Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I GENRE
- 1 The Future Catches Up with the Past: Peter Bogdanovich's Targets
- 2 Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci
- 3 Flash Gordon and the 1930s and '40s Science Fiction Serial
- 4 Just the Facts, Man: The Complicated Genesis of Television's Dragnet
- 5 The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky
- PART II HISTORY
- PART III INTERVIEWS
- Works Cited and Consulted
- About the Author
- Index
3 - Flash Gordon and the 1930s and '40s Science Fiction Serial
from PART I - GENRE
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I GENRE
- 1 The Future Catches Up with the Past: Peter Bogdanovich's Targets
- 2 Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci
- 3 Flash Gordon and the 1930s and '40s Science Fiction Serial
- 4 Just the Facts, Man: The Complicated Genesis of Television's Dragnet
- 5 The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky
- PART II HISTORY
- PART III INTERVIEWS
- Works Cited and Consulted
- About the Author
- Index
Summary
Motion picture serials, the forerunner of today's serialized television dramas, have been around since the earliest days of the narrative cinema. Exhibitors rapidly realized that, in order to assure continued audience attendance, open-ended “cliff hangers” were needed, as they keep viewers returning week after week to find out the latest plot twists, character developments and, of course, how the hero or heroine escaped from the previous week's peril. The first real serial — with multiple episodes and a running weekly continuity — was Charles Brabin's What Happened to Mary? (1912), starring Mary Fuller as an innocent young woman who inherits a fortune while the villain of the piece tries to separate her from her newfound wealth.
The sequel to the serial, Who Will Mary Marry? (1913), serves as proof of the new format's success. But the real breakthrough came in 1914 with Louis Gasnier's The Perils of Pauline, starring Pearl White. Pauline established the hectic, action-packed formula that would persist until the production of the very last serial — Spencer Gordon Bennet's Blazing the Overland Trail — in 1956. Fistfights, nonstop action, minimal character exposition and a sense of constant, frenetic danger permeated The Perils of Pauline and this recipe generated a host of imitators.
Soon the “damsel in distress” format used in The Perils of Pauline was being employed by a number of other serials, including Francis J. Grandon's The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), starring an equally athletic Kathlyn Williams, and Louis Feuillade's epic mystery Fantômas (1913).
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- Chapter
- Information
- Cinema at the Margins , pp. 19 - 30Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013