"Riders of Death Valley," Universal's "Million Dollar Serial" was clearly intended to be something special, better than their usual output. Released in 1941 and Directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, it was the last 15-chapter Universal serial, featuring a large cast familiar from "B" Westerns and serials, adding Charles Bickford as the main outlaw leader.
Jim Benton (Dick Foran) leads the "Riders of Death Valley" to protect miners and prospectors against outlaws, headed by Wolf Reade (Charles Bickford) but secretly hired by saloon owner Joseph Kirby (James Blaine), who wants to take over the miners' claims. An old prospector, Chuckawalla Charlie (Frank Austin) is brought into the saloon, dying, and gives Benton a map of his find, the "Lost Aztec" mine, making him co-heir with Mary Morgan (Jeanne Kelly), Chuckawalla's niece. When Kirby fails to gain possession the map, he has "The Wolf" pursue Benton and his party, resulting in a chase lasting most of the remaining 14 chapters. Opening titles are accompanied by the song "Ride Along" by Milton Rosen and Everett Carter, belted out by Foran and chorus in a studio, while the actors are shown riding and making faces as if they were singing. At least they don't do that during the chapters.
While mostly a repetitive running gun battle, it should be remembered that the chapters provided a weekly "fix" of cowboy action, and the plot wasn't especially important. It also didn't matter that some of the cliffhangers are not resolved convincingly; it was enough that the hero survived. Viewed with some time between the chapters, interest is maintained by the cast of familiar faces, and some well-managed humor.
Benton's riders include Tombstone (Buck Jones), Borax Bill (Guinn "Big Boy" Williams), and Pancho (Leo Carrillo). Noah Beery, Jr. is prominent in the cast list as Smoky, but supporting character Tex (Glenn Strange) is given more to do. Kirby is assisted by Rance Davis (Monte Blue) and Dan Gordon (William Hall), while Wolf Reade's "pack" includes Lon Chaney, Jr., Roy Barcroft, Richard Alexander, Jack Rockwell and Ethan Laidlaw. Several familiar faces from "B" westerns and serials appear in minor roles, including Jack Perrin, Edmund Cobb, Slim Whitaker and Ernie Adams.
While the serial is lacking in several respects, I like the humor, especially that from Buck Jones, who isn't saddled with the awkward dialogue he had the same year in Columbia's "White Eagle." Leo Carrillo's line "Let's Went" is uttered nearly as often by Dick Foran. And there's unintentional humor; regardless of how many of Wolf's "pack" get shot off their horses, there are still six of them pursuing Benton's riders. It's like the number of bullets in their "six shooters." And how many large bodies of water can they find to plunge into in Death Valley?
VCI's DVD edition, #8435, is on two discs. It has a few shortcomings, most-annoying of which is their logo, large and fairly bright, which appears for 20 seconds every two minutes. I was a little surprised that I didn't notice them as much later in the chapters; they were still present. The decent image quality of the transfer helps compensate for them, though the source prints were hardly as good as what VCI had for "The Green Hornet Strikes Again" or the 1945 version of "Secret Agent X-9." There is a moderate amount of "grain" and more than a few "funhouse mirror" effects, possibly where scratches were "corrected" and in common with the other editions, a couple chapters have dark streaks through the picture during the "Foreword" text, apparently a film processing problem. These faults may have been beyond VCI's abilities to correct, but other issues were not. We get the usual "restoration cheat" where all but the first chapter use the opening credits from Chapter Two, with MPPDA certificate number 6748; not a big deal in itself but the uncorrected faults become obvious when repeated in the last 14 chapters, such as one of those dimensional distortions in the rock cliffs at the left of the screen at the credit for the directors. The titles start abruptly, missing the opening cymbal crash in the music, though this is no worse than the first chapter which begins a little further into the music, with a bad speed glitch. Perhaps to disguise the rough start, Universal's logo, the one with the reflective globe, has been tacked in before each chapter, but it looks like it came from a VHS tape, with lots of video noise and a head-switch glitch at the bottom. But unlike VCI's pop-up logos, these faults don't affect the content of the chapters, and otherwise the picture is sharp, the gray scale decent, and only a few splices, scratches and similar defects are seen. The sound is good, fairly crisp with little noise and low distortion. VCI provides some "extra" features; "Bios" of Buck Jones, Dick Foran, Noah Beery Jr., Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Leo Carrillo and the two directors; a "Photo Gallery" with seven still pictures from "Riders of Death Valley" and lobby cards from nine serial movies; trailers from "Winners of the West," "Raiders of Ghost City" and one lasting only 40 seconds from "Riders of Death Valley" and the "VCI Serial/Cliffhanger Promo" with clips from serial movie trailers, advertising their DVD editions, some of which are no longer available.
VCI's old VHS edition, # 1707, was from a print with many of the same faults, and while the actual sharpness wasn't too bad, the video noise and inferior gray scale made the details harder to see. It seemed to have the correct MPPDA certificate numbers on the chapters, though guesswork was needed in reading some of them, and splices often interrupted the opening song. Most of the chapters don't clip the opening music, though the sound was a little noisy, lacking in high frequencies and somewhat distorted.
The main virtue of Alpha's DVD, # ALP 4127D is its low cost. In addition to techincal faults, it is now supplied on a "burned" DVD-R disc, which is double-layer and incompatible with many DVD players. Check the instruction manual for "DVD-R DL" and "DVD+R DL" as compatible disc types. Even Alpha's program notes are a little lacking, written as if Lon Chaney, Jr. was the main star of the serial, and failing to list Dick Foran anywhere on the cover. Alpha appears to have used the same video source as VCI's VHS edition, and while the video noise is a little lower, the image is otherwise worse, looking gray and washed out. The sound is quite horrible, with a "torn speaker cone" type of distortion, some chapters bad enough to make the dialogue hard to understand. Alpha puts their logo on-screen during the chapter "forewords" though only for about ten seconds, and they keep them turned off otherwise.
The serial is recommended especially to fans of Dick Foran, Buck Jones and Leo Carrillo, and of the editions VCI's DVD is the best choice. The pop-up logos are an annoyance, which is why I give it only a 3-star "OK" rating, but the good sharpness and gray scale are a big help, given that the scenery is more interesting than the plot. The Alpha edition is a lot cheaper, but its defects, especially the distorted sound, make it hard to appreciate what the serial has to offer. VCI's old VHS tape is only slightly better than Alpha's DVD. But with any edition, viewing should be limited to one chapter at a time, with a day or more between them.
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