2.0 out of 5 stars
OOOAAAHOOAAH!, January 8, 2006
I almost gave up on this after one chapter--the acting was pretty poor and the directing was bad. But I read enough about it on the internet that it renewed my interest, and found it worth watching after all. (Just barely.) In addition to the bad acting, the cliffhangers are full of cheats.
Serial producers apparently loved to take former Olympics athletes and try to take advantage of their fame, and Herman Brix was no exception. He had been the number two choice behind Johnny Weissmuller for the MGM Tarzan pictures. Brix won the silver medal in the shot put in the 1928 Olympics, and had been a football and track star at the University of Washington.
Apparently Edgar Rice Burroughs wasn't terribly pleased with the way his creation was handled at MGM, so he formed a production company with Ashton Dearholt for this serial. It was shot on location in Guatemala where they ran into all sorts of problems including storms, accidents, diseases, and rugged remote locations. As if that weren't enough, during filming Dearholt married leading lady Ula Holt, and Burroughs divorced his first wife to marry Dearholt's ex, Florence. Dearholt also played the villain Raglan, thought he was billed as Don Castello.
Herman Brix did his own stunts in this picture, resulting in multiple injuries, tropical fever, and chronic exhaustion. Still, he does a pretty good job; he's the best actor in the picture, although that's not saying much. Brix also co-starred in one of the all-time best serials, "Daredevils of the Red Circle," as well as "Hawk of the Wilderness." Later he took a few years off from pictures, took acting lessons, and reinvented himself as Bruce Bennett at Warner Brothers, where he made many feature films.
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