Customer Reviews

King of the Rocket Men

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Rocketman , the hero of this 1949 Republic serial offering, was also known to movie (and later television) audiences as "Commando Cody" (in "Radar men from From the Moon" and the "Commando Cody" limited-run tele-serial), and as "Larry Martin" in the "Zombies of the Stratosphere" chapterplay, which featured a young Leonard Nimoy as a malevolent alien invader.

The "Commando Cody" moniker was the most utilized name for this character, but the original serial, "King of the Rocketmen", is universally recognized as the best presentation of this flying suited hero(whom many "boomers" fondly recall as "old bullethead". Back in the 1930's novelist Zane Grey created an action-adventure character , Sgt. Dave King of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and put him in a book titled
"King of the Royal Mounted". Republic Pictures bought the rights to this and turned this "King" into an excellent serial feature starring Allen "Rocky" Lane. After this, Republic was off and running on a "King" binge that lasted for years. A hero who had the last name of King would pop up repeatedly in Republic serials. There was a "King of the Texas Rangers", a "King of the Forest Rangers", a "King of the Rocketmen", and so forth. In fact, Republic's very last serial was...what else?..."King of the Carnival".

This one is likely the best of the lot. It is a film that the old "Screen Thrills Illustrated" magazine, years ago, pronounced "The last great serial to be made in Hollywood". There were some GOOD ones after it, but most serial fans do think this was the last GREAT one.

The story concerns a scientific think-tank/research facility in California called "Science Associates" . This group does high level inventive research. One of the members, scientist Jeff King, has been working secretly on a flying suit,which consists of a metal helmet, a leather flight jacket, a rocket jet-pack for the back, and a control unit attached to the front of the jacket. With this suit on, Jeff can take off and fly through the air like Captain Marvel or Superman (the fact that he has no wings to give him aerodynamic lift is ignored, as is the fact that his unprotected lower back, buttocks, and legs would get burned off by the rocket flames....hey! Its a kid serial!!!).

Jeff has to create a "mystery persona"...Rocketman...when Science Associates comes under assault by a mystery man called "Doctor Vulcan", who seems to be someone among their own group. Vulan sends out his henchmen to do nefarious deeds throughout the serial, and Jeff King thwarts them time and again. But Dr. Vulcan DOES secure the particular device he has been looking for...something that may let him "rule the world"...it is a "death ray" device that breaks down the atomic structure of anything it is aimed at. It is called the "Decimater". Vulcan and his chief henchman, Tony Dirkin, take the Decimater to "Fisherman's Island", at the edge of the continental shelf, out from New York City. In a remote shack they train the Decimater beam on co-ordinates designed to cut through the water of the North Atlantic and disrupt the "Amsterdam Fault" on the sea floor. This will create a gigantic tsunami that will wipe out NYC unless an enormous ransome is paid.

The ransome is NOT paid and Vulcan goes to work with his death ray. New York is in the throes of cataclysmic doom. But Rocketman discovers the villains' hideout and leads a flight of Army A-20 attack bombers to "clean their clock" and save the day.

The flying effects are stunning. Stuntman David Sharpe is up suspended on a wire rig for some matte-work flying scenes, but most of the aerial footage is done with a life-size dummy pulled along through the air on parallel wires through some California hills and canyons; the same technique used when "Captain Marvel" flew a few years earlier. Some writers have claimed that this was an "oversized" dummy eight feet long. It wasn't. It was a LIFE size dummy (Republic wasn't going to build a special set of oversized clothes for an oversized dummy...that wasn't economical in the least...and if republic was anything, it was ECONOMICAL!!). The dummy represented a SIX-FOOT man. The eight-foot figure is arrived at when you realize the arms were extended out in front of the figure to represent horizontal "flight". Arms on a male six-foot adult are approximately two feet long when extended, ergo, a LIFE-size manikin, with arms extended upwards (when vertical), would tape out at approximately eight feet from fingertips to toe-tips.

Wired up and shot by effects wizards Howard and Theodore Lydecker, the flying dummy was a sight to behold. Extremely realistic for what it was. And the dummy shots, intercut with the take-off and landing stuntwork by David Sharpe, is truly awesome. The flying effects are much better than the CARTOON Superman flights of the movie serials, AND better than the pole-and-chest-plate matte shots of George Reeves "flying" in the Superman t.v. series.

One of the best action scenes in the film is a beautifully staged and edited sequence in the exciting last chapter. Ahead of the Army bomber flight, Rocketman dives on the hideout shack and takes on Dirkin and Vulcan in a furious fistfight. He wants the decimator shut down for sure.

The sequence begins with the dummy in a near vertical dive on the cabin, sailing down towards an open window. The editor does a quick cut as the dummy reaches the window and then Dave Sharpe (in the "stunt version of the flying suit), sails into the actual set...coming DOWN...HEAD first...hits the floor, somersaults to his feet, and blasts into the baddies' stunt doubles with fists flying. A real RUSH of a sequence.

Everything in this serial works, from the flying effects to the tidal wave stock footage from RKO's "Deluge", to the great photograpy and film editing, and to the outstanding stunt work by masters like David Sharpe, Tom Steele,and all the rest of "The Cousins", as Republic's stunt team was known.

This is a really, really enjoyable serial from the "golden age". Now we need two more to enjoy on DVD : "Spy Smasher" (My own favorite for "greatest sound serial ever made"...sorry "Captain Marvel") and "The Masked Marvel", a superlative WWII counter-sabotage showcase for stunt ace Tom Steele. Let's hope we can see these soon!!!

KING OF THE ROCKET MEN is a very enjoyable serial and I'm overjoyed it's coming to DVD at last.

By this late in the serial game (1949), Republic Studios had a tendency to go through the motions, getting by on the reputation (and re-releases) of earlier, better serials and the studio's matchless stunt and special effects men. That changed in 1948, when Columbia released SUPERMAN, which - despite the fact that it was a disappointment on every level - became the biggest money-making serial ever made. Republic, which had perfected "flying human" special effects with their earlier serials DARKEST AFRICA (1936) and THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941), concocted their own airborne super-hero, Rocket Man, and bested the Man of Steel handily.

Tris Coffin, nobody's idea of a handsome, two-fisted hero (he specialized in playing weaselly henchmen or slick con-artists) is Jeff King, the guy in the rocket suit. He surprises all of us by being a very effective hero, not least of all because he suddenly loses the moustache and turns into ace stuntman Tom Steele whenever a fight breaks out.

Speaking of ace stuntmen, not only is Steele doubling for the leading man, he plays one (or more) of Vulcan's henchmen, and the gang of thugs includes Dale Van Sickel and Dave Sharpe, two of the studio's other reliable stuntmen, who perform double (and sometimes triple) duty in the same scenes, doubling the heroes, themselves, and probably the cameramen and script girl. It's a delight to see.

The plot entails Rocket Man battling a mysterious archfiend named Dr. Vulcan, who's after a deathray that he plans to use to blackmail the civilized world. Along the way, New York City is destroyed by a tidal wave (via stock footage from the 1933 film DELUGE) but the mayor doesn't seem to mind very much. By the way, despite the serial's title, if you're expecting a scene in which hordes of flying rocketmen swoop down and proclaim Tris Coffin their leader, well, don't get your hopes up.

Rocket Man would return with a new identity in the serial sequels RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON and ZOMBIES OF THE STRATOSPHERE, and the faux serial COMMANDO CODY, SKY MARSHAL OF THE UNIVERSE. For more information, please visit www.inthebalcony.com.

The DVD of KING OF THE ROCKET MEN is quite nice, with a good picture and great, hiss-free sound. (You'll have to supply your own hissing.) It includes bonus trailers from a wealth of vintage sci-fi and horror titles from the same company, including THE HEADLESS GHOST, ROBOT MONSTER, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and several others, plus a number of drive-in movie snack bar ads.

Cheezy Flicks has done an excellent job of producing this DVD. The transfer quality is very good. The picture is sharp and clear and the sound is even. The DVD contains nice special features, including 3 sci-fi trailers. There is no invasive logos poping up on screen. Both discs play perfectly in my "sensitive" old unit. That's a real plus.

I am a trememdous fan of the Rocket Men serials, all 3 of them. King of the Rocket Men, Radar Men from the Moon and Zombies of the Stratosphere. Having them on vhs I was not looking forward to the daunting proposition of having to transfer them to dvd with a home dvd recorder. But that's just what the production people of this dvd did. When I got my copy it looks like a very amateurish job done on someone's home computer. When I tried to play the dvd I couldn't because these amateurs forgot to "finish" the dvd so my dvd player couldn't recognize it. When I tried to contact the company several times to arrange for an exchange I got no response at all. I gave it one star only because this system will not let me give it no stars.

Great serial, great transfer - well almost. Have tried 3 copies and Chapter 12 goes blank after 2 mins. It's a bit like having a good thriller with the last page torn out!

Hiccup on chapter 2, one sequence repeats itself

Shame, I was really looking forward to this.

I had never seen the full version of "King of the Rocket Men", only the severely edited feature-length version called "Lost Planet Airmen". This is a great serial, mostly well-mastered by Cheezy Flicks-- however, my copy has a slight defect in Chapter 2 where a brief sequence is strangely repeated. Overall though, the quality is very good, better than some other DVDs of serials from the same period!

This is another one of Republic's great adventure serials, made in the days before television when audiences would regularly attend the cinema and would be shown one serial episode per week.

The plot is not bad, but is really just an excuse to string together an almost non-stop series of stunts. Getting bored with the dialog? Well, don't worry, because there's a fistfight coming up in thirty seconds, courtesy of Republic's group of first-class stunt men.

With a gunfight every four minutes, a car chase every three minutes, and a fistfight every two minutes, you won't have time to get bored! And I lost count of the number of times our hero dons his rocket suit and flies off in pursuit of the baddies.

"King Of The Rocket Men" starred B-movie actor Tristram Coffin as "Jeff King", alias "Rocketman". The 12-part serial was edited and condensed into a feature version, "Lost Planet Airmen" (1951).

This DVD set brings us the entire 12-chapter serial on 2 DVDs, 6 chapters per DVD. The quality of the picture is excellent, obviously mastered from a first-rate film print. Images are sharp and the B&W photography shows the full range of grays and blacks.

I have only two minor complaints. First, you can jump to individual chapters from the main menu if you wish, but the names of the chapters have been transposed. You can still jump to Chapter 4, for example, but it's listed as "Molten Menace" rather than the chapter's correct title, "High Peril". Other chapter names have been similarly transposed.

My other complaint is that a short 30-second sequence in Chapter 2 is oddly repeated -- a henchman picks up the telephone and speaks to the Operator -- twice! But these are minor complaints about an otherwise superior product.

The 17 flying sequences from "King Of The Rocket Men" were reused in three later serials. The first of these was "Radar Men From The Moon" (1952), which starred baritone-voiced George Wallace as "Commando Cody". The 12-part serial was edited and condensed into a feature version, "Retik, the Moon Menace" (1966).

The second follow-on to "King Of The Rocket Men" was "Zombies Of The Stratosphere" (1952), which again reused the 17 flying sequences from "King Of The Rocket Men". The previous serial's hero, "Commando Cody", was replaced by "Larry Martin", played by actor Judd Holdren. Leonard Nimoy, then 21 years old, played a minor role as Narab, a Martian henchman. The 12-part serial was edited and condensed into a feature version, "Satan's Satellites" (1958).

The final 'Rocketman' serial was "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" (1953), with Judd Holdren playing the lead role of "Commando Cody". This was both a movie serial and a TV serial. At the time that this serial was made, 1952, the era of "Saturday Morning Serials at the Cinema" was almost gone, replaced by television. So this serial was made so that it could be shown as either a movie serial or a TV serial.

In fact, "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" was shot at the same time as "Zombies Of The Stratosphere", with Judd Holdren playing the lead role in both. To avoid confusing the audience with *two* serials featuring "Commando Cody", Holdren's character was renamed as "Larry Martin" for "Zombies Of The Stratosphere".

"Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" was shot as a 12-part serial, but with two major changes in format. Each episode did *not* end with a cliffhanger, and the length of each episode was increased to fit the standard 30-minute television time slot. The longer episodes required a more intricate storyline, so significant new footage was shot, including some additional hanging-by-wires matte-shot flying sequences.

After the first three episodes of "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" (1953) had been filmed, production was put on hold while "Zombies Of The Stratosphere" (1952) was filmed. When filming of "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe" finally resumed, actor William Schallert was unavailable to resume his role as Commando's sidekick "Ted Richards", so Richard Crane took over the sidekick role as "Dick Preston" for the remaining nine episodes. The 12-part serial was screened in cinemas in 1953, then appeared on television in 1955.

sorry to say that my copy was very good until the final chapter it went blank..nothing..just sooo "p*s*d off"..sitting through the whole serial front to back, last chapter." no picture" as you can see i am totally disgusted, didnt even know how it ended..

Despite the title, this serial has nothing to do with either Leonardo Di Caprio or Elton John. But `King of the Rocketmen' is a good piece of fun, with good special effects and stunt shots used to create a realistic illusion of actual flight. It moves fast, there are plenty of good fight scenes, and the acting is good. The casting of Tristam Coffin as the hero, Rocketman, is a little strange, since Coffin appeared to be clearly over 45, thin, with a small jaw and a pencil thin mustache: not the classic vision of a matinee hero, he usually played villains. But Coffin was a decent actor and pulled it off. The script is pretty straightforward, moving quick enough that the audience doesn't have too much extra time to think about how ludicrous the whole thing is.

This serial was released in 1949, the same year that Captain Video premiered on TV. Rocketman and Captain Video were the shock troops in a wave of super scientists and spacemen, like Tom Corbett (Space Cadet) and Rocky Jones (Space Ranger) populating TV and movie screens in the early to mid-50's. Yet at the same time, they and their peers were throwbacks to the pulp fiction, comic strips, and serial heroes of the 1930's such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

The villain of this serial, Dr. Vulcan, is an international thug and dealer in stolen weapons and technology. There is a sequence where Rocketman has to stop a stolen ballistic missle (called an `air torpedo') from hitting and blowing up LA.

We know from recent history, however, that when a city is threatened by an flying menace, the correct thing to do is to drag your heals before pursuing it, so that 3,000 people get killed and Your Party is able to use the opportunity to seize total control of government and implement a quasi-fascist regime. For the life of me, I don't know why Rocketman was unable to figure that out.

The other unrealistic thing is that Rocketman pursues the actual terrorists, as opposed to using the opportunity to invade an oil rich country. But then, this is a serial, so you cannot expect too much logic here.

A year after this serial was completed, a Superman serial featured a run- away atomic missile. Serials, although ostensibly the province of youngsters, were reflecting some of the collective anxieties of society. This was the era in which WMD's (though the label hadn't been coined yet) were entering mass consciousness.

Presciently, a major plot point is Dr. Vulcan's plan for a large scale terror attack on NYC. I don't want to spoil anything for you, so I won't describe how that resolves.

Flaws aside, this is one of the last serials where any attempt was made at an illusion of verisimilitude. You can have fun and smile to yourself at how absurd it gets, but it isn't laugh out loud ludicrous or painfully bad like an Ed Wood movie. You can see in later Republic serials, such as `Commando Cody' and `Flying Disc Man from Mars', that things went downhill pretty fast after this and you feel sorry for the actors stuck in those corny things. If you are a fan of serials or a fan of fast-moving old school cheeze, you should enjoy King of the Rocketmen. Obviously, I did.

William Hancock's great review missed one humorous item -- the bombers that "save the day" are NOT US A-20s but JAPANESE ARMY Mitsubishi Ki-21-Ia (Sally)s. For whatever reason they used footage of the Japanese bombing China for the finale rather than footage of American planes. Go figure.