This one's for.....SCIENCE!!!!
The Hong Kong Cavalier's
Zombies of the Stratosphere
My interest in the genre of cliffahnger serials dates back to my childhood.  It's probably a natural outgrowth of my love of comic books and of the era circa 1930s-'40s.  My late grandmother always told me that I had an "old soul"...but until recently, I didn't understand what she meant.  I guess I was just born about 50 years too late.  as for my interest in superheroes, ostumed goodniks of that bygone era were fodder for the serial machine.  In fact, my favorite serial of all time is the Republic Pictures 1941 effort, THE ADVENTURES OF CAPT. MARVEL, which in my humble opinion is the greatest cliffhanger of all time.  Republic also had a tendency to create their own heroes, as was the case witht the protagonist of this month's review, Rocketman.

Rocketman was the star of three of Republic's fondly remembered serials:  KING OF THE ROCKETMEN, RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON, and this little ditty.  Later in the early 1950s, he was adapted to television as "Commando Cody-Sky Marshall of the Universe", and served as inspiration for Dave Stevens' (the ex-husband of scream queen Brinke) wonderful comic book creation, The Rocketeer, who was later adapted to film by the House that Ub Iwerks Built, aka "The Vengeful Mouse" (my term..heh), aka Walt Disney Pictures. 

Zombies of the Stratosphere
Republic Pictures (1952)

Director:
Starring: Judd Holdren, Aline Town, Lane Bradford, and the very logical Leonard Nimoy
The Plot:  Martians plan on blowing Earth outta it's orbit and settling their own home planet into Earth's place, because according to advanced Martian science, your high school science teacher lied to you.

The scientific facts based on their data state that, "Mars is positioned so much farther from the Sun than Earth that the climate there is unstable".....waitaminnit....what climate?  There's an atmosphere there?  I always had a stinking suspicion that my high school Earth Sciences teacher, Mister Potts, was plotting with extra-terrestrials, but had no proof until now...

And, who will stop the nefarious invaders from the Red Planet?  Republic Pictures' second rate Flash Gordon, Rocketman, that's who, portrayed by Judd Holdren.

The cliffhanger endings of this chapterplay are especially informative, because I learned science stuff you'd never hear on PBS from them, like-
Leonard Nimoy can breathe underwater for up to 30 minutes, maybe more.
If riding on top of a speeding train car that's about to derail, simply jumping from it will allow you to avoid all that messy stock footage wreckage.
A thrown harpoon will not pierce the skin of your neck if, 1.) you are the hero of the flick, and 2.) you are driving a speedboat against rear projection.
All automobile crashes that involve a cliff usually also involve that same model car...and the same cliff....and they all explode.
H-Bombs useta be a helluva lot simpler to build.
Cowboys smuggle alot of uranium.
Throwing live hand-grenades at a planeload of badguys carrying about fifty pounds of uranium 238 is a pretty sensible thing to do.
Why go to some high priced lab to construct a robot body, when yer local sheet metal shop can do the job.  And for probably less money.  Martians sure are thrifty, even if they did steal their robot plans from Doctor Satan.
Lumberworkers take note:  Robots cannot swing an axe worth crap.

The End.   Thank God.




Our hero, folks....
Look for a young Leonard Nimoy in his first film role as a Martian henchguy....

Spock-completists aside, I'd recommend this flick to anyone inclined to be entertained by some goofy psuedo-science and good ol' two-fisted adventure.
BACK
1