Universal's twelve-chapter serial "The Perils of Pauline" from 1933 has little in common with the 1914 Pearl White classic, other than story writer Charles W. Goddard, who wrote the screenplay for the earlier serial. Still, the "remake" is good for its time. It was directed by Ray Taylor, with screenplay by Basil Dickey, Jack Foley, Ella O'Neill and George Plympton.
The story has Professor Hargrave (James Durkin) in China, seeking an ivory disk inscribed with an ancient formula for a deadly disintegrating gas, which years earlier he had promised his dying friend, the priest Confu, he would use to benefit humanity. With the Professor are his daughter, Pauline (Evalyn Knapp) and his secretary, Willie Dodge (Sonny Ray), neither of whom are enthusiastic about staying in China, given that a revolution is in progress and the city is being bombed. But the Professor explains that others have learned of the formula's existence, and it might fall into the hands of the evil Dr. Bashan (John Davidson). He also observes that the revolution will make it easier to spirit the disk out of the temple where it is believed to be hidden. As the Professor and Dodge leave the hotel, Pauline notices they are being followed, and in trying to warn them has to be rescued from Bashan's henchmen by an American, Robert Warde (Robert Allen). They reach the Professor and find what they believe is the formula, but the hard disk crashed and only half of it is there, with instructions for finding the rest of it. Bashan and his henchmen are waiting outside to steal the half disk, but are driven back when the temple is bombed, and have to spend the next eleven chapters following and causing trouble for the Hargrave party as they search many lands for the other half of the disk.
This is a fairly early Universal sound serial, with little background music, only mixed with spoken lines in a couple places. And as in their later serials, Universal used a lot of stock footage, though most of it is well-edited into the action. Some of this provides unintentional humor, such as in Chapter Five where a supposedly-dead leopard is clearly seen to be breathing, with the same clip used twice in Chapter Five, only a few minutes apart. In Chapter Eleven, as fire engines race through the streets to one of Universal's favorite cliffhangers, we see not only cars that were ancient in 1933, but even a horse-drawn covered wagon. There are a few "continuity" issues, including the Professor's last name, where both "Hargrave" and "Hargraves" are used in the spoken dialogue and titles. But Evalyn Knapp looks good, and has more involvement in the action than most serial movie heroines of the 1930's. She doesn't have the outlandish perils that beset Pearl White in the earlier serial, such as outrunning boulders rolled down the trail after her, just the more-usual kind of threats from wild animals, ancient death traps, and Dr. Bashan and his henchmen. Our hero, billed as Robert Allen, had made several films under his given name, Hugh Enfield, and was later known as Craig Reynolds. He makes a believable hero, and with James Durkin as Professor Hargrave avoids displaying more intelligence than their adversaries. And no excuse need be given for our heroes looting temples for the formula, and rather indiscriminate killing of hostile natives; after all, they are on a quest to benefit mankind. At least the question is raised as to how a disintegrating gas might do this, if the "ultimate weapon to end all war" answer has the kind of logic that brought about the atomic bomb. Faulty thinking is also evident in the inclusion of Sonny Ray as the perpetually frightened "comic relief" character, if a standard feature in serials at the time. It is more out-of-place than badly done, though used fairly well in Chapter Nine. The main acting strength is with the bad guys, led by John Davidson in one of his best roles as Dr. Bashan, a boss you wouldn't want to make angry. And Frank Lackteen as Fang does not always please his boss; one feels sympathy for him at several points when, after risking his neck, he must once again face Bashan with the news that he didn't recover the disk.
VCI's edition, # 6901, is on a double-layer DVD, quite adequate for the twelve chapters. No "extras" are provided. Restoration is credited to Film Chest Media Group, and the image is sharp, with excellent gray scale. Only a few scratches and related "dirt" are present. A couple places have some white speckles, probably from dirt on the negative, but otherwise there are only a few minor issues with the picture quality. The clean-up was done a little too well, correcting some of the miserably-grainy stock footage, sometimes resulting in poor sharpness or leaving odd artifacts like vertical lines in place of the grain. Slightly more serious, the image is sometimes enlarged by about 15 per-cent. While carefully done so heads don't get cut off, in a couple chapters most of the last line of the recap text gets wiped out by the bottom of the frame. But these issues are minor; it is still a glorious edition to watch. Unfortunately the audio is another matter, where "noise reduction" has deleted desirable background sounds like footsteps and distant yells of pursuing hostile natives. In some places the processing garbles the dialogue so it is hard to understand, especially in the first chapter where the sounds of exploding bombs are at full strength, yet the volume must be increased to hear what's being said. In Chapter Ten, it is hard to believe that Fang, listening at a window, can discover the plans being made by Hargrave and Warde, when their discussion is hard to understand as heard from inside the house. Other chapters don't have as much of the problem, and I wouldn't want to suggest that the sound of the Alpha edition is better; it suffered from noise due to excess dynamic range compression, but the dialogue was usually fairly clear.
I won't detail here the defects of the Alpha edition, since Amazon is (for now) keeping the reviews separate, but even with with the poor sound, VCI's edition is a lot easier to watch. There is a fairly-decent version from Sinister Cinema, which while lacking the clean-looking image has better framing, and fairly good gray scale. It also has much better sound than either the VCI or Alpha editions, if with some background noise. Still, a recommendation of the VCI release can be made, and it will amaze those who have suffered over the years with poor copies of bad prints of this serial. And while the serial itself has some shortcomings common to films of its era, it remains entertaining, though best viewed one chapter at a time so the redundant stock footage isn't so obvious.
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