King Of The Rocket Men!

This 1949 serial is a pretty entertaining movie. Much has been written about the more mature characters in this one, from Tristam Coffin a regular movie heavy who gets the nod as Jeff King, the hero and nominal Rocket Man of the movie to Mae Clarke who at forty seemed a bit old for the classic damsel-in-distress role. But while Clarke seemed a bit subdued throughout, I found Coffin quite good in his role as both scientist and action hero.

The plot is pretty standard serial, in that Science Associates is losing members to violent death left and right because of a shadowy villain named Dr. Vulcan. One scientist named Dr. Millard is seemingly killed but instead hooks up with fellow egghead Jeff King and they relocate to a cool cave lab where he pretends to be dead while King as himself and as Rocket Man (using the Millard invention of an atomic backpack rocket) tries to solve the mystery of just who is Dr. Vulcan. There's a young sidekick and the usual dame reporter. All the other scientists are suspects but as they themselves continue to be killed the list gets shorter and shorter.

The flying stuff is outstanding as Republic really knew how to do this as ably demonstrated years before in The Adventures of Captain Marvel. This is a pretty decent whodunnit and an above average actioner. The climax involves nothing less than the near total destruction of New York City and that actually tends to undermine the more down-to-Earth tone (pardon the pun) of the previous chapters. But taken as a whole I really like this movie serial, and have watched several times over the years. 

The serial was chopped down to feature length and released as Lost Planet Airmen. This title proved quite evocative and became at least in part the name of the folk-rock band Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. More on "Cody" later. More on King of the Rocket Men tomorrow. 

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