It’s a red-letter day for Superman Fans as Warner Home Video unloads a plethora of material based on the DC Comics property created in 1939 by Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster. Consumers will no doubt be rushing out to pick up copies of director Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns and The Christopher Reeve Superman Collection, which includes the super-cool Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios animated shorts which first introduced moviegoers to the Man of Steel. However, one release not to be overlooked is Superman: The Theatrical Serials Collection, which offers all 30 of the early live-action theatrical cliffhangers that ran from 1948-1950.
Kirk Alyn, the first actor to portray Superman on screen, does a fine job as he takes on Spider Lady and Atom Man. Alyn reportedly wanted too much money to reprise the role in the first feature film, 1951’s Superman and the Mole-Men, and lost the role to George Reeves, who went on to don the tights and cape in the popular television series.
The serials begin with the origin story in which Jor-El sends his only son to Earth in a rocket ship to save him from the destruction of the planet Krypton. To create such visual effects as the Krypton explosion and Kal-El’s rocket landing on Earth, the producers enlisted the talents of animator Howard Swift, who worked on the ‘Dance of the Hours’ segment of Disney’s Fantasia and directed a number of animated shorts for Columbia Pictures in the 1940s.
Using hand-drawn cel animation, Swift also animated Superman flying and performing other super-heroic deeds that would have been impossible to capture in live-action at the time with a limited budget. It’s a bit jarring at first to see Alyn suddenly turn into a cartoon character and take to the air, but it’s a fantastic effect that keeps the spirit of the comics in the films and makes them more exciting than the later television series which featured George Reeves leaping off of spring boxes and pretending to fly in front of a sky background.
A friend of mine actually owns what’s left of the animation cels used in the serials and he recently remarked on the fact that the Superman productions have, in a way, come full circle considering Brandon Routh is entirely animated in many scenes in Superman Returns, albeit more convincingly with CG. Still, it’s more fun to see a cartoon Superman land behind a house or a rock so that Alyn can come out from around the corner to help sell the illusion.
It would be great to see one the studios revive the cliffhanger serial as a way to help make the moviegoing experience special again and perhaps lure people back into theaters. It would be especially cool to see filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg get involved, considering they drew a lot of inspiration from the classic serials and even lifted specific ideas for Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
No Superman fan should be without Superman: The Theatrical Serials Collection, available today for the first time ever on DVD. Extra features include the featurette Saturdays with Superman, a nostalgic look at the serials with interviews of cast members, various writers and Superman historians. The Warner Home video release carries a suggested retail price of $39.98.
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