This is the first ever live action (mostly) adaption of Superman, long one of my favorite characters–a 15 chapter serial (serialized films that were released in cinema matinée screenings over successive weeks) from Columbia pictures in 1948. It starred Kirk Alyn, Noel Neill, Tommy Bond, and Carol Forman. I’m going through it (and its sequel) chapter by chapter. Read here for where it all starts.
Blast in the Depths (Chapter 12)
Directed by Spencer Bennett and Thomas Carr
Runtime: 16 minutes (I realize that in the version of this that I watched, after Chapter 1 they didn’t include the opening title sequence, so this might be slightly off.
Spoilers!
Super-feats: Superman flies into the truck where Jimmy is hiding, endures a hail of bullets, and then uses his strength to easily pick up the two henchmen off the ground before tying them up at super speed and flying away back to the prison and repairing the bars before he’s discovered.
Other than doing pretty well initially in a fight with Driller at the end of the chapter in his Clark Kent guise, this is the only super-ing we see this chapter!
Comments: So last time I predicted that the resolution to the cliffhanger was going to involve some creative editing. I wasn’t completely right, but only because I didn’t go far enough! What we actually got was indeed creative editing but also new footage which completely changes what was going on.
In the original version, the crooks go to check the back of the truck where Jimmy is hiding in a crate, and see his fingers closing the door as he is climbing back inside. The one crook, Conrad, goes to tell his partner that there’s a guy in the crate, and they slowly sneak around to the back of the truck again, with their guns drawn. Meanwhile, we see Jimmy hiding inside, waiting. Then the two guys together come around the back, and empty their pistols into the crate.
In the recap that we get in this episode, before Conrad goes to check on the crate, Superman joins Jimmy in the back of the truck and takes his place. Superman goes into the crate while Jimmy hides in the back of the truck. So when Conrad comes around, it’s Superman’s fingers that he sees closing the crate. So far so good. But then, to my surprise, Conrad doesn’t go to get his partner at all, but immediately fires into the crate himself.
Then his partner joins him, before Superman bursts out and deals with these guys that only our bully of steel can.
Of course, as is the pattern for this serial, it all amounts to nothing for the good guys. Jimmy’s life is saved and the bad guys are slowed down getting the mono-chromite they need for their Reducer Ray, but only barely. And Conrad and the other goon don’t have any useful information to share. So once again our heroes are left without a clue as to how to get close to the Spider Lady.
On the other hand, it does allow for a brief comical moment with Jimmy Olsen, who tries to pick up the two guys off the ground and finds that as difficult as you’d expect.
I did think it was bit thoughtless that Superman didn’t put them into the truck himself, but then I realized it was done on purpose for a bit.
This chapter leads to the serial’s first death for quite a while—poor mining engineer Collier who gets into a scuffle with Driller and gets himself shot for his troubles. We find out later that the police aren’t sure if it’s murder or suicide—but if it’s suicide, then Collier shot himself in the stomach, which I’d think is sort of weird. This leads to Lois going and checking it out, finding out where Collier had some mono-chromite, and…of course…getting herself into trouble with the Spider Lady’s men as a result.
Last time it was because she left her purse lying around, this time it’s because of a matchbook. Stop leaving things lying around when you are trying to hide, Lois!
Nonetheless, this sequence gives us some of the most fun Lois stuff that we’ve had. She uses a hairpin to pick a lock, and then when she’s in trouble she manages to scratch a message into a window, and then to break that window to draw attention to it (possibly, that last part is my charitable reading of it). It shows some quick thinking on her part, and later it’s fun to watch Clark put together the clues.
This leads everyone to gather at a mine at “Question Crossing”, and one of my favorite cliffhangers. We’ve already seen, numerous times, Clark take a hit to protect his secret identity, even if it means putting someone in temporary danger. Well now, Clark and Lois are handcuffed together as they face imminent death in an exploding mine. Saving Lois should be no problem, but how’s he going to do it and also protect his secret identity?!
Cliffhanger ending: As I said, Clark and Lois, handcuffed together, are trapped in a mine that has been rigged to explode.
How can Jimmy hope to stop these men? Does the spider Lady plan to take over the Daily Planet? See the amazing answers in “Hurled to Destruction,” chapter 13 of “Superman,” at this theatre next week!
Take over the Daily Planet? Is that what the Spider Lady plans to do? That had not even crossed my mind before the narrator asked that question. That’d be cool! Maybe that will mean that both the Spider Lady and Perry White—the serial’s two most single set-bound characters–will get to move around a little bit.
Other thoughts:
• It seems like it would have made a lot more sense for Clark to ditch Jimmy as soon as he learned about Question Crossing. He could easily have told him to go to the police and then turn into Superman and deal with the crooks lickity-split.
• The bad guys have an unhelpful (for them) reluctance to just kill Lois, or at least to kill her directly. They don’t seem to mind shooting other people, but whenever they have Lois in their sights, they always have to leave her to be blown up instead. In this chapter, they even go to all the bother of sneaking her out of Collier’s office so they can blow her up later, rather than just killing her directly.
• Lois gets to see Clark fight the bad guys and do pretty well against Driller, only going down when four of the guys pile onto him. Surely she can’t continue to think of him as a wimp and a coward after this, can she? Can she?
• At the mine, there are a couple of extra bad guys helping Driller and Brock (I think, it’s so hard to tell) move the mono-chromite. They look an awful lot like Conrad and his partner from the beginning of the story, even though those guys are caught by the police.
• I don’t like the habit of this serial (and others) of naming chapters after something that happens only at the very end of the episode. The titular “Blast in the Depths” doesn’t happen until the very last second of the chapter. I’d like it better if it invoked on the investigation to find the mono-chromite mine, which was the centrepiece of the episode, or something like that.
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