Buck Rogers (1939)

Directors:

Ford Beebe
Saul A. Goodkind

Writers:

Dick Calkins (comic strip)
Norman S. Hall (screenplay)

Release Date:

6 February 1939 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Family | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Original cartoon strip by Dick Calkins and Phil Nolan - Based on the Buck Rogers newspaper feature owned and copyrighted by John F. Dille Co. (original posters)

Plot:

A pilot and his young passenger crash-land on a mountaintop and are put into suspended animation by a strange gas...

Plot Keywords:

Suspended Animation | Blizzard | Outlaw | Saturn | B Movie

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Buster Crabbe	...	Buck Rogers (as Larry 'Buster' Crabbe)
Constance Moore	...	Wilma Deering
Jackie Moran	...	George 'Buddy' Wade
Jack Mulhall	...	Captain Rankin
Anthony Warde	...	Killer Kane
C. Montague Shaw	...	Professor Huer
Guy Usher	...	Aldar
William Gould	...	Air Marshal Kragg
Philson Ahn	...	Prince Tallen
Henry Brandon	...	Captain Laska
Wheeler Oakman	...	Lieutenant Patten
Kenne Duncan	...	Lieutenant Lacy (as Kenneth Duncan)
Carleton Young	...	Scott
Reed Howes	...	Captain Roberts

Also Known As:

Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (USA) (video title)
Buck Rogers: Destination Saturn (USA) (recut version)

Runtime:

237 min (12 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Red Rock Canyon State Park - Highway 14, Cantil, California, USA

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

The bullet cars used in the movie were the same ones used in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938).

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Buck and Buddy infiltrate the council on Saturn, the second soldier reacts to being shot by Buck's laser gun before he is shot.

Quotes:

Voiceover: From somewhere in the skies above us come, from time to time, flaming discs and weird phenomena. What are they? Whence have they come?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

A Dream Come True!

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.