The Phantom (1943)
Mexican Lobby Card
Hung up by its own low budget and scripting, this 15 chapter serial for The Phantom, with Tom Tyler (who matched the comic strip superhero quite well), kept the jungle in Hollywood. Lee Falk, creator of The Phantom did not like it one bit, commenting that it looked like it was shot in a phone booth. No matter how much you may complain about and dislike CGI and modern filming techniques now, let's face it, the superhero genre took off when that stuff kicked in. But the serials, with all their faults, were fun and paved the way for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the new wave of superhero and sci fi movie blockbusters we are also still complaining about. Columbia Pictures started filming a sequel some years later, but that got caught up in legal limbo so they renamed it the Adventures of Captain Africa and borrowed a lot of stock footage from the original movie and two other serials.
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