CAPTAIN VIDEO

By: BRIAN THOMAS
Review Date: Monday, October 03, 2005

At the dawn of the Video Age in the late 1940s, a pioneering little network called Dumont had a number of hit programs, but their main innovation came in the form of a daily science fiction adventure show. Broadcast live from New York, CAPTAIN VIDEO & HIS VIDEO RANGERS was an immediate sensation, despite the fact that the heroic Captain and his sidekick Video Ranger did most of their adventuring in front of cheap painted sets. Video was a sort of special science cop, using a variety of gadgets to fight criminals and supervillains. The Video Rangers got their name from the use of the "opticon scillometer", a television that allowed them to spy anywhere on Earth. This Big Brotherly aspect, as well as the fact that the Captain "asks no quarter and gives none" in his pursuit of evil, proved incredibly popular in the early years of McCarthyism. In addition, it allowed the producers the ability to fill time with footage from old serials and action pictures, as the Captain "checked in on" some of his agents. With TV rivals like BUCK ROGERS and SPACE PATROL popping up, Video was given a spaceship to expand his activities to repelling alien invaders. Evidence of VIDEO's popularity can be seen in the episode THE HONEYMOONERS (another Dumont show) in which Ed Norton is revealed as a loyal Video Ranger.



Merchandising was rampant, and it must have been inevitable that an offer would come to bring Captain Video to the theater screen, though no program from the upstart medium television had yet to invade the movies. Columbia Pictures bought the rights to make a 15-chapter serial based on the series. With stars Al Hodge and Don Hastings still at work every day on the live show, the lead roles went to Judd Holdren and Larry Stewart. Since they never took off their helmets, it's doubtful that any youngsters in the audience noticed the difference.




By all accounts (only a few kinescopes of the show survive), the serial is very faithful to the TV show, only expanded greatly to include a lot of terrific action and special effects orchestrated by veteran serial directors Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace Grissell.



We join the Captain and Video Ranger (other Rangers were given names, but never these two) in their mountaintop headquarters as they peep in electronically on a gang of saboteurs plotting to blow up a road. Breaking up the gang, our heroes learn that the men were hired on for the job by a mysterious group called Station X, who are in fact working as the vanguard for invaders from another planet. The mastermind behind Station X is secretly a Video Rangers associate named Doctor Tobor (George Eldredge), who has struck a deal with the beefy tyrant Vultura (beefy Gene Roth) of the Planet Atoma. Midway through the chapterplay, our heroes' adventures take them to Atoma for a time, but for the most part the action stays close to home. This is doubtless because of another innovation all scenes taking place on other worlds are tinted in monochrome colors. Atoma footage is in red, while another planet is green, adding a surprising degree of atmosphere and extra production value via a simple trick. Nevertheless, Columbia saved some tinting money by keeping these scenes to a minimum.



As serials go, CAPTAIN VIDEO doesn't offer up much variation from others of its type. There's the same cycle of chases, ambushes, captures, escapes and fights. There's also the usual recap episode in which Video reports on the whole story so far to a superior. Even the odd spying angle, with the Rangers able to look in on anybody they want in the name of national security, isn't used that much, and is somewhat offset by having Tobor constantly listening in on Ranger HQ with hidden microphones. But the serial is fast paced and full of action, which is all that was required of serials. Plus, the story is packed with one crazy gadget after another, as both sides wield

cosmic vibrators, paralysis rays, invisibility cloaks, and heat rays on each other.



VCI, more devoted to serials than most labels, gives the program a fine transfer, with only some minor warping in one chapter that may well be a part of the original print. To discourage bootleggers, the VCI logo sometimes appears in the lower right corner of the screen, but not often enough to cause a distraction. Disc one includes a fine selection of trailers for other VCI serials, and an informative essay is on a folded insert.



Copyright © 2005 Brian Thomas, author of the massive book VideoHound's DRAGON: ASIAN ACTION & CULT FLICKS.

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