A great serial, but it's not Dick Tracy.

This video, from a film series made in 1939, is a classic example of a hangover from the silent era for action films, when heros & heroines stood in mortal peril at the end of the film, only to magically escape when the punters returned from their suspense the following week to see what happened in the next serial.This is a classic marketing ploy seen several times in this combined film.The previous reviewer adequately summarised the plot.I bought it to obtain a copy of the second feature film ever made by Jennifer Jones when she was still Phyllis Isley (her given name).Made at the low budget minded Republic Films, this was her second attempt at Hollywood stardom at Republic, her first & easier to obtain, was "Frontier Horizon" with John Wayne.However, the low status and lack of character depth of roles (not to say money) offered, left her somewhat disillusioned and after this film she returned to New York with her then new husband of that year, Robert Walker, for a second crack at stage stardom on the "Great White Way".In this film she plays Gwen Andrews, Dick Tracey's girl Friday, a role like Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond saga, you will note was played by another actress from the 1937 series.An interesting example of the serial film genre from the 1930's.