Customer Reviews

Captain Midnight

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT is a) a Columbia serial, and b) directed by James W. Horne. That's two strikes on it right there, according to some serial purists who don't care for Columbia's illogical, six-against-one fight scenes and Horne's exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek approach. But this writer likes both Horne and Columbia, and this 15-chapter cliffhanger is about par for both.

Dave O'Brien, hero of Monogram East Side Kids melodramas, PRC Westerns, and M-G-M Pete Smith comedies, has to be the most authoritative serial hero on DVD. As Midnight he speaks very quickly! and urgently! and you MOVE when he tells you! O'Brien should have done more of these serials; he does his own stunts, too. James Craven, magnificent in Columbia serials as an easily exasperated villain, plays a master of disguise here. The script has too many "great impersonations" where Character A poses as Character B (you don't buy these at all because it's obviously the same actor twice) but at least it keeps the story interesting.

The cliffhangers are standard perils except for Chapter 10, which has a doozie: Craven traps Midnight in a sealed room, then he makes the floor revolve rapidly, then he removes the walls, THEN he sets the floor on fire, and THEN he lowers a stone block on his victim! This jaw-dropping overkill looks like James Horne at work, and must have sent Saturday-matinee audiences into ecstasies.

The supporting cast is adequate. Sam Edwards is good as Midnight's teenaged pal, Joseph Girard is wooden as O'Brien's superior officer, and ingenue Dorothy Short screams too much (but since she was Mrs. Dave O'Brien, we can understand the casting).

Fun for serial fans, but not as enjoyably satirical as the Columbia/Horne "The Green Archer" and "Terry and the Pirates." Print quality is excellent throughout.

Dave O'Brien leaps into battle against evildoers as the famous radio adventurer Captain Midnight. Midnight seeks to protect a scientist and his daughter from invention-stealing bad guys out to wreck America's defense effort. The bad guys, lead by Ivan Shark and his daughter Fury, stoop to new lows as they battle the Captain and plot to destroy our war effort.

O'Brien fills the role of Midnight well, despite looking and sounding a bit like a young Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman from "The Six Million Dollar Man").

Dorothy Short as the scientist's daughter, Joyce Edwards, is mostly suitable as a sort of love interest for Midnight, but mostly useless in every other capacity. She brings the helpless-girl-who-gets-in-trouble-in-almost-every-chapter to heights never dreamed of by Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in the classic Superman TV series. Short's continual screaming and helpless antics drag the serial down a bit. Far better (and a better choice for the Joyce character!), is the evil daughter of Ivan Shark, Fury, played by Luana Walters.

Joseph W. Girard plays the gruff but concerned Major Steele, who lets Cap walk all over him (apparently, in Midnight's army, being a "mystery man" means a captain outranks his commanding officer). Guy Wilkerson and Sam Edwards lend a hand as Captain Midnight's pals, who, like Captain Midnight and all the crooks, share the strange inabillity to retain their firearms when they get their foes cornered.

Ivan Shark, played by James Craven, is a great villain. He is a master of disguise, and has a fabulous secret lair. Several things fail Craven however, as his personal "Arab" outfit to hide his features is discarded about half-way through the story. Also dropped is the gang members going by numbers and not names. Worst of all, Shark's purpose and motivation for trying to wreck America's defense plants is never very clearly explained. As he sneers his evil way through confrontations with Midnight, all the while operating his dubious death traps, there never seems to be any connection with the Germans or Japanese, an element that would have added to the believability of Shark as an anti-American fifth-columnist villian.

One gets the sense that this serial (released in early 1942) had originally been more about a gang of rogue, criminal aviators who are after the scientist's new bombsight to serve their own ends. That would make sense, seeing as how the oft mentioned but never seen defense plant attacks were probably incorporated into the story post-Pearl Harbor.

The serial is pretty good overall, with moderately suspenseful cliffhangers and some good tricks, secret hideouts, and fights. It's probably two or three chapter too long, though, and things can get a bit tedious after a while. Probably Columbia's best effort, but it's no Republic serial, for sure.

VCI Entertainment and Columbia Pictures present "Captain Midnight " (1942) (Dolby digitally remastered), based upon the radio serial featuring 15 Chapters of cliffhangers loaded with all the excitement you would ever want and more...story line has our best fighting hero "Captain Midnight" in the skies leaping from the radio waves up onto the big screen...tracking down spies searching for some secret plans of loyal American John Edwards who has been kidnapped by fiendish enemy plotters at every turn...will Captain Midnight stop Ivan Shark leader of the gang of thugs from stealing the plans....can the we ever have a good nights sleep knowing that at Midnight some thing terrible will happen...well keep drinking your Ovaltine because this rousing adventure on the serial screen is not over...15 Chapters with great action sequences in a thrill crammed fight to the finish against criminals and spies...don't miss any exciting episode...and keep that dial tuned to our favorite hero of radio "Captain Midnight"...just the way we remember!

Under director James W. Horne with screenplay by Basil Dickey, George H. Plympton, Wyndham Gittens, Jack Stanley, original music by Lee Zahler...the cast include Dave O'Brien (Captain Albright, aka Captain Midnight), Dorothy Short (Joyce Edwards), James Craven (Ivan Shark), Sam Edwards ( Chuck Ramsey), Guy Wilkerson (chabod 'Icky' Mudd), Bryant Washburn ( John Edwards), Luana Walters (Fury Shark), Joseph W. Girard (Maj. Steel), Ray Teal (Borgman - Henchman), Ted Mapes ( Slim - Henchman), George Pembroke (Dr. James Jordan)...watch for some fine veteran character actors like James Craven (who always was one of the villianious of villians on the Columbia Pictures lot), Guy Wilkerson and Ray Teal great character actors

CHAPTER TITLES: (Disc One)
1. Mysterious Pilot
2. The Stolen Range Finder
3. The Captured Plane
4. Mistaken Identity
5. Ambushed Ambulance
6. Weird Waters
7. Menacing Fates
8. Shells of Evil
9. The Drop to Doom
10.The Hidden Bomb

SPECIAL FEATURES: (Disc One)
BIOS:
1. Dave O'Brien (birth name: David Barclay) (1912-1969)
2. Dorothy Short (1915-1963) (married to Dave O'Brien)
3. James W. Horne (Director) (1880-1942)

VCI CLIFFHANGER TRAILERS: (Disc One)
1. The Green Archer (Victor Jory)
2. The Secret Code (Paul Kelly & Ann Nagel)
3. The Vigilante (Ralph Byrd & Lyle Talbot)
4. The Iron Claw (Charles Quigle & Joyce Bryant)

CHAPTER TITLES: (Disc Two)
11.Sky Terror
12.Burning Bomber
13.Death in the Cockpit
14.Scourge of Revenge
15.The Fatal Hour

VCI CLIFFHANGER TRAILERS: (Disc Two)
1. Adventures of Red Ryder (Don "Red" Barry)
2. Zorro Cliffhanger Collection (Reed Hadley, John Carroll, Linda Stirling)
3. Dick Tracy's G-Men (Ralph Byrd)
4. Adventures of the Flying Cadets (Bobby Jordan)
5. Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe)
6. Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (Buster Crabbe )
7. Jungle Girl (Frannces Gifford),
8. Jungle Jim (Grant Withers & Raymond Hatton)
9. Mandrake the Magician (Warren Hull)
10.Zane Grey's "King of the Royal Mounted" (Allan "Rocky" Lane)
11.Miracle Rider (Tom Mix & Tony Jr)
12.Secret Agent X-9 (1937) (Scott Kolk Henry Brandon & Monte Blue)
13.The Phantom (Tom Tyler)
14.Secret Agent X-9 (1945) (Lloyd Bridges & Key Luke)

If you crave action, drama and plenty of adventure then this is the place for all of the above...if you enjoyed this serial check out another release from VCI Entertainment and Columbia Pictures present "Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere" (1951) (digitally remastered), 15 Chapters.finally for the first time on video the really great Columbia Serial that broke the mold...we have everything a serial fan would want...the tinted sequences by Cinecolor and unique inventions that were unlike any other serial out there in the '50s...get out there as they're going fast, this is the one you've been waiting for.

Great job by VCI Entertainment for releasing the digital transfere with a clean, clear and crisp print...looking forward to more of the same from the '40s vintage serial era...order your copy now from Amazon or VCI Entertainment, stay tuned once again with a top notch serial from VCI...just the way we like 'em!

Total Time: 270 mins on 2 DVD's ~ VCI Entertainment 8376 ~ (5/25/2004)

This is a ridiculous serial (What do you expect? James W. Horne is the director!) but it's a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed the short fused master villain Ivan Shark and his inept henchmen. Dave O'Brien is fine as the Captain and the supporting cast is fine. The print quality is not quite as good as it is on some of the other VCI DVD serials but it's more than adequate. 15 chapters on 2 discs with some bonus serial trailers. Highly recommended for serial fans!

Dave O'Brien is hilariously over-the-top as the Captain, in one of the goofiest serials you'll ever see, and I've seen quite a few. Anyone who's interested in buying one of these movies knows by now that they all have pretty huge script problems - funny how those problems eluded us when we were little kids thrilling to these adventures on the big screen. I won't give away many of the details - suffice it to say not much of the story makes sense on a logical level. But the action! Lots of fights, endless car chases (dig Captain Midnight being arrested by Motorcycle cops) and of course, 15 death traps.
My favorite moment comes in chapter 12 or 13. After escaping a dozen death traps, Midnight has been knocked to the ground. Henchman #2 is about to shoot him. The Evil Boss yells at the henchman "No, don't shoot him. I want to finish him MY way." You just want to shout at the guy "But your way never works!"
The Evil Boss is a master of disguise - check out how he's able to make himself look EXACTLY like the chief of police, a medical doctor, even Captain Midnight himself - and this was before CGI.
And finally, there is Dave O'Brien. He never speaks his lines or enters a room - he shouts and runs! And runs! And shouts! It's truly the runningist, shoutiningest performance of 1943.

I'm 80 years old now but when I was a child I enjoyed listening to Captain Midnight. I drank alot of ovaltine so that I could send for his secret decorder so that I was able to get information on the next 15 mimute radio program. I did not know at the time that I would have a connection with that radio
program. My son -in -law, Marty Mincer became a world champion Rag Time piano player. He became close friends with Bill Edwards who also competed with him. Bill went by Perfessor Bill Edwards and Bill Edwards was the step
son of Sam Edwards who played on alot of radio programs. Sam also played Captain midnight's loyal sidekick, Chuck Ramsey. I never did meet Sam but I did get to meet his wife, Beverly. Perfessor Bill Edwards & Marty Mincer playes Rag Time together and both of them play at manny different places around the country.
The DVD that you sent me shows me what only I could imagine on the radio. Very interesting.

Richard L Beck

Columbia Pictures Corporation presents Captain Midnight. And the fun begins. The serial begins with Ivan Shark's men bombing many key parts of the city from the air. Next we are introduced to Major Steel of military intelligence. His staff is busy trying to locate Captain Albright aka Captain Midnight. Albright is a former serviceman who has promised to lend a hand fighting crime if needed. Inventor Edwards has developed a range finder for use in wartime. Ivan Shark & his henchmen are out to steal the device at any cost. Most of the cliffhanger endings feature awesome airplane gun battles between Shark & Midnight. The 2 best cliffhangers are at the end of chapters 6 & 10. In chapter 6 Ivan Shark has Midnight trapped in a sealed room. Midnight is standing on a platform when suddenly Shark throws a switch that surrounds him in water! A grated drain cover falls across the device to prevent Midnight's escape. In chapter 10 Midnight is trapped in a sealed room again. This time Midnight is on a platform with a raging fire under him! The platform has a top half as well & a pole shaft through the center. Suddenly Ivan Shark throws a switch & the top & bottom begin to come together nearly crushing Midnight to death! How did Captain Midnight escape these to deathtraps? Come back to your dvd player next week-or tomorrow- or anytime you like & watch chapters 7 & 11 to learn the thrilling answers! I'm sure you'll enjoy the rest of this fine serial too. By the way watch the cast list closely when it plays. Actor Ray Teal plays Borgman 1 of Ivan Shark's henchmen. Many years later Ray Teal played Sheriff Roy Coffy of Virginia City on tv's Bonanza. Ray Teal also appeared in the Adventures of Red Ryder serial in 1940 by Republic Pictures.

Do you remember the character in "Reefer Madness" who demands the piano player to "Play faster....Yeah, faster! Faster! Play it FASTER!!"? Well, he's the star of this over-the-top Columbia serial. Dave O'Brien IS "Captain Midnight"! Holy smokes! He delivers dialogue at a machine-gun pace and doesn't hesitate to take on half a dozen bad guys at a time. He has two totally lame-brained "assistants" who seem to exist solely for comic relief, the skull-faced Guy Wilkerson as mechanic "Icky" Mudd and 27-year-old Sam Edwards as his.....ward? Oh, never mind. They face off against the evil "Ivan Shark", who occasionally dons silky bloomers and a scarf on his face to intimidate his captives. (He should really have been featured as one of the "Lightning Bug"'s disguises in "J-Men Forever" - guess they didn't check out Columbia serials.) Why, "he even interferes with OFFICIAL BUSINESS!", barks our intrepid narrator. Shark's battle cry is "Fools! Idiots!!", since his henchmen aren't the sharpest tools around. As usual with Columbia and Horne, the plot is all over the place. Shark starts off by bombing (as in a squadron of bombers!) some factories, but even though this is 1942, he doesn't seem to have any ties to the Germans or Japanese. He loses interest in that and focuses his attention on obtaining a new "range finder", going to all sorts of trouble, includng kidnapping, torture, and other assorted nastiness. It's never really clear what his ultimate goal is, but there's plenty of action, including at least one huge fistfight per episode, plus the astonishing aerobatics of the various "aircraft" used by Midnight and Shark. Midnight is the alter-ego of Captain Albright, who reports to 71-year-old Joe Girard as "Major Steel", but again, what the whole point is remains....obscure. Picture and sound quality are very good - surprisingly good, considering the source material. Great fun all around - never takes itself as seriously as the Republic serials and is all the better for that. The "death traps" get increasingly outrageous and reach what must be an all-time pinnacle with the wild setup at the end of Chapter 10. Highly recommended for first-time serial viewers, and veterans will savor the outrageous cliffhangers.

I have watched many serials and I would rate this as avg. for the genre.If you are a serial fan you will probably enjoy it,if not you will fast foward thru some of it.