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Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars is far from the ultimate trip. It’s not even a very good trip. It’s the kind of trip where you go somewhere, go somewhere else, then somewhere else, then go back to the second place, then go back to the first place, then go back to the third place, then go back to the read more

An Eye for an Eye is a disappointing finish for Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars but maybe not an unexpected one, not given the serial’s trajectory. The cliffhanger resolution is quick–Buster Crabbe gets away from Charles Middleton due to Middleton’s lack of observational prowess. They’re fitting read more

A Beast at Bay could just as easily be called We Give Up, There’s One More. After a lackluster cliffhanger resolution, Buster Crabbe’s plan to save the Clay kingdom fails because he couldn’t control one unarmed prisoner and then couldn’t beat him in a fistfight. The thirteen chapters of Crabbe read more

The Miracle of Magic is a funny title for the chapter since nothing really miraculous happens. There’s some anti-miracles. Maybe it refers to the curse of the Clay people getting lifted, which involves magical receptacles, but not really magic itself. It’s a strange sequence where the still suspici read more

It’s a good thing Ming (Charles Middleton) loves to carelessly gloat because if he didn’t, there’s no way Buster Crabbe could’ve got the upper hand this chapter. Ming the Merciless is, sort of, about Martian queen Beatrice Roberts finding out Middleton isn’t really her pal. But she doesn’t read more

And it’s back to the Martian imperial city or whatever it’d be called this chapter. After a surprising cliffhanger resolution–brainwashed Jean Rogers does indeed stab Buster Crabbe in the back–Crabbe and his male sidekicks (Frank Shannon, Donald Kerr, and Richard Alexander) go running around read more

Okay, Incense of Forgetfulness might be where Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars starts getting into… well, travel trouble. After an exceptionally bad cliffhanger resolution (Buster Crabbe just manages to break free of his bonds, nothing else), there’s about ten minutes of circular narrative. Crabbe, read more

Nine chapters in, Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars hasn’t had any majorly repetitive chapters. The overall story moves along, at least moderately, by the end of the chapter. But not so with Symbol of Death. The chapter opens with Buster Crabbe escaping Charles Middleton’s imprisonment and death ray; read more

Poor Flash (Buster Crabbe) and Dale (Jean Rogers), every time it seems like they might actually get a chance to lock lips, something happens. This time it’s Frank Shannon calling attention to Donald Kerr being injured. Flash being Flash, Crabbe has to attend to Kerr, not passionately reunite with read more

The Prisoner of Mongo title suggests, well, whoever was titling the chapters wasn’t paying attention to the actual script–much like last chapter’s title, calling the Forest People the Tree-Men–but it does indeed turn out Buster Crabbe and company will end up prisoners of Mongo. At least, of read more

Oh sure, the title is Tree-Men of Mars, but they’re actually called the “forest-people (of Mars)” or even the “fire-men (of Mars). They live in a forest (in the trees) and shoot fire at their enemies. Who, by the end of the chapter, are after Crabbe and company. Crabbe and Shannon have just read more

It’s unclear what the chapter title, The Boomerang, has to do with any of the content. Unless it’s something about Buster Crabbe and Frank Shannon continually returning to Beatrice Roberts’s palace from the Clay Men’s kingdom. Crabbe and Shannon start the chapter saving Jean Rogers and Donald read more

The cliffhanger resolution from last chapter should be this awesome sequence where Buster Crabbe–faced with a collapsing structure–swings down on a line, risking his life to save his prisoner (Beatrice Roberts), in a scene George Lucas would “borrow” for Star Wars. Unfortunately, the whole thing read more

Queen of Magic has a lot going on. After the perfunctory cliffhanger resolution, there’s another chase sequence (of sorts) through the Clay Men’s caves. It takes a while–and has Buster Crabbe and company duking it out with the actual bad guys (Beatrice Roberts’s human thugs)–but eventually read more

If only The Living Dead had some better stock music choices, because the actual content of the chapter is fantastic. Unfortunately, it’s got this passive, tranquil score without any energy or excitement. Meanwhile the onscreen action is all energy, all excitement. While Buster Crabbe, Frank Shannon read more

Until about three-quarters of the way into New Worlds to Conquer, I thought Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars was going to be one of those mistitled movies. Like the studio changed it for some reason. Because when adventurers Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, and Frank Shannon take off, they’re headed right read more

For the first few chapters, Bela Lugosi can carry The Phantom Creeps. He’s hamming it up as a mad scientist surrounded by actors who can’t even ham. Creeps has some truly terrible performances, particularly from its other leads, Robert Kent and Dorothy Arnold. He’s the military intelligence officer read more

Sadly, there’s not much world destroying in To Destroy the World. Not even when Bela Lugosi, finally reunited with his meteorite and able to escape, decides instead he’s going to steal a biplane and bomb things. Starting with the federal building. Only he drops a bomb on a zeppelin, which does inde read more

The Blast features some of Phantom Creeps’s most prevalent tropes. Good guys following bad guys because they happened to drive and pass one another. Jack C. Smith’s henchman (to Bela Lugosi’s mad scientist) getting shot and dazed. Smith’s been shot at least three times (and dazed) in the serial. read more

The title, Phantom Footprints, could almost refer to when a spy–seeing invisible Bela Lugosi’s shadow–thinks there might be something there. But then another spy just tells the first spy to shut up about it. It happens twice, first with Anthony Averill saying it’s stupid, then (after Averill read more