Chapter Nine: Battle in the Stratosphere
...but the airborne Ted drops a grenade upon the aggressor vehicle, crippling it, before returning in time to help re-attach the stricken Cody's errant air line. Repairing the damage done to the Juggernaut, Cody and Ted make it back to the rocket ship with their looted lunarium and prepare for blast-off with the captured moon man (whose spacesuit the Commando is still wearing) still aboard: "We're taking you with us. And you better get back to your quarters until we get started. Get goin'!" barks our hero when the kidnappee inquires as to whether he may return home now that the raid is over.
(And hold on a minute: this primitive rocket really must have TARDIS-like transcendental inner dimensions if it contains quarters for four crew members and a captured alien)
Understandable aggrieved, the hostage turns hostile - coming back through the airlock swinging with an iron bar and clouting all and sundry until the two-fisted Commando slugs him and then plugs him, shooting him through the heart. As he and Ted bundle the corpse out, Joan asks
"What'll they do with him, Hank?"
"It's just like a burial at sea, Joan. Only his body will float around in space forever."
Saturday matinee kids' fun!
As they head back to Earth, Retik contacts Krog and orders that the ship must not be allowed to land with its load of lunarium that could be turned against them. With both his life and the survival of his species at stake, Krog computes the incoming course of the rocket and sends Graber and Daly in the laser truck to intercept and destroy. Winging and crippling the incoming ship, the deadly duo get into a gunfight with Cody, who has soared downwards via jetpack to stop them. As the wily Commando uses the shelter of a boulder to hide from both their revolvers and ray cannon, Daly takes aim at the cliff face behind him and unleashes a blast that brings the mountain tumbling down atop him...
Chapter Ten: Mass Execution
...but he moves like lightning, quickly cleaving to the cliff and hugging the rock face for dear life as tons of stock footage earth and rock fall behind him. His distraction ploy has luckily worked, as Graber and Daly find to their chagrin that in the mean time the damaged ship has managed to make a landing on the other side of the mountain. As they return to the Krog-cave with the bad news that the lunarium is now in the hands of the government, Krog radios his superiors and a raging Retik declares that he is descending to Earth to personally take charge. Must all evil leaders be surrounded my incompetents?!?
Meanwhile at Cody Laboratories, Cody and Joan are also reporting to their higher-ups in the shape of Agent Henderson who informs them that TOP MEN are working on lunarium-powered atomic ray guns for Uncle Sam. As Henderson asks for a briefing on the story so far, the Commando delivers him a reminiscipackage of footage from previous episodes. Yes, folks, this is a clip show recapping chapters one to nine: necessary for people who'd missed out I guess, but a tad interminable for the dedicated watcher. As 'The One With All The "Previously On..."' unfolds, Cody suddenly remembers that he managed to retrieve one of the Selenites' ray pistols. As he shows it to Henderson. Daly and Graber lurk outside and decide to use one of Cody's own tricks against him by attaching a canister of gas to the lab building's ventilation system with something much deadlier and less funny than nitrous oxide. As a stifled Joan collapses to the floor and Henderson struggles with a door secured from the outside before plummeting groundwards himself, Cody tries to reach for the telephone before slumping unconscious...
Chapter Eleven: Planned Pursuit
...but not before triggering the alarm system, which brings a policeman (or maybe a campus security guard - surely no police response time is this fast!) racing to the scene, unlocking the door and dragging Cody, Joan and Henderson to safety. Leaving the still unconscious Henderson to the tender ministrations of the rent-a-cop, Cody and Joan pursue the fleeing thugs. Commandeering the officer's black sedan, they give chase through the streets of the city exchanging gunfire and even lobbing canisters of tear gas (apparently any law enforcement vehicle contains an array of such devices, possibly just adjacent to the Bat-shark repellent spray) before both cars are caught by the fuzz and all parties arrested.
Returning to the lab after managing to talk his way out of serious charges ("As soon as I convinced them who I was, everything was alright" - because TWOC-ing a cop car and wreaking carnage in a public place is A-OK if you're a dude with a jetpack), Cody informs his trusty pals that his new cop buddies have agreed to tail Graber and Daly in an effort to trace the secret base. After being wirelessed with the route of their car, the rocket man makes another super soaraway spurt into the sky to locate their destination. Finding the cave, Cody stealthily listens in on Krog and his underlings and hears that our glorious leader Retik (I, for one, welcome our lunar overlords) has already made planetfall - "He came down in his personal rocket ship. He landed it in the cave on the east side of the old Mount Henry mine" supplies Krog helpfully. Learning that Retik has brought four more atomic cannons with him, Cody decides not to wait and steps out of the shadows gun in hand to apprehend these villains. This of course sets off yet another frantic flurry of fisticuffs during which he grapples with Graber only to receive a punch to the helmet (OUCH!). A clout from Cody sends Krog careering backwards into a bank of equipment which explodes in a flurry of electrical arcs and sparks that would make Kenneth Strickfaden proud and he falls down dead, Seeing this, an enraged Graber picks up a chair and uses it lion tamer style to pin Cody and force him back towards the same machinery - which again erupts in a shower of sparks...
Chapter Twelve: Death of the Moon Man
...and a crash and flash in the pan is ours as the rocketeer's trusty suit saves him ("There was enough metal in my flying suit to partially ground the current so I was only knocked out, but the other man was killed instantly" our scientifically illiterate inventor informs us). Back at the lab, he relays the gathered data to Henderson and together they hatch a plan to capture the original ray cannon from the late Krog's now abandoned base and train it on Retik's location in the Mount Henry mine before he can gather enough men and vehicles to unleash his deadly arsenal of four van men of the apocalypse.
After a phone call from Al at the cafe in which the restaurateur relays that a recruitment drive of hell drivers is occurring in his establishment, Cody and Ted decide to rush over and apprehend them only to result in yet another
"No chance of getting them out of that!" comments Ted as he looks over the edge at the blazing carnage below.
"No. Let's go after Retik!" says our pragmatic lead.
Convening with Henderson's men outside the mine, Ted 'n' Cody decide to take a closer look and head into the mountain clad in suits and trilbys and packing heat - for all the world more G-men than spacemen - and quickly get into a gunfight with Retik and his remaining lunar henchmen. As the Selenite sub-boss is swiftly dispatched, Retik makes for his rocket in an attempt to break the surly bonds of Earth and touch the face of Zod - but the agents train the lunarium-powered cannon on his fleeing ship and blow it to pieces. Thus is the rather perfunctory end to this twelve-chapter space saga. Bit disappointing, really. Lot of that about, lately.
Radar Men from the Moon not only neatly repurposed footage from King of the Rocket Men, but also introduced the character of Commando Cody who would return in the following year's Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe played by Judd Holdren (with Aline Towne returning as Joan Gilbert). It would be re-edited and repackaged in 1966 as a 100-minute television movie under the not as punchy title of Retik the Moon Menace. Mostly good old-fashioned pulpy fun, its behelmed and bejetpacked lead would cut an inspirational silhouette that spawned other armoured flying heroes and anti-heroes.
It is the way.
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