Who remembers comic book character "Sarge Steel" with his steel fist and Luger?

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by Bill_in_fl

Just like the old t.v. and movie serials..

There was a theater just up the street from me, I can remember the old 20 minute serials. Batman was everyone's favorite, he drove a 1949 Ford and Batman actually carried (& used) a revolver. The entrance to the Batcave was thru an old grandfather clock (you set the hands to 12:00 to open the secret door in the clock) and the villain had his hideout in the middle of the Tunnel of Love (thugs getting in the little boat and riding thru the tunnel to get to the hideout). ...

I got the two Batman serials on DVD some years back but haven't played them through yet. Got as far as the villain's car changing color in mid-chase and the Batmobile/Ford flying off a cliff...

Also in the late 50's or early 60's, on Saturday afternoon, there was a TV show called "The Cliff Hanger Club" that played old serials...Flash Gordon, Batman, whatever...And Andy Devine had some show with Froggie The Gremlin (a rubber frog) that kept playing tricks on him..."Wave your magic twanger, Froggie!"...Or something like that...

[Bill_in_fl]

Originally Posted by sheepherder

There was a theater just up the street from me, I can remember the old 20 minute serials. Batman was everyone's favorite, he drove a 1949 Ford and Batman actually carried (& used) a revolver. The entrance to the Batcave was thru an old grandfather clock (you set the hands to 12:00 to open the secret door in the clock) and the villain had his hideout in the middle of the Tunnel of Love (thugs getting in the little boat and riding thru the tunnel to get to the hideout). ...

I got the two Batman serials on DVD some years back but haven't played them through yet. Got as far as the villain's car changing color in mid-chase and the Batmobile/Ford flying off a cliff...

Also in the late 50's or early 60's, on Saturday afternoon, there was a TV show called "The Cliff Hanger Club" that played old serials...Flash Gordon, Batman, whatever...And Andy Devine had some show with Froggie The Gremlin (a rubber frog) that kept playing tricks on him..."Wave your magic twanger, Froggie!"...Or something like that...

That is amazing that you have those two Batman serials from the 1940's....so do I! Only mine are on VHS tapes not DVD's like yours. There were two separate Batman serials both by Columbia pictures. The first serial was just called "Batman" (even though Robin was in it too) and was from 1943 and the other one was from 1949 and was called "Batman and Robin". The two separate serials used different actors for Batman and Robin. The first 1943 serial starred Lewis Wilson as the Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin. Famous character actor J. Carrol Naish (who also played many Asian characters in the 1940's....but he wasn't Asian!) was the bad Jap WW2 enemy villian and like you said, he had his enemy Jap lair hidden inside an old "Tunnel Of Love" carnival ride, gotta luv it. There were 15 chapters from Ch 1 "The Electrical Brain" to Ch 15 "The Doom of the rising sun". I'm reading off the jackets of my VHS copies right now.

Then in the second later 1949 Batman serial, Batman was played by Robert Lowery and Robin by Johnny Duncan with Lyle Talbot who I believe was in either the original Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, or the original Wolfman movies with Lon Chaney Jr. It also had 15 chapters from Ch 1 "Batman takes over" to Ch 15 "Batman Victorious".

The Batman's costume was a bit different between the two serials also. There were differences between the bat emblem on his chest as well as the ears of his cowl. I think his belt was different too. They were both a far cry from the costume worn by Adam West in the 1966 t.v. series as well as the later more modern Batman movies. Now I'm going to have to watch them all over again. I still have a working VCR believe it or not. Two of them actually and one is still hooked up to my modern t.v. along with my DVD player and cable box. I have quite a few old VHS tapes so I kept/keep the old VHS players.

I remember Tom Tyler as the 1940's serial "The Phantom" as well as him being in the 1940's serial "Captain Marvel" too. There was even a 1940's serial "Captain America" and like the serial Batman, he also used a revolver....but he didn't have that famous shield.

Those were the days huh? I remember as a very young little kid in the late '50's and very early '60's, I'd go to Whaley's open air vegetable market in Tampa with my mom, and I'd always go to the sawdust floor section where they kept their empty wooden crates they had for glass pop bottle returns. I'd search through the crates and find RC cola bottle caps down in the wooden crates and put them in a pickle jar, because if you got seven of them, you could use them for two kids (my sister and I) to get in free to the old Silver Springs theater in Tampa for Saturday morning kiddie matinee. I'd also scour the old 5 cent coke machines bucket that caught the caps from you decapping your pop drink for RC cola caps too.

Of course the get in free with bottle caps was a loss leader and like today the theater made their money off the snack bar. As we went into the theater, we'd get a free small paper bag with a few toy trinkets (like cracker jack box or cereal box toy trinkets) with a couple of pieces of candy or bubble gum, but yeah, mom always gave us a dime or two to get popcorn and sometimes a soda or we'd just drink from the water fountain. Mom would take us to the theater in our old (newer then) '54 or '55 Ford sedan (we had both). The matinee fare was usually a few cartoons and my favorite was "Mighty Mouse" ("Here I come to save the day! Mighty Mouse is on his wayyyy!" He was a flying costumed "Superman" type mouse who would turn super and in costume and cape when he ate cheese just like Popeye did when he ate spinach....for youngsters who don't know who Mighty Mouse was), then maybe an old serial or newsreel, followed by the main feature like say..."The three Stooges go to the moon" or maybe an old cowboy movie or maybe an old Laurel and Hardy movie. Most of which were 10 to 20 years old even back then! Lol. But we were kids and we loved it old stuff or not. Hey, we had got in free! Then mom would pick us up or we'd walk the couple of miles home.

Sheephearder, like you, I also remember Andy Devine (with his hoarse voice) on early t.v. and "Froggie" his gremlin, all us kids liked that one. We had a local t.v. show on Channel 13 in the late '50's in Tampa called "3D Danny" who was a spaceman with a robot and used the crew and announcers already working at the station for the show....which had rudimentary sets and NO budget Lol. That was back when t.v. was all live and shows hadn't started being recorded yet. Lots of funny mistakes were made in those live t.v. days. In the mid to late '60's channel 13 also had a teenage Frankenstein character called "Shock Armstrong the all American Ghoul" played by another announcer at the station. "Shock" had a full head cover Frankenstein mask and wore a number 13 "All American" football jersey and rose up out of his coffin as the show started to crashes of lightening and the howling of wolves, and his room was in the attic and he would shoot a howitzer at his neighbor and blow him up when he complained of the noise Shock Armstrong was making and Shock would also throw a hand grenade downstairs to make his mom scream when she got onto him about something. That wouldn't play today but it was great fun and he was a great creature feature host many years before Dr. Paul Bearer or Elvira became creature feature t.v. hosts.


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