''The Adventures of Captain Africa'' is a 1955

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...

serial film A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, gene ...

directed by

Spencer Gordon Bennet Spencer Gordon Bennet (January 5, 1893 – October 8, 1987) was an American film producer and director. Known as the "King of Serial Directors", he directed more film serials than any other director. Biography Born in Brooklyn, New York, Benne ...

and starring John Hart.

Plot

Trapper Nat Coleman and government agent Ted Arnold come upon a plot to take over an African nation. Its leader, Caliph Abdul el Hamid, has been exiled from his country and replaced by a look-alike usurper allied with an unnamed foreign power. The Caliph intends to return but enemy agents Boris and Greg are out to stop him. Captain Africa, a masked jungle lord, appears occasionally to aid Nat and Ted.

Cast

* John Hart as Captain Africa *

Rick Vallin Rick Vallin (born Eric Efron; September 24, 1919 – August 31, 1977) was an actor who appeared in more than 150 films between 1938 and 1966. Early years Born in Feodosia, in the Crimea, Russia, Vallin came to the United States at age three w ...

as Ted *

Ben Welden Ben Welden (born Benjamin Weinblatt; June 12, 1901 – October 17, 1997) was an American character actor who played a wide variety of Damon Runyon-type gangsters in various movies and television shows. Early years Welden was born in Toledo, Oh ...

as Omar *June Howard as Princess Rhoda *

Bud Osborne Leonard Miles "Bud" Osborne (July 20, 1884 – February 2, 1964) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 600 films and television programs between 1912 and 1963. Biography Osborne was born Miles Osborne in Knox County, Texas, ...

as Nat Coleman * Paul Marion as Hamid * Lee Roberts as Boris

Production

''The Adventures of Captain Africa'' was conceived and filmed as a sequel to ''

The Phantom ''The Phantom'' is an American adventure comic strip, first published by Lee Falk in February 1936. The main character, the Phantom, is a fictional costumed crime-fighter who operates from the fictional African country of Bangalla. The char ...

'' (starring

Tom Tyler Tom Tyler (August 9, 1903 – May 1, 1954) was an American actor known for his leading roles in low-budget Western films, and for his portrayal of superheroes in movie serials ''The Adventures of Captain Marvel'' and ''The Phantom''. Tyler als ...

). Well into production, Columbia found that its screen rights to the comic strip had expired.

King Features King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...

wanted more money than producer

Sam Katzman Sam Katzman (July 7, 1901 – August 4, 1973) was an American film producer and director. Katzman's specialty was producing low-budget genre films, including serials, which had disproportionately high returns for the studios and his financi ...

was willing to spend, and negotiations broke down. Katzman ordered a rewrite, and new scenes showed John Hart now wearing an amended costume that only used ''part'' of the original Phantom outfit, with the addition of a leather aviator's cap and riding breeches. The revised story featured a new hero, Captain Africa, who still bears a strong resemblance to

the Phantom ''The Phantom'' is an American adventure comic strip, first published by Lee Falk in February 1936. The main character, the Phantom, is a fictional costumed crime-fighter who operates from the fictional African country of Bangalla. The char ...

in both appearance and behavior. ''The Adventures of Captain Africa'' consists mostly of

stock footage Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...

from earlier serials ''

Jungle Menace ''Jungle Menace'' (1937) is the first serial released by Columbia Pictures. Based on the success of Republic Pictures's 1936 serial ''Darkest Africa'', starring real-life animal trainer Clyde Beatty, Columbia made this exotic jungle serial ...

'' (1937), '' The Desert Hawk'' (1944), and ''The Phantom'' (1943) itself. Footage from ''

'' was reduced when this stopped being a sequel. Each of the 15 chapters uses only a few minutes of new material. Producer Katzman was well known for his thrift and shortcuts. Serial producers often economized by including a "cheater" chapter, in which flashbacks to earlier chapters are shown instead of new scenes. ''The Adventures of Captain Africa'' uses four cheaters among its 15 chapters. The frequent recaps were possibly necessitated by the hasty rewrites during production. ''The Adventures of Captain Africa'' was Columbia's last jungle serial.

Release

The serial was released on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

, and on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

from a company called Serial Bowl, which specialized in movie serials.

Critical reception

Serial historian William C. Cline writes that ''The Adventures of Captain Africa'' is "an obvious remake of ''The Phantom'', it contained many stock shots from the earlier release and at times seemed almost like a repeat run."

Chapter titles

#Mystery Man of the Jungle! #Captain Africa to the Rescue! #Midnight Attack! #Into the Crocodile Pit! #Jungle War Drums! #Slave Traders! #Saved by Captain Africa! #The Bridge in the Sky! -- Re-Cap Chapter #Blasted by Captain Africa! -- Re-Cap Chapter #The Vanishing Princess! #The Tunnel of Terror! -- Re-Cap Chapter #Fangs of the Beast! #Renegades at Bay! -- Re-Cap Chapter #Captain Africa and the Wolf Dog! #Captain Africa's Final Move! _Source:

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adventures of Captain Africa, The 1955 films 1950s English-language films 1955 adventure films American black-and-white films Columbia Pictures film serials Films directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet American adventure films Films with screenplays by George H. Plympton 1950s American films Films produced by Sam Katzman English-language adventure films