Saturday Breakfast Serial 001 – The Crimson Ghost (1946) Chapter 1

First off, an apology for those who might have come here this morning looking for another Saturday Morning Cartoon installment, but the truth is, while I would have loved to continue the feature, it was simply too hard, due to copyright concerns, to find really good examples of a lot of the shows that I had hoped to feature, so instead I’ve decided to change things up a bit and shift focus to those great movie serials of the past. Just as in the theater, each week I’ll give you a new chapter of an ongoing serial, and along with it, some commentary either on movie serials in general, or on the one we’re watching at the time.

Today we’re going to begin one of the more famous and well-respected of the Republic serials, The Crimson Ghost. This 12 chapter serial was first released in 1946, but it’s also seen a number of different versions released over subsequent years. It was cut down and re-edited for broadcast as a television series in the 1950s. There’s a 100 minute TV film version which was released in 1966. It was even released yet again in a color version during the height of the colorization fad of the 1990s.

Okay, that’s enough from me for this morning I think, so I’ll just get out of the way and let the punches start flying.