DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE (1939)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

This Republic serial, co-directed by William Witney and John English, is generally regarded as one of the best examples of "the Golden Age of Serials." I think it's very strong for its first six chapters, and then loses some momentum due to repetitiveness (and that's not counting Chapter 11, one of the notorious "clip episodes.")

That said, it's hard to beat DAREDEVILS for the simple clarity of the revenge-motives of both villain and heroes. At the opening, an escaped criminal (Charles Middleton) uses his old prisoner-number, 39013, as a nom de guerre as he pursues a monomaniacal project to destroy all the holdings of industrialist Granville. No specific reasons are given for the evildoer's grudge, except a loose allusion to Granville having helped imprison 39013. The villain and his gang of cutthroats don't care if the public gets in the way, and in episode one 39013 strikes at a Granville-owned amusement park. At this park, three superb athletes are performing, and they too have a nickname, "Daredevils of the Red Circle," for the target-like circle each one wears on the front of his shirt. 39013's thugs set the park on fire, and though the Daredevils escape death, the kid brother of one of them does not. The trio dedicate their lives to taking vengeance upon the murderers.

Each of the Daredevils is given a specialty in addition to general athleticism. Tiny (Herman Brix) is a strongman. Bert (Dave Sharpe) is an escape artist. And Gene (Charles Quigley) is a high diver with exceptional reflexes, as well the one who loses his kid brother in the fire. The trio seek out Granville's mansion to proffer their amateur assistance, and Granville's granddaughter Blanche (Carole Landis) proves instrumental in getting her grandpa to accept the guys' help. The athletes thus become independent agents who can get johnny-on-the-spot to any of 39013's sabotage operations-- at least partly because the fiend, like many a comic-book villain after him, is usually considerate enough to announce his next target.

But there's a wrinkle, for Granville is not Granville. The man whom the heroes meet is actually 39013 himself, disguised in a perfect mask (meaning that he's played in those scenes by the same actor essaying the real Granville). The industrialist is imprisoned in a cell beneath the mansion, where a Rube Goldberg device threatens to drop poison gas into the man's cell if said device is not regularly corrected by Granville's captor. 39013's sole desire is that his enemy should hear about every enterprise being destroyed in turn, so that he'll know that his entire life's work has been wrecked before he himself perishes.

The roust-and-repeat actions of the super-athletes, as they dash hither and yon foiling the villain's pawns, might have become tiresome but for an additional angle: someone inside the mansion is privy to 39013's schemes. That someone sends printed notes to the Daredevils, warning them of this or that peril, and each note is signed with the same "red circle" image as the brand used by the heroes. To be sure, there are two or three named characters at the mansion, and surely no one would have suspected the comical Black butler Snowflake (though imagine how 1939 audiences might have reacted, had Snowflake been the Daredevils' secret benefactor). I'll note in passing that aside from the butler's condescending name he doesn't perpetrate any other racial-humor schticks except for his broad accent.

Since 39013 isn't a scientist, mad or otherwise, he only used a couple of diabolical devices besides his poison-gas contraption. In one case, his thugs rig a clinic's curative radioactive device so that it will slay a patient with deadly rays. In another, 39103 executes an expendable henchman by flooding the garage at the mansion with poison gas. But was that really the most efficient way to set up hench-executions? When the heroes survive getting caught in the same trap, they do a whole detective-number on the garage's gas-apparatus, which conveniently gives the good guys a new avenue for tracking down the crooked cabal. But the script makes it sound like 39013 intended to make the gas-apparatus look like it was tampered with by agents unknown. Why would he do so, since he doesn't expect to found out, thinking he can pass off the garage-executions as carbon monoxide poisoning from the automobiles?

The action set-pieces in the first two episodes are the most thrilling in the chapterplay. After that, the rest of the episodes are mostly hand-to-hand fights, well enough done but not that noteworthy. As far as acting, Middleton takes top honors with his hiss-worthy villainy, though 39013 would not make my list of best serial-villains, just as the serial wouldn't make my twenty best of all time.