Best movie ever!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Someone at Universal Studios got the bright idea to edit out all the cliffhanger chapter endings and re-release an old Buck Rogers serial as a feature film in 1953. The advances in science have rendered it laughable in those Cold War years, now the film is high camp.The original serial had the notion that a 20th century dirigible pilot and junior sidekick Buster Crabbe and Jackie Moran crash near the North Pole and their bodies are cryogenically frozen and thawed out by those who found them 500 years later which is about the same time that the Starship Enterprise was doing its thing. But this is not a Star Trek world that they've come back to. Although in the original Star Trek series in one of the comic episodes a humanoid people did take on the gangster culture from 20th century earth.In this film because we did not deal with the Al Capones and Lucky Lucianos back in the day as we should have, they're on top now and the boss of all bosses is a guy named Killer Kane played by Anthony Warde. Fortunately Crabbe and Moran fall into the hands of the Resistance who have holed up in a Hidden City. There are some other humans on Saturn and most of the film is devoted to making an alliance with them.Science Fiction as a film form does have a half life. Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov can write about the wonders of the future, but you can read it and use your imagination and a hundred, a thousand years from now it will adjust depending on how far humans advance. But once it's on film it stays. The Buck Rogers films are pretty laughable and campy for today, but I wonder what Gene Roddenberry's vision will look like a hundred years from now, just how much will he have gotten right?Tacked on is a prologue and epilogue of narration where a Cold War era message is hammered home. That too is a relic of the times.

After a 1938 airship mishap, our handsome hero and his young pal are buried in an avalanche; but, they employ an experimental gas to put themselves safely in suspended animation. "When Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe) and his sidekick Buddy (Jackie Moran) are aroused from centuries of cryogenic sleep, they are enlisted by Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) to save the world from the grasp of a tyrannical gangster named 'Killer Kane'. They travel to the planet Saturn to get some much needed help for their assignment, and then set out to deal with Kane and his villainous cohorts," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.This re-produced feature-length version of the fondly remembered 12-part serial "Buck Rogers" (1939) must have held up well for 1950s Saturday matinée and television audiences, due to its futuristic plot and imaginatively recycled sets. Apparently, the original chapters were edited down, with (brief) new work done on the opening and closing segments. "The planet Saturn" isn't as peculiar a setting as it might seem, if you consider they may be referring to "Saturn's planet Titan." No comment on the suggestion the place is populated with helpful Asians. The end brings Buck Rogers into the then popular anti-Communist fold.**** Planet Outlaws (1953) Ford Beebe ~ Buster Crabbe, Jackie Moran, Constance Moore, Anthony Warde

This is one of four feature version attempts made from the serial 'Buck Rogers' (1939). This one, released in 1953, in addition to condensing the story down to a trim 69 minutes, has an added prologue and epilogue filmed that year. The prologue narrator suggests that as the submarine, airplane and atomic bomb were written about years before they actually became a reality, so too will the existence of flying saucers be proved in the near future. What a non sequiter! He makes reference to the science-fiction writer (it was Cleve Cartmill) who was investigated by the FBI which thought that he had used classified information to write about the A-bomb years before it was created.Supposedly, this is the prologue to the story of Killer Kane and his quest to rule the Earth. Cut to the condensed archival footage of the 'Buck Rogers' serial, with Buster Crabbe, Jackie Moran, Constance Moore, Anthony Warde and C. Montague Shaw. Not much derives from the original story or comic strip-- Buck (Buster Crabbe) and Buddy (Jackie Moran) go into suspended animation and wake up 500 years in the future, where they meet Lt. Wilma Deering (Constance Moore). That's it. Very quickly they take sides with Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw) and 'The Hidden City' in its war against the tyrant Killer Kane (Anthony Warde). For some reason, in order to win the war they need to form an alliance with the government of Saturn, so our trio of heroes wind up going there three times. The alliance is made; they storm Kane's city, and he is turned into a mindless robot. The continuity is pretty good in condensing the story, but as a result, in several scenes we see things going on in the background that are never explained since so much from too many chapters has been skipped.Travel to the far future was a common trope in science fiction from H. G. Wells on, and the emphasis was usually on the contrast or differences between our time and that of the future. Here, in Buck's new 25th Century, we get anti gravity belts (from the original story), terrestrial spaceships that double as interstellar ones, a high speed tunnel car, a mind control device, and a funny triangular space gun. The best part for me was the great art deco sets of Killer Kane's city.Killer Kane just doesn't make it as an evil tyrant, since about all he does is stand around berating his council members for their incompetence, except when he tries to put the Robot Battalion coffee pot on Buck Rogers (deleted from the feature versions). I had this same reaction when I watched the entire serial. Anthony Warde didn't have a menacing enough tone of voice, but had more of a high pitched yell. He was better in other serials where he was not the lead villain. The 1953 epilogue narrator warns us of the rise of any future Killer Kane (an obvious reference to Joseph Stalin of Russia), and facing the camera says, "God bless America!"We get a lot of music from Max Steiner's great score for 'The Bride of Frankenstein' (1935), Buster Crabbe's winning personality and cheerful take charge attitude, and the great deco and recycled 'Flash Gordon' sets. It's too bad that neither this nor the original serial is very good. Unfortunately this squeezed down version moves so quickly and does so little that I can only give it a 3.

Final words from this edited version of the 1939 serial, as the added on narrator warns the viewers of the threat of evil dictators. In this case the one in the film is Killer Kane but was obviously a thinly veiled allusion to Hitler when the serial was originally made.The whole film is a grim allegory to the Nazi regime, right down to the mindless slave labour of Killer Kane's 'Robot Battalion,' fitted with a mind controlling helmet, they work till they die. A terrible reminder of the Nazi death camps.Re-edited and released again in 1953, with an introduction and voice-over to explain the plot, it now returns as a warning against the then perceived 'Red Menace' of Starlin's Russia.The editing is choppy at best but does get rid of a lot of the padding and recapping of the plot that make the old serials rather slow and boring to watch for today's modern audience. What we're left with is mainly the action which is somewhat simple by today's standards but was probably exciting at the time it was made.The whole film is as corny as a box of Kellogs and with Buster Crabbe in the lead role, this is really a Flash Gordon story in all but name. Playing Buck Rogers who finds himself suspended in time and reawakened in the 25th century, Crabbe's easy going charm helps carry things along. As he quickly acclimatizes to his new environment and leads Earth's forces against the named 'Planet Outlaws' led by the aforementioned, Killer Kane.It's strange viewing this from today's perspective, as in this future world there are no computers, mobile phones or even radar! The spaceship pilots have to look out the windows to see what's happening. Plus it seems the ships of the future only have one seat in them and everybody else stands. It all seems very primitive when compared to today's mega-budget special effects films but that's been rather unfair. This is more something to watch as a reminder of how it used to be and seen like that, it's quite enjoyable. Just don't expect too much!