Touches You

Blistering performances.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a very intriguing serial - gets quite interesting. Fun - most definitely fun. All the characters, including the supporting ones, are good. Of course the best are our leading and rival men, Ralph Byrd as Lt. Terry Kent and Bela Lugosi as Boroff.As you can easily guess this is mainly a sea adventure - one that takes a few surprise twists and turns - good cliff hangers - and a fun but far fetched story of disintegrating gas and mass destruction. Lt. Kent stays hot on the trail of Boroff so there is never a dull moment.This one is good for a few giggles but is a refreshing change to see Lugosi outside of the horror genre that he is well known for. Recommended for Lugosi fans - he gets lots of screen time.8/10

*Spoiler/plot- SOS Coast Guard, 1937, Follow a tenacious Terry Kent, US coastguard officer & secret agent as he attempts to capture the international criminal scientist, Doctor Boroff, before he can auction of a dangerous gas weapon capable of killing whole cities inhabitants. A nail-biting race to beat the clock in it's final conclusion.*Special Stars- Ralph Byrd, Bela Lugosi. Maxine Doyle *Theme- American honesty and patriotism conquers evil and foreign designs for terror.*Trivia/location/goofs- Republic theatrical Serial, black & White, Locations filmed at the west San Fernando Valley movie ranch's, Iverson Film Ranch Chatsworth California.*Emotion- I heard good things of this serial. I was NOT misinformed. A very enjoyable film for it's on-screen production values, plot and acting. Much more enjoyable with Bela Lugosi as the 'baddie' and he does add to things here. Even today, very watchable and enjoyable. Fun to see Ralph 'Dick Tracy' Byrd in his prime.

SOS COAST GUARD (1937) never flags throughout its entire run of twelve chapters. Nearly every episode offers something new and different, be it a chase involving two cars and a motorcycle in one episode or one involving speedboats and tommy guns in the next. Most of it is filmed on location in all sorts of picturesque Southern California coastal sites. As the hero, Ralph Byrd (Republic's own Dick Tracy) seems to do a lot of his own stunts-on land and at sea. He clambers around rocks, flies a plane, goes out in boats, rides a motorcycle, runs around rooftops, jumps off of them and when he has to fight, he plunges right in, getting into furious scraps with a host of different henchmen. And it's never the typical movie fight in which opponents trade telegraphed punches. It's pummeling, tussling, shoving, grabbing, rolling, kicking-messy, like a real fight.The hero and villain (Bela Lugosi) are well matched. They're both smart and proactive. The villain's always one step ahead-as it's gotta be for a serial to last 12 chapters-but Byrd is no dope and he catches up pretty quickly. The villain uses lots of henchmen, divided into different teams for different tasks, so Byrd's not fighting the same bad guys in every episode. Also, unlike most serial heroes, Byrd's not afraid to call in police or Coast Guard backup. One great scene has the henchmen staking out a lab where a scientist is trying to analyze the villain's disintegrating gas so he can find a method to counteract it. Byrd's got several policemen protecting the lab. The lead henchman comes up with a clever plan to get Byrd out of the way, find a ruse to get past the police, get into the lab, kidnap the scientist and get him out without arousing the cops' suspicions. Usually, scenes like this rely on wild coincidences or highly improbable circumstances, but the plan used here actually makes sense and one has to give the bad guys credit for using their heads. It makes the whole thing so much more dramatically interesting when the hero faces genuine challenges.Bela Lugosi plays the villain, Boroff, a criminal mastermind trying to develop disintegrating gas to sell to foreign powers for use in the coming war. Lugosi plays it straight, without any of his usual over-the-top mannerisms, and he's very effective. He's well supported by the actors playing his men, who look and move like actual thugs and not pretty boys from Central Casting.If I have any complaint it's that the idiot comic relief, inept photographer "Snapper" McGee, gets way too much screen time and is the only element that actually slows the serial down. Also, some of the cliffhanger endings are a little on the cheating side. In one ending, Byrd ducks into the cockpit of his plane as a water tower falls on top of him. At the beginning of the next episode, it shows that he escaped injury---by ducking into the cockpit of his plane! Not exactly worth waiting a week for. This actually doesn't bother me because the rest of the story is so filled with action and thrills that the cliffhanger endings really don't matter much.

"S.O.S. Coast Guard" benefits from the casting of Bela Lugosi as the chief villain. He adds a certain menace that only he can provide, what with that thick Hungarian accent and his patented menacing stare.Coast Guard Lt. Terry Kent (Ralph Byrd) discovers that the evil Boroff (Lugosi) has developed a deadly disintegrating gas which he hopes to sell to a foreign power (in this case, "Morovania"). The key component of the gas, an element known as "arnatite" is being smuggled aboard the freighter "Carfax" to Boroff's hideout. En route the ship runs into a storm and runs aground.News reporter Jean Norman (Maxine Doyle) and her photographer Snapper McGee (Lee Ford) recognize the fleeing Boroff. While escaping, Boroff is pursued by Terry's brother Jim (Thomas Carr) who is murdered by Boroff. Terry vows to avenge his brother.Meanwhile, in order to hide the evidence of the arnadite, Boroff sends his hulking mute henchman, Thorg (Richard Alexander) to cut the cables securing the distressed vessel. The ship then sinks. Boroff enlists scientist Rickerby (John Picorri) to manufacture the deadly gas.Boroff has Thorg dive to the sunken ship to recover the arnadite. This leads to several death defying encounters between Terry and Thorg. Eventually Boroff is able to manufacture his gas and moves to ship it. Again and again Terry thwarts his efforts. Finally Terry and the Coast Guard bring the villains to justice in the final chapter, as we knew he would.I believe that this was the first time Republic Pictures used that "melting/disintegration" special effect. You can see variations of this effect in several of their subsequent serials.Others in the cast include Herbert Rawlinson as Terry's commanding officer, George Chesboro, Carleton Young and in an early serial villain role, Roy Barcroft as Boroff's henchmen.It's interesting to note that the name "Boroff" is a contraction of the name BORis KarlOFF. The name of the ship, "Carfax" is the same as the name of the abbey Lugosi as Dracula rented (i.e. "Carfax Abbey")in "Dracula" (1931). Coincidence? Who knows?Ralph Byrd would go on to portray comic strip detective "Dick Tracy" in three Republic serials, a role with which he would be identified for the rest of his career.