646f9e108c A mad doctor named Zanoff uses a drug to bring himself back from the dead after his execution in prison. Dick Tracy sets out to capture Zanoff before he can put his criminal gang back together again. That&#39;s probably the less interesting serial of all that William Witney made in his all carrier. And certainly the less of the three Dick Tracy ones he made; the best is the fourth. This one was the third. One good point is of course Raplh Byrd - the best Dick Tracy actor of all times - and the villain played by Irving Pichel - whose face reminds me Benicio Del Toro. Yes Pichel is a terrific heavy here. But besides, I won&#39;t say it&#39;s a tepid serial, far from that, but I could prefer those directed later, even in the fifties, made by the likes of Fred C Brannon or Spencer Bennet. The weak point, if you compare with those made by Republic Studios several years later, is the fist fights. Here, you perfectly see that they have not reached their peak yet. But a couple years later, the fist fights are spectacular, oh my God !!!<br/><br/>One more good an surprising point for this serial is the ending. I am not a serial specialist, but the ending here, although not spectacular, is very interesting and unforgettable. I won&#39;t spoil it, but I don&#39;t think that in another serial you could Watch such an end. <br/><br/>But maybe I am wrong. I saw the feature film version of this serial. There is very little about this movie that screams Dick Tracy to me.<br/><br/>It is a silly creaky spy caper with criminal Nicolas Zarnoff escaping execution by feigning his death through some mysterious drug and Tracy and his fellow FBI agents pursue him.<br/><br/>There are regular cliffhangers, at one point Tracy is hanging off a plane, there is stock footage used from an airship disaster but it also looks archaic to modern eyes. The scene where Tracy and his men take a conveniently parked cab when their car has a flat tyre and the cab driver turns out to be a henchman.
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