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 Genre: Movie
Theater Serial (1952, B&W)
Overview: Commando Cody
in Radar Men From the Moon is a traditional serial, one
of the last in the style that existed for many years before the
advent of television caused its demise. Basically, these
serial were shown in movie theaters on Saturdays, one chapter a
week, for twelve or more weeks. And then another twelve or
more part
serial would start the following week and also run on for so
many weeks until its conclusion. The serials were action-packed and
each chapter would usually end on a scene of the hero in peril, a cliffhanger, only to be
resolved in the following week’s chapter. This particular
serial, Radar Men From
the Moon, is actually the second serial of Republic Pictures’
“Rocketman” series. The first serial in this
series was King of the Rocketmen in 1949. That
serial, though, featured a Rocketman character named Jeff King
– it didn’t star Commando Cody or his team. However, the
Rocketman flying special effect would be recycled for the rest
of the “Rocketman” serials.  Three years later,
in 1952, Radar Men From the Moon was the second
“Rocketman” serial, and it introduced the character of
Commando Cody, played here by George Wallace. Later, the
same year, the final Rocketman serial was released, called Zombies of the
Stratosphere,
and it starred Judd Holdren as Larry Martin, although the
character was essential Cody again. This marked the end of
the Rocketman serials, but Commando Cody would reappear again as
the Rocketman on his own TV show called Commando Cody, Sky Marshall of the
Universe, and would be
played this time by Judd Holdren. This switch from serials
to TV occurred at basically the same time that the
traditional movie serials died out as television began to take
hold in the early 1950s. Although they died out, these movie serials, like
Radar Men From the Moon, were and still are
the influence behind a lot of the big blockbuster movies of our
generation, such as the Star Wars series and the Indiana Jones
movies, proving that the cliffhanger still continues to appeal to modern audiences.
Video Links: Due to the fact that
this serial is in the Public Domain, Radar Men From the Moon
can actually be viewed on the Internet via streamed video. Here are a couple of
links that have this serial for viewing:
 Don’s Review: On its own, Commando
Cody is a fun action-packed, though very dated, cliff-hanger
serial. Watching it actually gave me a ting of nostalgia
for the times that this serial was made, even though it was long
before I was even born! The segments of the serial seen on MST vary little in quality
from chapter-to-chapter, but were featured in a crucial stage of the
show’s development. So watching the 8½ chapters featured on MST really
illustrates the maturing of the show from the laid-back show, as
it seemed to be early in Season One, to the well-written show
with fast-paced humor that MST later became. It’s really
amazing to see how much better the riffing gets as the serial
progresses, because by the end of Season One, the show was
really shaping into the form it would take for the rest of its
run.
Synopsis: Commando Cody in Radar
Men From the Moon was originally seen in twelve chapters, shown
over the same number of weeks. MST only featured the first
nine of these chapter (and cut off the ninth prematurely), but
this basic synopsis will continue through the rest of the serial’s
chapters for completeness sake.
- Chapter One: Moon Rocket. A mysterious attack razes an oilfield, leaving reserve oil supplies depleted.
And power transmission lines are destroyed in another attack, crippling the power supply. A mysterious explosion also destroys an office building.
Commando Cody and his team of Joan and Ted have developed a rocketship, and so the government plans to use it to combat the wave of destruction, which is of atomic origin.
The government believes that the atomic rays originated from the Moon, so they want Commando Cody and his team to fly there and investigate.
Meanwhile, some bad men with an atomic ray gun in a truck use the ray gun to derail a train.
Hearing the report, Commando Cody takes off in his jet pack to search for the truck.
The bad men are waiting for a troop train to arrive so they can blast it, but before they can do that, Commando Cody arrives and they have a shoot-out.
Commando Cody succeeds in chasing the two men off and capturing the raygun.
So the Moon men whom the bad men work for then send the two to
Cody’s lab to retrieve the raygun. At Cody’s lab, a fight breaks out, and the two bad men succeed in knocking out both Cody and Ted.
The bad men “take” the ray gun back (Note: plot-wise they do, but due to a blooper, they actually leave it behind).
Cody and his team proceed with their plans to travel to the moon, so they take off in their new rocketship and land not far from a classical city on the Moon.
Cody flies to this city using his rocket pack and, after landing, is instructed by a voice to enter a building.
Inside a lab in the building, Cody meets
Retik, the leader of the Moon men. Retik tells Cody that the reason for the mysterious attacks on Earth is to disrupt things in preparation for a coming invasion of the Moon men.
Cody starts a fight with the Moon men to try to escape, but is apparently killed by a blast from
Retik’s atomic ray pistol. Next Week, Chapter Two: Molten Terror.
(Don’s MST Rating:  )
- Chapter Two: Molten Terror. “Commando Cody fights the moon men in an effort to escape
Retik, who plans to disintegrate him with a ray-pistol blast.”
But Cody ducks behind a chair immediately before the blast, escapes the room and
then uses his rocket pack to return to the rocketship.
Cody tells the rest of his team about
Retik’s plans, so Cody and Ted make plans to go out and use Nitrous Oxide to knock out the Moon men so they can steal a raygun from
Retik’s lab. Cody leaves Ted about halfway between the rocketship and the city, and flies to
Retik’s lab. Outside the
lab, Cody feeds the N.O. into the ventilation system.
However, inside the lab, Retik uses an oxygen tank to keep from passing
out. When Cody enters to try to take the raygun, Retik and his assistant attack him.
Cody is able to knock both of the Moon men out and steal the heavy raygun.
Because the ray gun is too heavy for Cody to fly, he lugs it back
on-foot to where Ted is waiting. But the recovered Retik sends out a Moon tank to intercept Cody and retrieve the raygun.
The Moon tank catches up to Cody and Ted, so the two take refuge inside a cave.
The moon men in the tank use their raygun to melt the rocks of the cliff above the cave, and the molten rocks trap Cody and Ted, who
must abandon the heavy captured raygun, and retreat to the back of the cave with no place to run.
Next week, Chapter Three: Bridge of Death.
(Don’s MST Rating: )
- Chapter Three: Bridge of Death. “Command Cody and Ted are trapped in a cave by the moon men, who use their ray-gun to melt the rock walls.”
Cody and Ted, trapped in the back of the cave, succeed in finding another tunnel out, through which they escape.
Outside, Cody and Ted attack the Moon Tank with hand grenades, causing the tank to retreat.
Cody and Ted return to the rocketship and, there, the team makes plans to return to Earth with the news about the planned lunar invasion.
A Moon man scout spots
Cody’s rocketship and radios back
its location. Cody uses his rocket pack to fly out and attack the scout, who falls off a cliff to his death.
But he was too late, so a Moon Tank is sent out by Retik to intercept and
try to destroy the Earth rocketship. As the rocketship is taking off, the
Moon Tank attacks and causes minor damage, but the rocketship is about to get away.
So Retik radios his cohorts on Earth to intercept the rocketship as it lands and blow it up with dynamite.
The two bad men collaborators are sent out to do this, but end up in a shoot-out with the police officers waiting for the
rocketship to arrive. So the bad men flee in their car and Cody pursues them in another car.
The bad men put their dynamite bomb on a bridge, and it blows up as
Cody’s car is crossing, causing the car to go off the side of the bridge.
Next week, Chapter Four: Flight to Destruction.
(Don’s MST Rating: )
- Chapter Four: Flight to Destruction. “Commando Cody pursues Daly and Graber who, on
Krog’s orders, attempted to bomb the Rocket-ship on its return from the moon.”
Graber and Daly put a dynamite bomb on a bridge, but Cody sees the bomb and jumps out of his car before it explodes, sending his car over the side.
Back at
Cody’s lab, he is telling the G-man Henderson about the planned lunar attack.
Cody suggests rounding up the gang of Moon collaborators currently on Earth.
Meanwhile, Graber and Daly want more money from Krog to build another ray-gun.
But Krog threatens them and tells them to resume their previous career of bank robberies to finance the operation.
So Graber , with three other cohorts, attempt to rob a bank.
But the robbery goes wrong and the three cohorts are all killed, with only Graber getting away.
So now to get money they need, Graber and Krog come up with a plan to kidnap Cody and hold him for $100,000 ransom.
Graber and Daly show up at
Cody’s lab looking for the Commando who isn’t there, and a fight breaks out between them and Ted and Joan.
After knocking out Ted, the two instead take Joan hostage and leave.
They take Joan to a waiting airplane and it takes off.
Cody hears a report about the plane and takes off in pursuit in his rocket suit.
The flying Cody has a shoot-out with the pilot of the plane, who then knocks out Joan, disables the plane and jumps out in a parachute.
Cody lands on the plane and get inside, but the controls are wrecked and the plane crashes into the ground.
Next Week, Chapter Five: Murder Car.
(Don’s MST Rating:  )
- Chapter Five: Murder Car. “Commando Cody uses his flying suit to overtake Graber, who has kidnapped Joan and plans to hold her for random.”
After Cody boards the disabled airplane, he finds a parachute for Joan, and they both jump out before the plane crashes.
After making sure Joan is okay, Cody takes off to look for Graber.
Meanwhile, after parachuting down, Graber succeeds in hitching a ride from a passing car.
Graber sees the pursuing Cody flying behind in his rocket suit, so Graber begins to shoot at Cody and succeeds in hitting the rocket pack, which brings Cody down in some bushes.
Krog radios Retik on the Moon about the failure to kidnap Cody for funds to continue the disruption operation.
The Moon men threaten Graber and Daly to produce the needed
funds, so Graber comes up with a plan to pull a payroll heist.
The heist is successful, but the police pursue the escaping men.
So that they
aren’t caught with the stolen money, Graber throws the payroll out the window where they can pick it up later.
The police shoot out the tire and the car goes off the road.
Cody identifies the captured Graber, but
can’t question him until he is moved to a sanitarium, to avoid causing a public panic.
But Krog makes plans to break Graber out by intercepting the transfer truck, which is an ambulance.
The break-out plan succeeds, but Cody and Ted are on their way to intercept in
Cody’s car. Graber leaves in an escape car, but instructs one of his men to continue on in the transfer ambulance until he can ditch it.
When this man sees
Cody’s car, he jumps out and the ambulance crashes into
Cody’s car,
causing both vehicles to fall off a cliff. Next week, Chapter Six: Hills of Death.
(Don’s MST Rating:
)
- Chapter Six: Hills of Death. “Commando Cody and Ted try to intercept Graber, unaware that Daly has been ordered to crash the stolen ambulance into them.”
Daly succeeds in crash into
Cody’s car, but Cody and Ted bail out of their car just before the ambulance hits.
Meanwhile, Graber and his other man retrieve the payoff from the side of the road and get in to
Krog, so they no can continue with their disruption plans.
Retik radios Krog and instructs him to set off an atom bomb inside a volcano in order to cause atmospheric disruptions.
The two henchmen drop the atomic bomb in the crater and the explosion succeeds in causing earthquakes and storms, as well as a flood.
Cody and tem suspect that the Moon collaborators caused the eruption and Cody finds the airport from which they chartered the plane used to drop the bomb.
So Cody goes to the airport and gets a lead that Graber likes to hang out at a place called
Al’s Cafe. At the cafe, Cody and Ted run into Graber and his men and a fight breaks out.
Graber takes Ted hostage and leave. While in
Graber’s car, though, Ted is able to escape by jumping out.
Without a hostage and in a recognizable car, Graber and cohorts decide to hide out on a mountain until Krog can send another car to pick them up.
Ted calls Cody and tells him where Graber was heading, so Cody flies to the mountain in his rocket pack looks for the bad guys.
Cody finds the men waiting for their getaway car to arrive.
A gun shootout results and the bad men run up into the rocky hills to hide.
Cody pursues on foot and corners Daly on a cliff. But the hidden Graber throws a large rock, hitting Cody and causing him to fall off the cliff.
Next week, Chapter Seven: Camouflaged Destruction.
(Don’s MST Rating:
)
- Chapter Seven: Camouflaged Destruction. “Commando Cody learns that Graber and Daly are on Clark Mountain, and goes there in an attempt to capture them.”
Cody corners Daly on a cliff, but a rock thrown by Graber knocks Cody off the edge.
The falling Cody, though, is able to start his rocket pack just before hitting the ground.
Cody
can’t find the escaped Graber and Daly, so he returns to his lab, where Ted and Joan are waiting.
Cody decides to visit
Al’s Cafe again to see if he can dig up another lead to Graber.
Cody meets a mechanic there who referred Graber to a repair shop called
Benson’s, so Cody goes to investigate. Meanwhile, Krog informs Retik that they have another raygun ready and plan to use it to destroy troop trains.
Graber must go to the
mechanic’s shop to pick up the truck that will hold the raygun.
At the
mechanic’s shop, Cody is investigating the truck when Graber and Daly show up and hold him at gunpoint.
A fight breaks out and Graber and Daly take off in the truck and get away.
Back at his lab, Cody figures out that the truck is intended to hold a raygun, so he sends Ted out to standby in an airplane so he can take off and hunt down the truck when it is located.
Word comes of a raygun attack on a troop train, so Joan radios Ted to take off in the plane while Cody flies there in his rocket suit.
When the bad guys in the truck see Cody flying in, Daly begins to shoot at the flying Cody with a rifle.
So Cody veers off and joins Ted in the airplane. Cody and Ted then start to drop small bombs over the truck, but miss.
The bombs cause Graber and Daly to stop the truck and try to blast the plane with the raygun in the back.
The first raygun blast misses, but the second one destroys the plane.
Next week, Chapter Eight: The Enemy Planet.
(Don’s MST Rating:
 )
- Chapter Eight: The Enemy Planet. “Graber and Daly try to shoot down Commando and Ted, who locate them as they use the raygun against troop trains.”
As Graber and Daly prepare to blast Cody and
Ted’s airplane, the two men bail out just before the blast destroys the plane.
Due to their disadvantage in fighting against the Moon rayguns, Cody plans another trip to the Moon to acquire
Lunarium, so the Earth can also use this rare substance to build rayguns in defense.
Cody, Ted, Joan, and the rocket pilot Hank fly to the Moon again in the rocketship and, as before, land in the same canyon just outside the Moon City.
Cody takes off in his rocket pack to try to capture a Moon man for information.
Flying around, he sees a Moon man, who he then surprises and takes prisoner. The Moon man tells Cody the location of the
Lunarium. So Cody goes undercover in the Moon man’s spacesuit to infiltrate the Moon City, while Ted puts on the rocket pack.
Cody and Ted succeed at finding the
Lunarium, but have the hide when a Moon tank shows up.
While the tank driver is out reporting in, Cody and Ted steal the tank to help them transport the heavy Lunarium back to the rocketship.
When the tank driver sees that his tank has been stolen, another tank is called in to pursue.
After the pursuing tank blasts at them, Cody and Ted take refuge by driving their damaged tank behind a large rock for cover.
While Ted takes off in the rocket suit to attack the other tank, Cody stays behind to repair damage caused by earlier blast.
But the shock wave from another blast knocks Cody out and separates the oxygen line in his spacesuit.
Next week, Chapter Nine: Battle in the Stratosphere.
(Don’s MST Rating:
)
- Chapter Nine: Battle of the Stratosphere. “Commando uses the captured Moon
Man’s uniform to get the Lunarium and, with Ted, tries to escape with it from the pursuing Moon guards.”
After the blast knocks
Cody’s air line off, Ted returns from attacking the other tank with grenades and is able to reattach
Cody’s air line before it’s too late. Ted goes back out to hold off the Moon men in the other tank while the recovered Cody continues with repairs.
The repairs completed, Cody and Ted get away from the Moon men and return to the rocketship.
While Cody goes to ditch the stolen Moon tank, Ted takes the Lunarium aboard and prepares to take off.
The rocketship takes off with the captured Moon man still onboard as a prisoner.
<THE MST VERSION ENDS HERE> [But the Moon man prisoner attacks the other during this takeoff and in the scuffle, the Moon man prisoner is killed. The rocketship then begins the return to Earth.
Meanwhile, Retik radios Krog and instructs him to send out men to destroy the rocketship on landing to prevent the Lunarium from being using in defense against the lunar invasion.
So Graber and Daly go out and fire a raygun blast at the landing rocketship.
Cody tells Hank the pilot
to take the rocketship out the raygun’s range while he flies down in his rocket pack to deal with Graber.
But Daly is able to shoot down the flying Cody with a regular gun.
So Graber and Daly prepare to blast at the rocketship again, when the downed Cody begins shooting at them.
Graber and Daly blast the cliff above
Cody’s location, causing an avalanche on top of him.
Next week, Chapter Ten: Mass Execution.]
(Don’s MST Rating:
)
- [Chapter Ten: Mass Execution. “Commando Cody tries to stop Graber and Daly from destroying the rocketship as it lands after its trip to the moon.”
Graber and Daly use the raygun to cause an avalanche to fall on Cody, but he is able to take shelter before the rocks come down.
Meanwhile, the rocketship has successfully landed while they were preoccupied with Cody, so Graber and Daly leave.
With the news of the failure to destroy the rocketship, Krog radios a disappointed
Retik, who decides to come to Earth himself to ensure that the preparations for the invasion go well.
But he instructs Krog to eliminate Cody and his team before he arrives on Earth.
So, while Cody is at his lab giving a report on what happened on this most recent trip to the Moon to the government man Henderson, Graber and Daly block the door and then use the ventilation system to fill
Cody’s lab with deadly gas. Next week, Chapter Eleven: Planned Pursuit.]
(Don’s MST Rating: N/A)
- [Chapter Eleven: Planned Pursuit. “Commando, Joan, and Henderson are trapped in the laboratory by Graber and Daly, who flood the ventilation system with deadly gas.”
Before passing out from the gas, Cody sets off the fire alarm.
This alerts a passing cop, who unblocks and opens the door and pulls the three out of the lab to safety.
The recovered Cody and Joan then take the
cop’s car and pursue the fleeing Graber and Daly. Both Graber and Daly (as well as Cody and Joan for being in a police car) are then captured by the cops after a chase.
But Cody instructs the police to release Graber and Daly so he can tail them back to the secret Moon base.
Cody, in his rocket suit, follows the men to a mine entrance, in which he sees Krog along with Graber and Daly.
A fight breaks out in which Krog is killed and Cody is apparently electrocuted while Retik is able to listen in on the radio.
Next Week, Last Chapter: Death of the Moon Men.]
(Don’s MST Rating: N/A)
- [Last Chapter: Death of the Moon Men. “Retik arrives from the Moon and listens in on the fight as Commando tries to capture
Krog, Daly, and Graber.” After the apparent electrocution of Cody, Retik radios Graber and Daly.
He tells them to still carry out the earlier orders from the now dead Krog to get extra men and trucks for the new rayguns.
Meanwhile, the unconscious Cody revives and returns to his lab.
Cody tells the government man Henderson to retrieve a raygun from
Krog’s cave while he and Ted scout around the area for the other Moon cohorts.
But then Al from
Al’s Cafe calls Cody and tells him that Graber is now there.
Cody and Ted go to the cafe and get the drop on Graber, Daly and two other men they were meeting there to recruit.
A fight breaks out, and these two new recruits run away.
Graber and Daly are able to knock out both Cody and Ted and escape in their car.
Cody and Ted pursue in their car and are able to shoot Daly, the driver, causing the car to go over a cliff, killing both Graber and Daly.
Cody and Ted then proceed to the location of the captured raygun from
Krog’s cave. They scout around and find another mine entrance.
Inside, they run into one of
Retik’s guards and a shootout results. The guard is shot and Cody arrives in the cave as Retik is taking off, trying to flee back to the Moon.
Cody and Ted exit the cave and return to the truck with the captured raygun.
Using the raygun, they shoot down
Retik’s rocketship, killing him and ending the invasion threat.
The serial ends in
Cody’s lab as plans are made to build even more
rocketships.]
(Don’s MST Rating: N/A)
Don’s Overall MST Rating:
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