Radar Men from the Moon (1952)

One of serial king, Fred Brannon's later efforts in which he was forced to make do with an extremely bottom-rung budget. Despite some wonderful explosions and other rescued-from-the-archives special effects work by the Lydeckers, nearly all of the cliff-hangers are of the hero-jumps- out-of-car-just-before-it-plunges-over-cliff variety. Production values are so minimal in fact, they are even insufficient to pad out the feature cut-down, "Retik, the Moon Menace", without endlessly repeating the same shots or the same sets. Perhaps, the feature film needs to be cut down even further, though as it is, the continuity is rather jerky. At least the non-action scenes with their comic strip dialogue exchanges are bustled through at a great pace... I must admit the heroine is mildly attractive, though the rest of the cast is pretty wet. Roy Barcroft's scenes look as if they were all filmed in a couple of days and then judiciously interspersed throughout the film. Understandably, he can do little with the title role of Retik.

The movie theater serial "Radar Men from the Moon" is a 12 episode action series, each episode of which lasts about 10 minutes I think. The basic plot is that a dying civilization on the moon wishes to take over the Earth, so they begin their preparations by sending a small advance guard to cause mayhem on our planet before the full-scale invasion. The US government assigns Captain Cody and his rocket pack to stop the evil henchmen before they can proceed further.The dialog is kept to a minimum since this is an action series intended for the 7 to 13 year old crowd (those children are in their late 60s to early 70s now - scary thought) and it is pretty much one action scene after another. The cliffhangers at the end of each episode are miraculously resolved at the beginning of the next episode as the hero Commander Cody works a plan to outwit the moonmen and their evil earthling co-conspirators. Overall not a bad adventure series actually in my opinion, considering the limited budget and the limits on special effects at the time... they certainly didn't have computer graphics to insert back then.But why "Radarmen" in the title? I don't remember seeing any radars. There are some ray guns and moonmen and spaceships and rocketpacks, but no radars. Hmmm... go figure.

This first Commando Cody adventure ain't bad, but the rocket suit, and most of the flying footage, was straight from Republic's first rocket suit serial, King of the Rocket Men (1949), usually considered the last of the great classic serials. Everything good in Radar Men (and there's plenty that's good) is better in Rocket Men! Please see it! The hero and villain have more personality, the action is more hard-hitting and extreme, the plot is more focused, and - perhaps most importantly - there is much mystery and subterfuge. In Rocket Men, our hero must keep his identity secret - no one knows it's him in that suit. And the villain too has a secret identity - we see him only in silhouette. Here, in Radar Men, everybody knows who everybody else is. Enjoy Radar Men (I know I did), but first, enjoy Rocket Men!

From my review to The Rocketeer (1991): This serial made an easy transition to television, and was played every Saturday - some years every day - on television throughout the early 1960s. I sat glued whenever it was on. Commando Cody actually did look like he was flying! - But more importantly, being the last of the great serial heroes, his writers had learned from previous mistakes, not to let Cody or his friends - or his enemies - do any much talking. The serial was just one fist-fight, shoot-em-up-explosion after another; but, what made this important is that Cody thus had no time to doubt, to question, even to pose - he had to take decisive action at every minute - and he did! - this was no typical wimp (which by the mid-'60s were cluttering up comics, books, and films), this was a Man Of Action! And the second I recall ever seeing from popular culture (after Eliot Ness in the Untouchables).Accept no imitations.