Serial Time - TERRY AND THE PIRATES (1940)

At least once a year I dive into an old serial that I've never seen before. There's still quite a number out there that I haven’t watched and after stumbling across an illegal copy of the Columbia serial Terry and the Pirates (1940) in a stack of DVD-Rs, it got shifted to the top of the ‘watch’ pile.

This is an adaptation of the Milton Caniff comic strip of the same name. I don't know anything about the strip so I can't tell you if this is a serial that wraps itself around its subject matter effectively as an adaptation or whether it takes the basic idea or the characters of the source material and kind of shoves them into the serial format. I do know from the Wikipedia entry about this production that Mr. Caniff was not pleased. He is quoted from his autobiography as saying “ I saw the first chapter and walked out screaming.”

Regardless I'm three chapters in to Terry and the Pirates and so far, it's not too bad. It's not great but it's not an embarrassment and therefore it hits that sweet spot that I need classic cereals to land in. It also has the classic family structure that for me was cemented into place by the Jonny Quest cartoon series of the 1960s. You have the scientific father, the young son striving to be just as incredible as his dad and the macho badass pseudo father who is also the constant companion and protector of the young boy. If they had a dog you just might as well call it the Quest Family Adventures.

The most interesting thing so far is that the father character has proven to be a very action-oriented character. He has not been the kind of weak lamb scientist who has to be saved by the strong protector character or by the actions of his overly energetic son. Dr. Lee has often initiated fisticuffs and other types of violence when the villains have threatened him in some way. This is a nice switch from this type of character normally being a kind of male Damsel in Distress. But I have to say I was fairly annoyed by the serial until the third chapter because of the characterization of Terry. His incredibly irritating optimism and giant toothy smile served just to get on my nerves most of the time. That is until he became a take-charge ass-kicker in the third chapter and suddenly turned me around on him and the whole serial. Terry was involved in an extended fistfight that was a perfect example of the kind of sequence these short chapters were built to showcase. If he stays in this mode for the remainder of the run I'm going to turn into a major fan.

I think I also need to track down some of the comic strips see how they compare to this adventure on screen. Certainly, Milton Caniff deserves to have his creation evaluated from an example of his actual work.