Customer Reviews

The Purple Monster Strikes! [VHS]

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

 

 

OK..so it's not the best of the Republic serials!
But it has Roy Barcroft as the "reptilian monster" and it has plenty of the Republic furniture-throwing fight scenes and a lot of cliffhanger endings that are resolved with, "Jump Sheila!".
Just wait until you see how Dennis Moore escapes the closing spike door, using his 4 inch Colt handgun and a wall mounted pay-phone!
This escape was inspired!
The quality is good and should be put out as a DVD!

It so happens I saw the first chapter of this serial as a boy of 10. At the time I thought it was rather cool how the Mars invader puts himself into the body of the professor. I think I saw the final chapter as well, but I missed everything in between. Lucky me.

This serial isn't a waste of time, but it's pretty lame and formulaic. It's not at all indicative of the best of Republic's serials. Brannon and Bennet seem to have been the mainstays of Republic's serial directors after Witney and English left the scene, and they certainly tried to uphold Republic's reputation for great fistfights.

Roy Barcroft, beloved B-Western villain that he was, is not exactly my cup of serial tea. He was much better as a bad guy in dozens of oaters. He looks quite silly here in his Purple Monster costume (as he also does in "Radar Men From the Moon"). The dapper James Craven was featured in several serials in the 1940's, and then had a very long career in A pictures (he made his last picture in 1992!). He's pretty good here in a kind of double role as the kindly astronomer whose body gets taken over by the Purple Monster.

Neither is Dennis Moore my idea of a dynamic hero. However, I must admit that his low-key style kind of grows on you and by the end of the movie I thought he wasn't half bad. Linda Stirling ("Zorro's Black Whip," "The Crimson Ghost") was a model before becoming "the queen of the serials," and it shows. Her good looks and demeanor carried every serial she was in, and there were a lot of them. The best scenes in this movie are those in which she appears.

One oddity is that the little convertible in which the hero and the girl constantly run around led a charmed life. It is completely blown up at least twice, and always shows up in the next chapter. The film companies were always trying to save money in filming their serials, but this is a bit ridiculous!

This is a horrible serial. The special effects are laughable, the characters are ridiculous, and the plot is insane. If you want a serious scifi movie, go elsewhere, but if you're the type of person who's seen Plan 9 from Outer Space more than once, who delights in the truly awful, then this is for you. The repeated elements do get a bit tedious, and it's hard to watch more than three or four episodes at once (remember, people originally had to wait a week to see the next installment), but it's a lot of fun. I only wish it were available on DVD.

This was a very disappointing serial. The story and effects are average at best, and that's only once in a while.

The story involves a plot to take over the Earth by the evil Purple Monster, the henchman of the Martian Empire. For some reason, even though the Martians have mastered the abillity to take over humans by "merging" with their bodies, and have learned English and determined how to go from Mars to a precise location on the Earth and locate a specific person driving down the road at night, they have yet to figure out how to build a rocketship that doesn't blow up. If a Martain comes to Earth, it's a one-way trip.

Add to that the fact that a Martain can effortlessly use a handgun and other Earth tools (in fact, they have none of their own, apparently), this serial is going a bit beyond the suspension of disbelief.

The Purple Monster wants to take over the rocket project being worked on by the puny, backwards Earthmen. If they can steal the rocket, they can go back to Mars, and learn how to build more. Then a fleet of rockets can take over the Earth.

If these guys are so advanced, why do they need an Earth rocket? The thing wasn't even built!

I know it sounds good on paper, but this serial is far from good.

Usually, Republic serials kick butt. This one only stubs a toe.

DVD quality was somewhat grainy, but understandable given the age of the series. My big disappointment was that the DVD "froze" at least 10-12 times. I did, however, enjoy the content & remembered most parts from having watched the series in a movie theater as a youth.

This serial about a Martian who crash lands on Earth, is a fun example of early sci-fi at the movies. Each episode has a cliffhanger, in which the alien traps the hero, Craig Foster, in a scenario of certain doom. The Martian, who is the Purple Monster, often assumes the body of Dr. Layton, by use of an inhaled gas. Anyway, there's crashes, explosions, fights, etc..Will the Purple Monster take over the world? What do you think?

A must for the serial lover, the Purple Monster has what your looking for. It wants to take over Earth. The problem is their space ships can't make the round trip. He wants to build it with help from earthly cohorts that are recruited with a show of technology. You'll need to get it to see if Earth lost the battle.

Great serial fare.

The Purple Monster Strikes is a 15 chapter movie serial typical of the ones shown each weekend at "B" movie theaters in the 1940's. I actually saw this very serial each Saturday in the Fall of 1945 when my Dad took me to see the weekly western Shoot-em-Up at a Tuscaloosa, Alabama theater. I was 9 years old at the time and found the obligatory cliffhanger at the end of each chapter to be very thrilling. I couldn't wait to get back to the theater the following Saturday to see how the good guys could possibly survive the terrible explosions, fires, car crashes, acid vats, etc., that supposedly finished them off the previous week!

I ran across this serial quite by accident and decided to order it to see if it would bring back some of that thrilling mystery and nostalgia from my boyhood. It did, but now in my 70's seems quite campy and considerably less thrilling than it did in 1945. It now doesn't take much ingenuity to guess how most of the weekly escapes will be accomplished, but it was a lot of fun to see the old cars, their chases, and the various sets and scenes from long ago!

The acting was probably fairly good for its time, but is far from what would be considered fine today. The photography is well done, but some of the devices like the Purple Monster's rocket ship, anihilator, invisible poison Martian atmospheric gas, etc., seem crude and laughable compared to today's very realistic computer generated graphics......but I enjoyed watching it! In fact, I have watched it twice!

If you are into these old serials, or just want to see what it was like at the Saturday matinae 65 years ago, I highly recommend this one! I still can't believe we got to see a cowboy flick, the Movietone News, the weekly serial episode, plus a Looney Toons cartoon all for the price of one thin dime! And for another nickel, popcorn! It was good to be a kid then!!

I agree with the other reviewer...this is a good serial with plenty of cliffhanger action. The DVD is kindof like a copy in that it does not 'look' totally professional but has great picture quality. The only disappointing thing is the cover art work includes no information such as actors, year made, and synopsis. If you're into serials buy it!

I first saw all fifteen chapters at the Fairbanks Theatre in Springfield, Oh, when I was about ten, and it scared me to death. Fifty years later I saw it again, and could not believe that Dennis Moore beat the crap out of the same four guys in every episode. Nonetheless, Roy Barcroft is the ultimate bad guy, and anything he's in is worth having.