A must see for any fan of retro-futurism or of Buster Crabbe. This serial epic is truly one of the best examples from an era when people went to the movies on Saturday afternoon,spending only a dime for a day of cartoons, movies and adventure serials based on popular comics strips and funny books.This serial, based on the 30s comic strip of the same name, pulls out all the stops to entertain and wow it's audience. Although the FX will seem dated by todays Hollywood standards, they were state of the art when the serial debuted in the 30s.This is a good family film to watch, and far more culturally significant than another Saturday morning with spongebob. Parents note that the film is spread out into chapters, or episodes, so an episode a day will keep your kids entertained. It's also fun for the parent who is fed up with the schlock kids are forced to watch now... any parents wishing Thundercats were still around? Ever wonder where George Lucas got his ideas for Star Wars? Well look no farther, this Buck Rogers serial was one of at least two inspirations for the galaxy, far, far away (the other being Flash Gordon Conqures the Universe, another comic based sci fi serial starring the immortal Buster Crabbe.) For fans of the original comic hero, it's a little disappointing to see some minor changes to the story. Like Bucks sidekick Buddy not being Col. Wilma Deerings little brother, or Wilma, Bucks main love interest, demoted to a lieutenant, darn Hollywood making women all helpless again, not to mention the fact that she is barely in the serial at all.Don't expect Buck to be a frozen fish like the 70s TV version, Buck Rogers was a WW1 pilot who was preserved in a caved in mine who awoke 500 years into the future. In this serial he's still a pilot, only now he is preserved in an Airship along with Buddy.The cliffhangers are still fun to this day and the space ships Buck rides around in are pretty cool. This serial stands the test of time, much like it's hero.

I can't help comparing this 1939 serial to "Flash Gordon" (1936) and "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" (1940). Although some of the special effects (the ray guns and fleets of spaceships) are superior, "Buck Rogers" is less fun. It's not the fault of Buster Crabbe, who invests Rogers with the same heroic energy he gave to Gordon. And Jackie Moran shines as sidekick Buddy Wade (in the newspaper strip he was Buddy Deering, Wilma's younger brother). But the other actors fall short. So does the story and pacing.Anthony Wade's Killer Kane is a colorless villain, lacking the panache of Charles Middleton's gleefully evil Ming the Merciless. He badly needs a slinky, sinister Ardala Valmar to spice things up. Constance Moore is a competent Wilma Deering but there's no chemistry between her and Crabbe. Moore lacks the passion Jean Rogers exhibited as Dale Arden in the "Flash" series or the breezy camaraderie Erin Gray displayed as Wilma Deering in the 1980s "Buck Rogers" television show. C. Montague Shaw is OK as Doctor Huer but doesn't have nearly as much to do as Frank Shannon's Doctor Zarkov (again, from the "Flash" serials).After an exciting start, the serial falls down in the latter six episodes. It is typical of the genre to have a late episode replay scenes from earlier in the series to pad things out. But "Buck Rogers" does this twice. Serial plots also tend to have a lot of captures, escapes, and re-captures. "Flash Gordon" broke the monotony by having these occur in a variety of ways in a variety of locations. "Buck Rogers" has only two destinations: Earth and Saturn. Both planets apparently share the same rocky desert terrain. Doctor Huer has only one technological gimmick to help Buck. The heroes get stranded by crashed spaceships seemingly every other episode. And Kane's goons never tumble to the fact that it's Rogers driving that rocket cruiser reported missing from their hangar.Given it's charismatic hero and quality special effects, "Buck Rogers" could have equaled or surpassed "Flash Gordon" if it had had stronger writing or more energetic secondary characters. Unfortunately, it has neither.

"Buck Rogers" (Episodes 1-12, 1939): This stuff is interesting to me for more than its comic book/kitsch style, weak acting, poor production, low grade special effects, lame story, and bad costumes. In 1938 & 1939, audiences were treated to Serials before the main movie at their local theater. Each section of these ongoing stories was about a half an hour in length, and a new one was shown each week. To see all 12 episodes (the entire story) you had to attend the movies 12 weeks in a row. Did you know the good guys would win? Of course. Did you know that at the end of each week's installment, there would be a "cliffhanger" moment leaving you wanting more next week? Of course. The Great Depression was still on, and television was invented but not yet available except to a few rich people in New York City. Once a week, especially on the weekend date nights and Saturday matinees for the kiddies, the Movie was IT...A SPECIAL experience to be savored for a nickel or dime. You got the NEWS, a CARTOON, a SERIAL installment, and THE MOVIE, plus some "private" time with your date...IN THE DARK, IN AIR CONDITIONING!! What a deal!! When I look beneath the surface of this serial (I go back and forth whether I like the characters in Flash Gordon OR Buck Rogers better, both having the same Space/Future theme, but I definitely prefer the décor and the hidden symbology of Buck) I see, as always, a "future" depicted by what we ARE at the moment, in our own time - considered the most "modern" of styles available to us. The cities, room sets, machines, costuming, transportation, and tools expected to be available to us in the future, are all shown in the Middle Art Deco style of America – Zig Zag, Geometric, Jazz, Skyscraper – applied (slathered) to everything from a pair of shoes to a rocket ship and an entire city. And, since the most modern symbols of the 1930's were our very own skyscrapers - with their skeletons of riveted steel - everything in the future is made of…riveted steel, even if it should float. Wonderful and silly. The city designs are direct ripoffs from various buildings of the 1933 Chicago and 1939 New York World's Fairs. The costumes are a mix of para-military horse riding jodfer outfits, and objects that can serve as both helmets OR trash cans for example...trash cans with lightning bolt wings, anyhow. Radio microphones FLOAT (on a fishing line) for some reason, but their speakers still look like turn of the century wind-up record player speaker horns; doors are toothy, biting jaws that open and close with intimidating chews; every object of any importance has a few vacuum tubes or power line insulators on it, along with the rivets; the powerful rocket ships snap, crackle, pop, fizz, and smoke like a used Desoto pouring sparks out its tail pipe, but somehow they get from planet to planet in minutes. Fight scenes: Buster Crabbe's (Buck's) stand-ins do all the work – and you KNOW they're stand-ins because you can SEE them fighting, and they look NOTHING like Buster/Buck. "Hey look, some OTHER guy's fighting now! Oh wait, he's Buck's stand-in!" Then we have the Zoggs – a dark skinned race of dolts, with large spirals of forehead flesh that hang in their eyes, serving as the gophers and laborer/minions of governments. Bad guys wear tight black uniforms. And here is where we get glimpses into the world of 1938/39, when Hitler, like the "Killer Kane" maniac leader in our story (a name that would have been recognized as the powerful "Citizen Kane" character who represented publisher William Randolph Hearst), who was attempting to take over the world, the solar system, the universe...controlling the minds of everyone. The good guys are working on alliances, some are ready to roll over for Killer Kane, others want to fight, and politics & leadership councils are being put to use as everyone decides who is on which side. In Buck Rogers, the American/English Caucasians/Earthlings are joined by the Chinese/Asians Saturnians and the Russian/Caucasians (of some other planet) to fight the power-mad German/Aryan race. The parallels were simple enough for all of that movie audience to "get". (The Japanese/Asians Aliens were not in the mix directly, but the audience would've known that the alliance with the Americans meant China, who was being attacked by Japan.) On and on the serial goes... battles, spying, espionage, meetings, weapon races, disguises, and science dedicated to winning wars not curing diseases. It was low-grade info-tainment – mild propaganda on a weekly basis – expressions of contemporary concerns and fears, which reached so many millions of Americans every week. Those hidden in the top back rows of the balcony didn't notice.

It strikes me that "Buck Rogers" is almost like a male fantasy come to life. Think about it: Buck gets to take a nice, long five-hundred-year nap! I'm ecstatic if I can get a fifteen-minute nap on a weekend! When he wakes up, Buck is the smartest, most dynamic guy around. Never mind that in real life you would treat someone five centuries behind the times like something that escaped from the zoo. Everyone needs Buck to go on exciting missions, fight the bad guys, test exotic equipment and fly rocketships (and crash them -- I think out of five or six flights Buck makes in the serial, he only lands successfully once).Now that that's out of the way..."Buck Rogers," the serial, is merely average: better than some serials, not as good as others. It's inevitable to compare it to the "Flash Gordon" serials, and in that contest, "Buck Rogers" comes in second. Buster Crabbe essentially plays the same character as Buck and Flash, but he had more style and dash (okay, more "flash") in "Flash Gordon." Constance Moore's Wilma tries to be a more proactive character than Jean Rogers' Dale, but Rogers just seems to inhabit her character more (and those belly-baring costumes from the first "Flash" serial weren't hard on the eyes, either). You can't even begin to compare Anthony Warde's Killer Kane to Charles Middleton's Ming: Warde could have been any gangster from any generic crime movie, but Ming was an archetype of evil right up there with Fu Manchu."Buck Rogers" does provide the requisite thrills and generates its share of excitement, although the rocketship crashes get repetitive after a while (as I said before, almost every time Buck goes near a rocket, he crashes it). It's a decent enough story on its own merits, I suppose, but it does pale in comparison to the "Flash Gordon" trilogy.