The Resolution: Trapped in a wooden box with Brand aiming the radiotomic transmitter at it and flames rising up around it (and seriously, wouldn’t a raygun which blasted a hole in the concrete and stone walls of the lab have gotten done with thin plywood sooner?), Lance has nothing he can do but kick the box over backwards, shielding himself slightly by offering the bottom side of the box to the radium ray. Fortunately, Claire chooses that moment to rush in to Lance’s rescue, firing a gun at Brand. Brand hightails it through the same hole in the wall through which the scientists escaped.
Ouch — that’s gotta hurt, Lance. Getting saved from your first cliffhanger by a dame?
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I don’t know what this serial will promise, except for one thing: judging from the first chapter, there will be plentiful knock-down-drag-out fights, the kind that destroy a room — especially chairs and vases — while leaving the hero without a bruise. Count me sold!
Here’s the background: Dr. Forrest (Forrest Taylor) has invented a wonderful device called a “radiotomic transmitter,” which can relay practically limitless power to planes, ships, etc. to replace fossil fuels. Yes, oil scarcity was a concern even in 1945. Forrest and his assistants were wandering the world because of the scarcity of radium, miracle mineral which was necessary to the transmitter. Forrest disappeared somewhere on his travels, but one of his associates, an engineer named Harvey, has stowed away from their secret location to (one assumes) Los Angeles, where Forrest’s daughter Claire (Linda Stirling) and criminologist Lance Reardon (Richard Bailey) wait for word. Unfortunately, Harvey is pursued by the mysterious agents of “Captain Mephisto,” and dies literally on Reardon’s doorstep, clutching what he smuggled out of Mephisto’s grasp: the blueprints to Forrest’s transmitter.
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The Resolution: I think it’s obvious that the purpose of every chapter in a serial is to get to back to watch the next chapter. But what is the purpose of the last chapter? According to the writers here, it’s to throw something-or-other on the screen and get the damned thing done. The paycheck’s already cashed, so who cares?
Observe: We left Bruce as he hurtled earthward, falling off a cliff after a mountain lion spooked Rip into letting go of his rope. The first thing we see new this chapter is Marvin and Scanlon arriving on the scene; they scare away the mountain lion with a shot. To do this, they would have had to go around or somehow miss the gangsters who were out front of the cabin, having just shot up a row of bushes that they thought concealed G-Men — gangsters who, last chapter, had a clear view of the cliff face that Bruce, Rip and Mary were ascending.
And aside from that — what did Bruce land on or in? A haystack? A surprisingly soft pine tree? A previously-nonexistent body of water? I don’t know, and neither do you; we just see Bruce climbing back up to the ledge where Mary lies stunned. Marvin and Scanlon somehow instantly get above Bruce to where Rip is, and help Rip haul Bruce and Mary up by a rope that now has no business being there, Rip having dropped it completely last time.
“Eh, we’ve already got their money. Why make sense?”
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The Resolution: Are you ready for this one? Are you ready? Bruce doesn’t get killed falling off a three-story roof because he lands in a huge vat of water. One of two, actually. Because for some reason, in this ghost town where tumbleweeds blow through the unpaved streets on which no grass grows, there’s enough rainwater that these two giants vats are filled to the brim.
Okay, whatever…
The Narrative: When Mary sees Bruce fall off the building, she immediately faints (apparently, she didn’t think it likely he would fall into a vat of water either). So when the gangsters are scared off by Marvin and Scanlon’s fresh ammunition and the Boy Scouts’ arrows and Indian sounds, they spy Mary on the ground and grab her as a hostage.
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The Resolution: As much as I complain about cheating, sometimes the non-cheating way out of a cliffhanger isn’t any better. Scanlon and Bruce in the Indian’s cage are protected from the dynamite blast because they are in the cage. What Indians there are scurry away out other tunnels. G-Man Marvin comes in another tunnel and meets Scanlon and Bruce just as they’ve gotten out of the cage and are on their way to safety.
I should note that, having gone to the trouble of dynamiting the cave to scare the Indians away from the radium, one of the thugs opines, “Hey, let’s stick to counterfeiting.” Wanna bet that the radium subplot won’t even be mentioned in the next two chapters? (Except that the government will want to take over the area, a fact that Bruce mentions along with the obvious “medicinal properties” which the radium surely has as he, Scanlon and Marvin skirt the edge of a bubbling, radium-fueled pool on their way out of a tunnel. Hope you weren’t planning on having a little Scout of your own, Bruce.)
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The Resolution: Happenstance doesn’t make so satisfying a resolution to a cliffhanger, you know? Bruce falls into the path of the stampeding horses; he covers his head; the horses pass around him and courteously decline to step on him. After they’re gone, Marvin rides in on his own horse and remarks on how lucky Bruce is (I believe this is known as “lampshading”). No one inquires as to the whereabouts or condition of Scout, Bruce’s horse that threw him in the first place.
By the way, according to the summary crawl for this chapter, it was the Indians who started the stampede to wipe out the boy scout camp, a fact which was not in evidence. This is why Mom always told you to pay attention to the preamble, kids!
The Narrative: While all of the scouts are distracted by the horse, juvenile delinquent Rip skips out of camp, his supposedly “broken” leg giving him as much trouble as a small pebble in his show. Scanlon sees him leaves, goes after him, and tries to persuade him to return to clear Scanlon’s name, but only gets an elbow in the gut for his trouble. And that isn’t all; as he’s trying to get back to camp, the Indians surround him and hustle him back to their caves as a prisoner! Rip, seeing the Indians and Scanlon, follows along until he knows exactly where Scanlon is.
Seeing that both Rip and Scanlon are missing, Bruce musters the scouts to search for them (assuming rightly that Scanlon went after Rip). They split up to track, and naturally it’s Bruce and Skeets who discover the trail of Scanlon and the Indians. Bruce sends Skeets back to get Marvin while he goes on alone.
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The Resolution: Despite the old log bridge being over forty feet from the shallow, rock-filled river, Bruce suffered no ill effects when dynamite blew up one end of it and sent it downward. He clung onto the guide ropes, which held, as one end of the log fell; the other end stayed anchored momentarily, then slid down into the water, smooth as you please. (Yes, there is a waterfall at the other end of the river. No, that didn’t come up as a threat, nor do I think it will, for reasons to be given below.)
The Narrative: Bruce wades out of the river on the original side and starts walking back toward camp or wherever. But remember, all of The Great Outdoors can be encompassed in two square acres. The bad guys who left the log bridge and drove away when the Indians attacked stopped when the Indians gave up the chase, and are now going to work their way up this bank on foot, thinking that Scanlon and Mary didn’t get across the bridge and therefore are hiding on this side. Naturally, Bruce is close enough to overhear their plans, so he swims back across the river — which at this point has no cliffs around it — to find Marvin, Skeets, Scanlon and Mary. In fact, he wades across it, and it’s more of a large creek than a real river. Makes you wonder why someone built a log bridge atop the higher cliffs a quarter mile upstream, doesn’t it?
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The Resolution: Surprisingly, there is no cheat involved. Bruce is in the barn, the dynamite is in the barn, and the dynamite explodes while Bruce is in the barn. It’s a good thing, then, that these criminals who rely on dynamite so much aren’t really competent in its use. Some beams and stuff come down in the barn, and dusty smoke billows out, but when G-Man Marvin rushes in, Bruce simply coughs, hauls himself from under the wreckage which fell at such angles that it didn’t crush him, and dusts out his hair. (The explosion didn’t even take down the barn? Yeah, that’ll be a great help in warning the Indians away.)
The Narrative: I’m getting so tired of the “chasing between three locations” plotting that I didn’t take notes this time around. I figured that if a plot point fell out of my memory in the scant few hours between watching the chapter and writing up its synopsis, it really didn’t need to be immortalized.
While Marvin is gone to Bruce’s aid, Scanlon and his daugher Mary escape. Scanlon, you’ll recall, is innocent of any of the counterfeiters’ schemes, but Marvin won’t believe that, and Mary knows it, so she urges her dad to go on the lamb. It only takes a moment for them to pass a car full of counterfeiters (this deserted mountain road hasn’t seen so much traffic in forever!), who give chase. Marvin and Bruce also tail them on foot, taking the direct overland route while the cars have to tack back and forth on the switchback-filled road.
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The Resolution: Bruce, Skeets, and ace G-man Marvin are in the Indian’s wicker basket elevator (yes, you may snicker) when the Indians above chop through the rope! The basket plummets! Fortunately, it falls directly on a tree and holds, so everyone aboard can climb into the tree and shimmy down to safety. Wait, why is there a tree directly beneath the basket elevator?
The Narrative: Good golly, I’m getting tired of this “back and forth between three or four locations” storyline. The three of them hike back down to Ghost Town to get Mary and Kent, who in the meantime have discovered the counterfeiter’s plates which they left behind while they took the first load of people up to the cabin. Bruce is supposed to take Kent, Skeets and Mary back to the Scout camp while Marvin snoops around a little bit, but it just so happens that the path to the camp runs right beside the mountain road the counterfeiters use to come back down the mountain (and get a flat tire, which gives them an occasion to get out and talk about things they already know just so Bruce can overhear it). Bruce uses Mary’s compact mirror to signal back down to Marvin in Ghost Town (via Morse code) to be ready for the counterfeiters. Marvin gets the drop on the two of them, ties one up, and forces the other to drive him (yup) back up the mountain to the cabin.
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The Preamble: My triumphant return! Because doggone it, you can’t put off the Boy Scouts forever. Though I would have been back to this serial even earlier if there were cookies involved. The Boy Scouts need to sell cookies. Or jerky. Something yummy.
The Resolution: A big ol’ waterfall — every river has one! — was just about to swallow the canoe containing Scout Leader Bruce, fellow Scout Ken, and Mary Scanlon, who were drifting downriver to see if Mary’s brother Skeets had drifted the same way. In a show of honesty, there’s no cheat to get out of the cliffhanger. The canoe goes over the falls with all three inside. It even breaks immediately on impact with the water! And how do the three escape? They simply swim to shore like nothing’s wrong. Now, I expect that kind of sturdy indestructibility from Boy Scouts, but Mary’s a girl, and that means she’s more tender and fragile and stuff, so I don’t know.
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Because of some recent medical troubles, I don’t have sufficient stamina to keep up with all of my web ventures, so I’m sorry to say that Saturday Action Matinee will be on an indeterminate hiatus as I recuperate. Please stay subscribed to the RSS feed so you’ll know the exact moment that I spring back into action.
For this chapter, try to keep up. I don’t want these recaps to grow to gargantuan length, but especially this time out there’s plenty of happenings shoved into the one installment, and I don’t want to leave out anything that might turn out to be important down the road. Much of what happens is silly, admittedly, but that’s never stopped us before. And anyway, this time out we get to see many more of the central scouting skills on display.
For instance, tracking. When last we left Bruce Scott, Boy Scout Wonder, he and a few other Scouts had tracked the eagle who had stolen the satchel with their two-way radio. Bruce circles one direction while the other couple go around the hill the other way (which, I think, betrays a certain two-dimensional character to their tactics, given that eagles have the entire sky open to them); Bruce falls through a hidden pit trap, and is quickly encircled about by Indians.
The other Scouts, coming around the hill, see the chase and capture, and run back to camp for reinforcements. They manage to convince the rest of the troop surprisingly easily that, no really, there are Indians up here in the hills! Even Marvin, Ace G-Man who’s just arrived back at their camp, utters only one “Indian? Impossible” before nevertheless accepting their assertion and throwing in with them to help rescue Bruce. I was expecting a little more skepticism; being captured by Indians in 1939 is only one degree more plausible than being captured by Bigfoot.
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Huh. Interesting. According to the screencrawl recap that starts this chapter, Pat Scanlan is a former government engraver. That’s good information to have, but it still doesn’t seem kosher to insert new information in the recap. That’s even lazier storytelling than the revision of last week’s cliffhanger to get the hero out of certain death! Maybe that’s the producers’ way of making sure that people read the danged crawl each time. After all, someone put a lot of work into writing a concise summary of the previous chapters, and it’d be a shame for their effort to be wasted, so they’ve put an “easter egg” of info in each one. I’ll keep you updated in future chapters as to whether this trend continues to hold true, as I’m sure you’re anxious to know.
So where were we? That’s right, the Incans (referred to as “Indians” for the time being) have released a booby trap consisting of logs, rocks, and half the non-snow avalanche footage produced in Hollywood to that point to block the road beneath and keep the cars from coming up into what they consider “their territory.” Never mind that they apparently didn’t mind when bulldozers and other heavy equipment invaded “their territory” to build the road in the first place. The first car, carrying gangster Turk and his cronies, makes it past before the avalanche strikes the road; Heroic Scout Bruce half-climbs, half-falls down the slope to warn off Marvin in the following car, and the he stop just in time — literally, with boulders resting against his bumper.
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Before I bring you up to speed, I need to point out a few problems with the screencrawl that jogs our memory on how things stood at the end of Chapter 1. According to the crawl, the map Skeets Scanlan had (which was indeed part of the letter that his father Pat Scanlan received from his brother) was one to a cache of counterfeit money and plates. Hey, wait a second! That’s information we haven’t received in the filmed narrative yet! Last we knew, the boys had found thousands of twenty dollar bills; that’s it. Also in the crawl, the high priest of the hidden cave-dwelling Incans is given: Lukolu. Because heaven knows, we couldn’t live without that information, simply calling him the “grand poo-bah” or something.
Now, where were we? Oh, yes; Bruce, HSIC (Head Scout In Charge) had dashed toward where Hal Marvin’s plane was plunging to earth. Just before the plane crashes, Bruce ducks behind a log — on the wrong side, actually, for it to shield him from the crash and explosion. But he gets up unscathed, as the plane crashed just far enough away for him to be unharmed. Not only that, but though the plane is now a fiery ball of tinder, Marvin was thrown clear in the crash, just far enough for, say, the actor to have said, “I’ll get this close, but not an inch closer!” As Marvin’s only semi-conscious, Bruce throws him over his shoulder to get him to safety. (Young Jackie Cooper is a husky lad, it’s true, but I strongly suspect stunt-doubling.)
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Gather ’round and hear a tale of yesteryear, a tale of the days when the Boy Scouts were a lot more popular. No, seriously; there really was a heyday for Scouting in the U.S. of A., back when clean living and discipline were more than quaint relics of geekery. I think it also may have something to do with the hats that Scouts wore — those Smokey The Bear hats are bitchin’, and I don’t think enrollment’s ever been the same since they were ditched.
This serial takes advantage not only of the general popularity of Scouting at the time, but also of related stock footage. Our opening scenes are for appear to be authentic footage of a huge Scout Jamboree in Washington D.C., complete with President Roosevelt waving to all the assembled boys from his motorcade. The tableau is overseen by a radio announcer in an biplane circling over the Washington Monument (I have no idea how he made himself heard in an open seat right behind the prop) being flown by ace Scouter Hal Marvin (William Ruhl), who impresses the assembled Scouts with some skywriting.
Among the impressed are the Scouts who are going to be our stars, a troop from Martinsville, led by Scoutmaster Hale (Jack Mulhall) and his Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, Eagle Scout Bruce Scott (Jackie Cooper). I know Cooper best for his role as editor Perry White in the Christopher Reeve series of Superman movies, and I was surprised at how little Cooper’s face changed in the next four decades. (By the way, when he made this serial at age seventeen, he already had thirty-four – ! – movie credits.)
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Manhunt of Mystery Island | Nathan Shumate November 28, 2009 | 
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