Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Rainey Dawn This is a very intriguing serial - gets quite interesting. Fun - most definitely fun. All the characters, including the supporting ones, are good. Of course the best are our leading and rival men, Ralph Byrd as Lt. Terry Kent and Bela Lugosi as Boroff.As you can easily guess this is mainly a sea adventure - one that takes a few surprise twists and turns - good cliff hangers - and a fun but far fetched story of disintegrating gas and mass destruction. Lt. Kent stays hot on the trail of Boroff so there is never a dull moment.This one is good for a few giggles but is a refreshing change to see Lugosi outside of the horror genre that he is well known for. Recommended for Lugosi fans - he gets lots of screen time.8/10

JohnHowardReid The main reason this serial is popular with the fans is the casting of Bela Lugosi as the chief villain. Unfortunately, although he appears in every episode, his role is comparatively small until chapter 8 when he really becomes the dominant villain. It's Lugosi's man, Richard Alexander, who provides most of the action, and even continues to prove a rousingly unworthy, stop-at-nothing opponent for super-natty hero, Ralph Byrd, even when Lugosi finally has more than a few fleeting scenes. Mind you, Lugosi doesn't do much in the way of acting. He does little more than say his lines. The same goes for hero Byrd. It's the rather boring Lee Ford as an incompetent photographer who seems to get all the attention from directors Alan James and William Witney. Ford even does his best (or worst!) to push our lovely heroine, Maxine Doyle, out of the picture. Miss Doyle started in movies as an extra in 1933 but quickly graduated to feature player (Babbitt 1934) and feminine lead (The Mystery Man 1935). She left movies after making this serial. When she returned in 1943, her roles were so small, she was usually uncredited. Another lovely girl that Hollywood wasted or didn't know what to do with! This was Republic's seventh serial and was brought in at $128,530. The original budget was $107,217. Costs and delays while shooting on location in the Los Angeles area were responsible for the increase. Barry Shipman, Franklin Adreon, Winston Miller and Edward Lynn were responsible for the screenplay, which was based on a story outlined by Morgan Cox, Ronald Davidson and Lester Scott. U.S. release: 28 August 1937. Available on two DVD discs from Alpha.

Brian Camp SOS COAST GUARD (1937) never flags throughout its entire run of twelve chapters. Nearly every episode offers something new and different, be it a chase involving two cars and a motorcycle in one episode or one involving speedboats and tommy guns in the next. Most of it is filmed on location in all sorts of picturesque Southern California coastal sites. As the hero, Ralph Byrd (Republic's own Dick Tracy) seems to do a lot of his own stunts-on land and at sea. He clambers around rocks, flies a plane, goes out in boats, rides a motorcycle, runs around rooftops, jumps off of them and when he has to fight, he plunges right in, getting into furious scraps with a host of different henchmen. And it's never the typical movie fight in which opponents trade telegraphed punches. It's pummeling, tussling, shoving, grabbing, rolling, kicking-messy, like a real fight.The hero and villain (Bela Lugosi) are well matched. They're both smart and proactive. The villain's always one step ahead-as it's gotta be for a serial to last 12 chapters-but Byrd is no dope and he catches up pretty quickly. The villain uses lots of henchmen, divided into different teams for different tasks, so Byrd's not fighting the same bad guys in every episode. Also, unlike most serial heroes, Byrd's not afraid to call in police or Coast Guard backup. One great scene has the henchmen staking out a lab where a scientist is trying to analyze the villain's disintegrating gas so he can find a method to counteract it. Byrd's got several policemen protecting the lab. The lead henchman comes up with a clever plan to get Byrd out of the way, find a ruse to get past the police, get into the lab, kidnap the scientist and get him out without arousing the cops' suspicions. Usually, scenes like this rely on wild coincidences or highly improbable circumstances, but the plan used here actually makes sense and one has to give the bad guys credit for using their heads. It makes the whole thing so much more dramatically interesting when the hero faces genuine challenges.Bela Lugosi plays the villain, Boroff, a criminal mastermind trying to develop disintegrating gas to sell to foreign powers for use in the coming war. Lugosi plays it straight, without any of his usual over-the-top mannerisms, and he's very effective. He's well supported by the actors playing his men, who look and move like actual thugs and not pretty boys from Central Casting.If I have any complaint it's that the idiot comic relief, inept photographer "Snapper" McGee, gets way too much screen time and is the only element that actually slows the serial down. Also, some of the cliffhanger endings are a little on the cheating side. In one ending, Byrd ducks into the cockpit of his plane as a water tower falls on top of him. At the beginning of the next episode, it shows that he escaped injury---by ducking into the cockpit of his plane! Not exactly worth waiting a week for. This actually doesn't bother me because the rest of the story is so filled with action and thrills that the cliffhanger endings really don't matter much.

Mike-764 Boroff, a munitions expert, has just perfected a disintegrating gas which he plans to sell to any nation that will meet his price. Despite being a wanted man across the world, Boroff smuggles himself aboard the SS Carfax to ship a load of arnotite to Morovania, who plans to use the disintegrating gas. The Carfax is wrecked at sea and is rescued by the Coast Guard led by Lieutenant Terry Kent. Boroff is recognized but manages to escape the Coast Guard, while killing Kent's younger brother Jim. Boroff disguises himself and plans to manufacture the disintegrating gas while evading the watch of Kent and the Coast Guard, who go piece clues together to find Boroff and stop the gas from being made, which also means battling Boroff's lobotomized, hulking servant Thorg. The serial had a great first two chapters and well done ending, but the middle part of the serial was very routine since all of the atmosphere, villainous characterizations, and action packed encounters seemed to be lessened. Richard Alexander must have had a great agent for getting him these memorable serial roles, since Thorg is among his best, where he evokes a lot of sympathy from the audience. Lugosi is fine here as well, but as I said before, he loses his evil touch as the serial progresses. Byrd is somewhat disappointing comparing this to his Dick Tracy roles since his reading of lines doesn't always sound too heroic. Doyle is cute, but no actress, and Ford is annoying as he was in Dick Tracy Returns. Rating, based on serials, 6.