Movie Review: Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc. (1949, Republic/Cheezy Flicks)

...ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls...return with us, once again, to the thrilling golden days of yesteryear, when sandwiched in between each and every classic double-feature bill, yet another grueling and suspense-instilling serial chapter...gripping the audience with anticipation, and gasp-inducing thrills & chills. During that exciting time, famed Republic Pictures held a pretty respectable gamut, in the genre of multi-chaptered cliffhangers, with the best of them amongst the lot, including 1939's "Zorro's Fighting Legion", 1936's "Undersea Kingdom", 1946's "The Crimson Ghost", 1950's "Desperadoes of the West" (...covered earlier, on this webpage), 1949's "King of the Rocket Men", 1945's "The Purple Monster Strikes", and several others. For the most part, known for being quite fast-paced, as well as being crammed with as much easily-digestible story into each chapter, the Republic serials very much stood out amongst their peers, which included the likes of Universal Pictures, Pathe Exchange, Columbia Pictures, Astra Films and Mascot Pictures, just to name a few. And it was gripping and action-packed entries, such as 1949's "Federal Agents vs. Underworld, Inc...one of Republic's latter-end serials...which firmly cemented their reputation, as far as their respected and well-received contribution to this genre...

Movie Review: Desperadoes of the West (1950; Republic/Cheezy Flicks)

...I really envy my late grandfather's days, when it came to visiting the local cinema. Back in the '30's and '40's, for a measly ten cents, eager movie theater attendees of all ages, were privy to TWO feature films, which were proceeded by, and sandwiched a handful of movie trailers, a cartoon, a newsreel...and a weekly chapter of the latest serial, or cliffhanger. Never mind the pre-set allure and attraction of the feature films, each week...those cliffhanger chapters were definitely a great crowd-drawing gimmick, as...providing the serial was suspensefully engaging enough...people clambered back to the theaters each week, to see what happens to the cliffhangers' various characters, who were in dire straits and peril at the end of one week's episode, only to emerge from such peril, relatively unscathed, in the onset of the following week's vignette. It is somewhat surprising that in this day and age, when a hefty price at the movies (...nearly 100 times that of the aforementioned good old days, and thus driving folks further away from the auditoriums, and into their homes, where their wall-sized LCD television reigns movie-supreme) provides only ONE feature film, two or three trailers...AND commercials, no less...that movie distributors and movie house managers haven't considered reviving the movie serial, if at the very least, an able-bodied money-grubbing attempt to draw and keep theater patrons' butts in their seats. And this viewer, who WOULD gullibly, albeit gleefully venture regularly to the local cinema, in response to any such revival of the cliffhanger, can't help but think that THIS movie serial, a nostalgically wild and wholly, rip-roarin' action-packed, Old West six-shooter western from 1950, called "Desperadoes of the West", most assuredly had to have been one of those likably exciting chapter serials, which brought 'em in droves, back in the day...