Manhunt Of Mystery Island

Since I’ve reviewed / critiqued the other two Republic serials of 1945 (Federal Operator 99 and The Purple Monster Strikes), I might as well polish the year off with Manhunt Of Mystery Island.

In many ways this is the quintessential sound movie serial, the Baby Bear of all serials:  

Not too big, not too small.  
Not too polished, not too chintzy.  
Not too clever, not too dumb.  
Not too good, not too bad;
just right.

It's a variant of the earlier classic Republic serial, Daredevils Of The Red Circle: Gal & hero try to save her father from villain in disguise who is holding him hostage (in this case to make super weapons).

Written by pretty much the same team that wrote Federal Operator 99 (Albert DeMond, Basil Dickey, Jesse Duffy, Alan James, Grant Nelson, and Joseph Poland) and directed by the same trio of co-directors (Spencer Gordon Bennet, Yakima Canutt, and Wallace Grissell), it’s not quite as good as that serial but certainly a marked improvement over The Purple Monster Strikes.

It looks inexpensive and unfortunately does feature some cringe worthy dialog, 

Watching the chapters back-to-back, you notice how no one changes clothes day to day.  The characters keep coming back to the same secret lab / warehouse in almost every chapter no matter how many times it's booby trapped.  The exact same transformation clip is used every chapter. 

Offhand I'd say there's less than 10 minutes of original footage in any chapter after the first two.

Despite these shortcomings, I enjoy it.  It wrings a new twist on the old evil masked mastermind trope with the villain’s transformation machine physically changing him into an even more villainous ancestor, Captain Mephisto.

Roy Barcroft chews the scenery with great relish as Mephisto and I’m genuinely sorry nobody thought of a way of bringing him back -- perhaps in a prequel set in the golden age of piracy.  Linda Sterling has more to do than in The Purple Monster Strikes, and Richard Bailey proves he can take a punch with the best of ‘em as the hero, private eye Lance Reardon.

“Lance Reardon?!?!?”  Oh, fer da luvva mike… somebody had to sneak a joke past the censors (i.e., “lanced rear end”).  =groan=

Co-director Cannutt staged some really great action scenes for this, especially a running fight up a cliffside in one of the latter chapters.  

But Manhunt Of Mystery Island is sadly deficit in one key area, an area where all serial producers but especially Republic had problems.

The ending.

Manhunt Of Mystery Island ends with Mephisto and his henchman knocking Reardon out.  Mephisto says he’ll switch clothes with Readon then use the transformation machine to turn him into a copy of Mephisto while the original Mephisto turns back into Braley, his regular identity.

This seemingly works.  We see Reardon placed in the transformation machine, we cut to action outside the secret chamber, then we cut back to a somewhat stunned-looking Mephisto rising from the chamber and stumbling out, only to be shot by Linda Sterling.

But then Reardon emerges unharmed, explaining he woke up, knocked out Mephisto, then captured the remaining henchman.

Folks, that is a cheat.

If the audience didn’t see it, especially after all the other action in this serial, they were shortchanged.

And it leaves this great unanswered question:  How do we really know that’s Reardon?

Mephisto might have successfully switched clothes then decided to become Reardon instead of Braley to throw the law off.

Who could tell?

Now, this kind of ending works fine for Scanners or John Carpenter’s version of The Thing.

But it’s not the kind of ambiguity one wants to end a serial on.

Republic often had more problems with their endings than other studios, the steam running down as the last chapters wound up.

The big climax of Zombies Of The Stratosphere was Commando Cody flipping a switch off.

And when they did go for a big ending -- like the time they used the destruction of Manhattan from Deluge for the last chapter of King Of The Rocket Men -- it makes the hero look like a schmuck, allowing millions to be killed by failing to arrive on time.  (When Republic edited King Of The Rocket Men into a TV feature in the 1960s, they added a line of dialog where the mad scientist was only predicting what his death ray would do; shoulda thunk of that 20 years earlier, Republic.)

Despite the lackluster ending and several innovative ideas that never caught on (physical transformation, anachronistic villain, innovative exterior fight scenes), Manhunt Of Mystery Island proved solid enough entertainment.

1945 has been called the end of the golden age of movie serials and truth be told, nothing that came afterwards ever looked as good or felt as much fun.

Manhunt Of Mystery Island long sat on my list of must-see serials but it wasn’t until the last few years that I finally managed to track it down.  All in all I enjoyed it.  Not great but certainly tons o' fun!

© Buzz Dixon