Overland Mail dvd movie.|
Overland Mail dvd videos, dvd movies reviews |
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List Price: $29.99 Our Price: $26.99 You Save: $3 Features • Black & White • Closed-captioned • DVD-Video • NTSC In Theaters : 27 September, 1942 DVD Release : 10 July, 2006 |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | The Mail Must Go Through |
| Lon Chaney, Jr. appeared as a minor character in several serials, but he turns up here as the lead in a Western serial. He's as good an actor as most serial leading men, but somehow he doesn't quite fit the part. Although he rides well and has a nice horse (that looks like Trigger), romantic he's not. He's best known, of course, for his classic "The Wolf Man"--in fact, he's the only person ever to have played all four classic movie monsters--the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, and the Mummy. I give him an A for effort here, but the movie would have been better served with a more traditional leading man.
Ford Beebe was Universal's best serial director, and he did a lot of them. He was a real workhorse, directing in every film genre. He even supervised live-action sequences in Disney's "Fantasia" (1940). Most of the good Universal serials were directed by Beebe. One interesting thing he did in this one is pairing the Beerys, Sr. and Jr., as characters on opposite sides of the law. Noah Jr. plays the hero's sidekick, Sierra Pete, while his dad plays the dirty rotten scoundrel who's trying to wreck the Overland Mail service. Noah Beery, Sr. made a wonderful heavy, my favorite in serials (see "Zorro Rides Again," "Red Ryder"). They first appear in the same scene in Chapter 4, and not too frequently thereafter, though at one point the father (real-life, that is) tries to get the son hanged by the mob. (That must have caused some guffaws on the set.) Noah Jr. was also a serial staple ("Ace Drummond," "Three Musketeers," "Riders of Death Valley"). Helen Parrish plays the love interest, and though I had never heard of her she does an excellent job. Apparently she had a strong career in the early 1940's, but retired in 1942 when she married. She died of cancer in 1959 at the age of 34. BIG CHEAT: In Chapter Five Jim Lane and Sierra Pete are trapped on a flimsy suspension bridge which very clearly spans a rock-filled canyon. The phony Indians hurl gigantic rocks down at them, breaking the bridge and hurling the heroes down--into a rushing river! Who turned the rocks into water, I'll never know. This is a rather typical Western, filled with lots of action. For all that action,however, it's not a very exciting serial. It's too long, the cliffhangers are not very inspired, and frankly the whole movie is rather forgettable. |
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