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THE CRIMSON GHOSTakaCYCLOTRODE X
Rating:  ½
USA. 1946.
Directors – Fred C. Brannon & William Witney, Screenplay – Alfred De Mond, Basil Dickey, Jesse Duffy & Sol Shor, Producer – Ronald Davidson, Photography (b&w) – Bud Thackery. Production Company – Republic.
Cast:
Charles Quigley (Duncan Richards), Linda Stirling (Diana Farnsworth), Bud Geary (The Crimson Ghost), I. Stanford Jolley (Voice of The Crimson Ghost), Clayton Moore (Ashe), Kenne Duncan (Professor Henry Chambers)
Plot: Criminologist Professor Duncan Richards goes into action to stop a criminal mastermind known as The Crimson Ghost who is trying to steal Professor Henry Chambers’ new invention, The Cyclotrode, which can block electrical transmissions.
As serials go this is a rather humdrum affair. As always the action remains the best part about the film. Some of the cliffhangers are quite decent – especially one in which the hero chases the villain down a set of power-lines which the villain then cuts. And best of all are the fight sequences – no fight sequences anywhere else in filmdom ever manage to match the sheer enthusiasm of those in the serials. Here the participants dive right across rooms into the fray, sliding across tables and rebounding off walls. But despite such there is the overall feeling of a film that never goes anywhere. It is a fault common to all serials. The Crimson Ghost’s drama is strung out in pedestrian ways with an inordinate number of components that have to be stolen for the central device, plots on the part of the hero to track the villain to his laboratory hideout and of course the tediously drawn-out whodunnit between the string of suspects as to which is the villain.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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