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. I’m going through it (and its sequel) chapter by chapter. Read here for where it all starts.
The Payoff (Chapter 15)
Directed by Spencer Bennett and Thomas Carr
Runtime: 17 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: Generally Superman demonstrates his standard set of powers in this episode—he flies around really fast, smashes through walls, and shows super-stregnth. He also shows his invulnerability, going so far as to easily withstand a direct blast from the Reducer Ray. But he also does something I’ve never seen him do before in any story—he retrieves a broken record of the conversation between Hackett and Anton in jail, and uses his “super sight” to read the message that is etched on the pieces and recreate it on a new record. Pretty cool ability. I guess since everything went digital we don’t hear of stuff like that much anymore.
Super-Lore introduced (in the context of these serials, not for the character overall): Superman protects himself from kryptonite by wearing a special lead lining under his costume. I don’t know that he’s ever done exactly this before in the comics or elsewhere, but I feel like it’s at similar to stuff I’ve seen before.
Comments: And it’s over!
I really thought the chapter’s title, The Payoff, had a double meaning—both something in the story and the fact that this was the conclusion to the serial, so it was where the adventure would “pay off,” dramatically. But it turns out that it only has a single meaning—the second, metatextual one, since there’s nothing in the plot itself remotely related to anyone or anything being paid off, ie with money.
Instead, it’s about the Spider Lady, now that she has a working Reducer Ray, deciding it’s time to get serious and prove how dangerous she is by blowing up the Daily Planet building. Nevermind she already blew up the prison. Apparently that was not enough of a demonstration, even if we did read that many prisoners were killed in her attack.
Amongst those prisoners were her targets, Anton and Hackett, which I was glad for (as I said last time, just because I wanted the story to prove how dangerous she could be.) But seeing Superman race in to save Lois, leaving the two thugs behind crying out for their lives, reads as a bit strange.
The Superman I want to see, that I most enjoy, wants to save everybody. Obviously, it’s meant to be that he simply didn’t have time to help them, and of course he prioritises innocent Lois, but it’s still it’s not really a good look.
After Supes saves Lois we get a moment that most overtly hints at Lois’ romantic attraction to the Man of Steel. Her smile at waking up to see her rescuer is positively schoolgirl crush-worthy. It’s not addressed, and Lois never says anything else to indicate her she’s attracted as opposed to just awed, but it’s easy to interpret this way.
Lois is also the centre of the serial’s single most emotionally real moment, which comes with the brief glimpse of the story that she starts to write after the Spider Lady’s threats against the Daily Planet are made. It’s titled “WHAT DO WE THINK OF WHILE WAITING FOR OUR DESTRUCTION?” and begins with these words: “11:20 a.m. The first shock of the frightening knowledge, leaves you numb, puzzled a bit helpless.”
That’s all we see of it, but it’s a nice touch. It’s the only time we get a sense of Lois not as an investigator, but as a writer, and I liked it.
It’s also a decent episode for Jimmy. He gets to fly a plane, which seems like quite the skill to have.
Although to be fair, he almost immediately crashes the same plane. This occurs when the plane’s electrical system gets knocked out—something you think he’d have expected given they are purposely going somewhere where the same thing has happened to multiple cars.).
He also gets to punch out Driller at the end, which is a nice touch given how many times he himself has been beaten up.
The story here moves along at a good clip, with an impressive amount happening especially in the last few minutes. Right toward the end the episode manages to create a lot of tension—the Spider Lady has got Lois and Jimmy captured and Superman completely debilitated by kryptonite, and she’s about to make good on her threat to blow up the Daily Planet. With only three minutes left for the whole serial how are our heroes possibly going to get out of this one?!
Well, by possibly the silliest method ever. Superman, it turns out, is only pretending to be debilitated by the kryptonite so he could find the Spider Lady’s hideout (which has basically been the goal for almost the entire serial). Superman protected himself from the kryptonite by wearing a lead-lining under his uniform.
It’s a solution that comes out of nowhere, and of course is not one that holds up at all given that his costume doesn’t actually cover his whole body. As a result, it feels like a cheat, and doesn’t make for the most satisfying climax.
A bit better is the Spider Lady meeting her grisly end. It’s Dr. Graham who does the honors, which feels appropriate given how much time he’s spent being captured and tortured by her.
He turns the Reducer Ray on her and she dies by her web in an explosion of sparks and screams. It’s not gory, of course, but pretty gruesome.
In the end she’s a serviceable but unremarkable villain. Carol Forman has got some screen presence but I still wish the serial had taken some time to explain literally anything about this character
I have never watched a classic serial that wasn’t to some degree an exercise in perseverance, and that is true for Superman as much as it is for anything else. But as cinema’s first live-action (mostly) depiction of the character, it’s certainly historically notable and not completely without charm. Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill are never going to be my favorite Clark or Lois (although Tommy Bond is amongst my favorite Jimmy’s), but given they are representing characters who up to this point had only been seen in comic books or in animation, they do a decent job, creating a space for all those who will come after them.
Cliffhanger ending:
None! It’s over. Until next time anyway. Until, Atom Man vs. Superman!
Other thoughts:
• Three times in this episode, what looks like the exact same shot is repeated, showing Superman running through an alley toward the camera and then jumping off into flight. We all know the serial was cheap but so far it has avoided anything so obvious. All three of these instances are from the first seven minutes of the episode, and the first two occur less than a minute apart from each other.
• There’s another newspaper montage, which includes the same newspapers as last episode, in the same order: the Daily Planet, The Star Dispatch, Record Herald and Star-Herald.
• We get to see Clark be kind of clever when he’s figuring out the whole “Dog’s Eye” comment, but seriously, if Metropolis actually looked that much like a dog when seen on a map, this would surely have been common knowledge amongst the citizenry.
• Our whole serial ends, as many Superman stories have, on a Clark is a “mild-mannered dope” sort of moment.
I half-expected him to wink at the camera, but no instead just laughs awkwardly to himself.
Now, this wasn’t the last of this cast of Superman of course. Two years later there was Atom Man vs. Superman, which I’ll have to get watching next.
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