Radar Men from the Moon Chapter One: Moon Rocket (Fred C. Brannon, 1952)

Stand by for Rocket Action

A long, low time ago when people would talk to me (for I was but young and death was just a dream) I reclined supine upon the old couch while off sick from school and watched the flickering shadows dancing before on the television screen - shadows of a bygone age.  I was very young, and we must be talking about the late 1980s - certainly before 1991 and the release of Joe Johnston's fabulous yet oft-forgotten pulp period spectacular The Rocketeer - as this was my first exposure to the jetpack-bedecked, bullet helmeted sky-soaring hero the Rocket Man, in the form of a morning television repeat of the 1949 serial chapter play King of the Rocket Men.

Also my introduction to the concept of an episodic monochrome movie serial (a genre which has since become a favourite of mine, with such choice gems as Adventures of Captain Marvel, Atom Man vs Superman, Undersea Kingdom and the unfortunately problematic and Japanophobic Batman), my glee at the discovery of this heretofore hidden style of filmmaking, with all of its literal car-goes-over-a-cliff cliffhangers and cheat 'he rolled out of the car at the last minute in a new edit you just didn't see last time' resolutions was tempered somewhat by the fact that I would only see an episode or two - they were being screened each weekday morning as opposed to once every Saturday like on their cinematic debut - before the illness passed and I was forced to return to school desolate in the knowledge that I could not know precisely how Jeff King and his amazing aeronautical adventures would triumph over the evil Dr Vulcan.

A few years later, of course, The Rocketeer would be released, and would rekindle to my inexpressible joy my fondness for this character (and also my burgeoning thing for Jennifer Connelly, the seeds of which had been sown at a tender age when I first saw Labyrinth, but that's another story).  It would be a long time before I learned that there had been other similar such serials featuring the masked rocketeer, such as 1952's Radar Men from the Moon (which replaced Tristram Coffin's Jeff King with George Wallace's Commando Cody), the same year's Zombies of the Stratosphere (starring Judd Holdren as Larry Martin, and featuring an early appearance by Mr Spock himself Leonard Nimoy) and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (Holdren again, this time as the eponymous Cody) in 1953 - all of these serials being directed (or in the final run's case, co-directed) by orginal Rocket Men head honcho Fred C. Brannon.  Clearly, thought I, a number of individuals had come to possess and utilise the famous rocket pack after the 'King of the Rocket Men' himself Jeff King - including Larry Martin, The Rocketeer Cliff Secord and Commando Cody himself - but there again I did always like maintaining a fictional continuity in my head.  I blame Doctor Who fandom.  The name of 'Cody' would become familiar again during the mid to late 2000s when George Lucas' 2005 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith introduced the similarly monikered clone trooper Commander Cody (not to be confused with the 1970s country singer) whose story would be furthered in the animated TV series The Clone Wars.  Having just recently finished watching the debut season of another television series set in Lucas' galaxy far, far away The Mandalorian, which featured another helmeted and booster-packed hero, I thought it was high time to raze the walls that time constructed and finally get back to some classic Rocket Man movie serial action.

In the opening chapter, 'Moon Rocket', we begin with a montage of stock footage representing a swath of destruction across the United States - replete with spinning newspaper headline reports - akin to the campaign of terror waged by Stupor Duck's imaginary arch-nemesis Aardvark Ratnik ("I blow up buildings, bridges, trains!  Everywhere ruin and destruction!").  The government agent Henderson (Don Walters) brings news of these terrible events to the laboratory of Commando Cody and his scientific co-workers Joan Gilbert (Aline Towne, who would go on to play the very similar role of Sue Davis in this story's semi-sequel Zombies of the Stratosphere) and Ted Richards (William Bakewell).  These incidents have been discovered to be of an atomic nature, but not the work of an atomic bomb but some kind of atomic ray emanating from the Earth's sleeping satellite.  As Cody and his indefatigable team have been working on an experimental rocket ship capable of achieving a lunar landing, they are tasked with discovering the root cause of this extraterrestrial terrorism.  Strapping himself into his trusty leather coat, backpack and helm ensemble, Cody traces the location of the latest incident - the destruction of a governmental supply train - and is able to examine the ray gun responsible for America's entry into the Star Wars (no, not Ronald Raygun).

Rocketing in their space-age rocket ship from Earth to the moon (via intra-lunar space that is conspicuously bright and starless, just like the sky), the team discover the lunar city ruled by the malevolent Retik, monarch of the moon (Roy Barcroft), who reveals that these incursions have been but a softening up of the Earth's (for which read 'America's') defences in preparation for an invasion.  Pulling his trusty revolver from his belt, Cody is outmatched by Retik's atomic disintegrator gun...

To be continued...