Tomb

Egad! The fiendish Dr. Frakoff has tied Miss Polly to the train tracks! Plus, the Aztec temple is about to collapse and drop Cap'n Cutlass, li'l Billy and their loyal dog Chester into smoking magma! Can Cowboy Nick escape from the burning mineshaft in time to save them? Find out next week, in the electrifying 12th episode of... Nick's Happytime Singalong Ranch!

All right, I just made all of that stuff up, but the style and tone of that little burst of nonsense should seem familiar to cliffhanger aficionados. The heyday of the cliffhanger serial was a long time ago, but fans of the form got a dose of jetpacked nostalgia on October 26, when Crash Corben: Last of the Rocketmen (2007) premiered at Fort Calgary. Rik Van Dyke's short film pays homage to serials like Undersea Kingdom (1936) in much the same way that Larry Blamire's sublime The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001) pays tribute to creaky old ’50s flicks like Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

Erm. Too much cross-referencing? Whatever. Movie buffs will know what I'm talking about. In any case, Fort Calgary's tiny movie house filled up with cast members, friends, family and assorted well-wishers (the one-night event was by invitation only), all of whom got treated to a half-hour blast of old-fashioned cliffhanger thrills and spills. Gas-masked villains sneered, square-jawed heroes posed, rocket pilots pulled levers and twiddled dials, and a giant robot got ray-gunned to death in the picturesque outskirts of Drumheller. The theatre itself was nestled in the middle of an actual museum, giving the evening an extra touch of old-time atmosphere.

At the moment, no further public screenings of Crash Corben: Last of the Rocketmen are scheduled, but you can check out the trailer on YouTube. Meanwhile, I've been reminded of the cliffhangers of yore, and the impossible situations the heroes always found themselves in at chapter's end. Week after week, serial writers were forced to come up with new perils to put their protagonists in. Sometimes, they'd run out of ideas, and just have the hero's car careen off a cliff for the umpteenth time, while viewers frowned with the absolute certainty that next week's episode would show the dazed driver leap from the vehicle just before the plunge. Other times, the episode would end so ingeniously that missing the followup chapter would be absolutely unthinkable. Would the upcoming resolution be brilliant or lame? Both outcomes were possible. Here are a few of my favourite examples:

• G-Men Never Forget (1947) — The first chapter of this terrific serial is a corker. Unfortunately, bitter disappointment is just one episode away. While the hero (Clayton Moore, the Lone Ranger himself!) zips through a channel tunnel on his motorbike, the bad guys flood the tunnel! The fade-out shows Moore looking over his shoulder at the unstoppable wall of water descending on him as he cranks the accelerator. Whew! How will he ever get out of this one?

We find out in Chapter 2. Moore simply pulls over to the side of the tunnel, and casually turns a little wheel projecting from the wall. This closes some kind of floodgate, halting the deadly wave in its tracks.

What?! Are you kidding me?! Booooooo! Oh well. At least he didn't leap out of a cliff-bound car.

• Radar Men from the Moon (1952) — It's Commando Cody to the rescue! In Chapter 2 of this adventure, the rocket-backpacked hero raids an alien compound on the moon in order to steal a powerful ray gun. Cody and his sidekick Ted escape with the device, pursued by angry moon men in the funniest tank you've ever seen in your life. Cody and Ted scramble into a narrow cave where the moon tank can't follow, but the moon men simply aim their cannon at the cliff face, and proceed to melt the entire mountain!

Trapped like rats, Cody and Ted race through subterranean passages, before coming to a dead end, as the cave fills with molten lava behind them. Oh no! How will they survive?

If you said “They'll notice another passageway just there, off camera, and escape,” give yourself 10 points. Not content with angering the audience this way, the heroes sneak out and peer at the moon men, who are convinced that the good guys must be dead by now. If Cody and Ted would just stay hidden at this point all would be well, but they throw a grenade at the moon tank, alerting the enemy to their location and survival status. Stupid, stupid heroes!

• Spy Smasher (1942) — This adaptation of the “Whiz Comics” character gets my vote as the coolest serial ever. Not only does the hero battle Nazis, but the plot line is pure white-knuckle suspense the whole way.

“Spy Smasher” is the name of a caped superhero who escapes from Nazi-occupied France with the help of the heroic Captain Devanne, who arranges a fake execution for the hero and smuggles him out in a coffin. In Chapter 3, the duo find themselves locked in the torpedo bay of a German U-boat, as the chamber slowly fills up with sea water.

The next episode brings a resolution as creative as it is devastating. Unable to awaken his injured comrade, Devanne frantically searches for useful tools. Finding a single aqualung, he straps it on the unconscious Spy Smasher, and fires him out of the torpedo tube. This leaves Devanne with no way to escape himself, but he dies with a smile on his face, knowing that he gave his life to save Spy Smasher.

This willingness to kill off heroic and beloved characters really sets Spy Smasher apart from the pack. In fact, the final episode features the heartbreaking death of... well, I won't say, but believe me, it hurts. Check this one out if you possibly can; it's a wow.