THE PERILS OF PAULINE (1933 serial)

My latest serial binge watch was the 1933 version of The Perils Of Pauline, which other than the title has nothing to do with the original 1914 serial.

The silent Perils Of Pauline is what marketeers call a category definer, and along with Flash Gordon doubtlessly the most famous serial character of all time.

Proof of that is two movies made under that title (1947 and 1967), and a character based on her (mashed up with Natalie Wood’s Maggie Dubois from The Great Race) in the 1968 animated show Wacky Races was spun off into her own vintage serial flavored The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop the next year.

The 1933 version has nothing to do with any of the others beyond the main character sharing the same first name.  It is a strong entry in Universal’s serial slate, and more than any other serial gives one a feel for pulp fiction of the era, but while it fully captures their flavor it unfortunately also incorporates more than a few of their flaws.

The plot is your basic white-people-are-justified-taking-natives-stuff-cuz-they-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-it story, jam packed with felonious archeologists and great white hunters.  It’s not rabidly racist as many productions of that era are but it sure is packed to the gills with patronizing attitudes.

If you can recognize that and live with it as an artifact of the era, you might enjoy The Perils Of Pauline.  If you can’t, you’re better off avoiding it.

Evalyn Knapp is our erstwhile Pauline, daughter of Professor Hargraves (James Durking), a polymath who wants to assemble an ancient disc that will reveal a deadly new form of gas because…well, that point’s kinda muddled, let’s just say to keep wily Eurasian Doctor Bashran (John Davidson, delivering an exceptionally fine performance) from weaponizing it to terrorize the world.  She’s joined on her adventures by Robert Allen as Robert Warde and comedian Sonny Ray as Willie Dodge, one of the few comic sidekicks who actually manages to generate a few genuine laughs (a running gag has him turning in his resignation at the height of danger, then being asked, “You want to go out into that?”).  Frank Lackteen rounds out the cast as Fang, Bashran’s chief henchman.

Directed by Ray Taylor off of an original story by Charles Goddard and scripted by Basil Dickey, Jack Foley, Ella O'Neill, and George H. Plympton (Goddard and Dickey had worked as writers on the original 1914 Perils Of Pauline serial), it offers a more substantial albeit still somewhat derivative plot than most serials.  

Thanks to Universal’s larger budgets, copious stock footage and newsreel resources, and left over sets and costumes from big budget productions, their serials tended to have much better production values and performances.  Cinematographer Richard Fryer does some really great, moody work, giving The Perils Of Pauline a more glossy look than most chapter plays.

The story starts in China during a revolution, moves to Malaysia, pops over to India, finds a clue that leads them back to New York City where a museum houses an ancient Egyptian artifact, and finally ends up in a country estate for a surprisingly low key climax.  Universal’s editors threw in lots of newsreel and stock footage to pad the production out, the best of it (such as two native tribes warring against each other or newsreel footage of a spectacular waterfront warehouse fire) expertly fitted into the story line, but they also took the lazy way out and populated their Malaysian and Indian jungles with tigers, warthogs, leopards, boa constrictors, gorillas, and hippopotamuses!

It’s the kind of story where our heroes get saved from hostile natives by the fortuitous arrival of a great white hunter who just happens to be close friends with the hero, wild animals attack whenever the story sags, and immediately after arriving in NYC in a classic Dornier flying boat our heroes -- rather than rush straight to the museum where the last clue is held -- leisurely don furs, top hats, and tails to arrive at the museum after it’s closed, simply asked to be let in, and the guards dutifully admit them!

The museum scene also features Sonny Ray using a gag the Three Stooges would duplicate later:  He falls into a trough of wet plaster and emerges as a ghost-like apparition, scaring off some of the baddies.

Also, depending on who’s writing a particular chapter, Pauline can either shrink against the wall screaming in terror at a threat or dive in fists swinging.  Since the original 1914 serial was about a young heiress pointedly rebelling against the restrictions on women of that era and wanting to experience some adventure in her life before settling down, this contrasts with Pearl White’s spunky performance.

The 1933 story also has some strong points.  Dr. Bashran may be a villain, but he’s not a bad guy.  He runs a tight crew, cares about those working for him, makes and honors alliances with locals, and never vents his rage at his team when they fail but simply says they’ll have to try again.  Small wonder they stick by him through thick or thin.

In one scene he employs a female spy to sneak into Pauline’s room and steal the ancient disc everybody wants.  Pauline catches her in the act, and the spy drops the disc down the front of her low cut evening gown.  Pauline reaches in after it all the way down to the spy’s naval, which is something we’d never see in a serial again after the Hays Code came into effect.

Action is so-so and varies.  Universal serials never mastered screen fights the way Republic did, and too often the cliffhangers end in cheats, such as when Pauline tumbles downstairs with an exploding boobytrap that luckily doesn’t kill her.

As stated, it’s a good, almost opulent looking serial that unfortunately hasn’t aged well in key aspects, but if you can get past the “white man’s burden” background racism you might enjoy it.  Recommended with that caveat.

For completion sake, The Perils Of Pauline (1947) starred Betty Hutton in a raucous but mediocre mock bio pic of Pearl White, while The Perils Of Pauline (1967) attempted to build off starlet Pamela Austin’s 15 minutes of fame as “The Dodge Rebellion Girl” (who appeared in a series of cliffhanger-like commercials).  They aimed for high camp ala TV’s Batman and widely missed the mark.

© Buzz Dixon