Such a frustrating disappointment

Purely Joyful Movie!

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Watching the feature film version of Dick Tracy Returns it becomes apparent how departed you are from the comic strip Dick Tracy and how appalling the serials were. It is just difficult to take any of it seriously.Dick Tracy works for the FBI and he is after Pa Stark, the head of the Stark gang. A rookie FBI agent is shot, but not to worry as Tracy states, he will be fine as he has been placed in an iron lung. The agent dies because no one posted any round the clock guards so Pa Stark sneaked in and pulled the plug on his iron lung.Then you get a scene of Tracy rounding up some bad guys only for his helper Junior shout 'well done Tracy' enabling the others to attack Tracy and Junior being taken hostage.It gets better when one bad guy leaves a briefcase with a bomb behind in Tracy's office with Tracy in another room guessing that the bad guy will slip out while leaving his briefcase behind, Junior runs after the bad guy who is getting away in his car, but he manages to throw the briefcase inside the car just before it explodes.It is all preposterous and silly, even nostalgia cannot save it. Thank goodness for the Warren Beatty version who salvaged Dick Tracy's cinematic reputation.

Unlike the other three reviewers of this serial, I was quite disappointed.But let me start with a good point. At least the writers came up with a plausible set of characters for the bad guys. The Stark Gang is a noticeable improvement over the Spider (with his tattoo-flashlight signature on the forehead of his victims) and the Lame One (with his three-inch sole added to his shoe and stuttering step) of the original Tracy serial. But there the writers lost their sense of originality and commitment to a believable story. All they did was come up with ten or so special new inventions (super fast boat, special airplane engine, have the Stark gang mysteriously find out about it, have them contact the agent for a 'foreign power' (I guess in '38 you couldn't yet say Germany or Japan - FDR was still keeping the US neutral then, only to have Tracy and his men foil their plans. Then, on to the next episode with a 'insert here' new super special device. One decent story arc throughout the entire 15 chapter - like the Arc Indiana Jones goes after in Raiders (which Lucas and Spielberg supposedly fashioned after these serials) would have been much, much more engaging. The cliffhanging ends of the episodes were also very hackneyed. In virtually all cases, you could predict how Tracy once again cheated death. Car over the cliff? Simple: insert a shot of him jumping out just before it goes over. (And don't worry that he is seemingly unhurt even though the car was going 40+mph). But what REALLY irked me for this one was that unlike most 15 chapter serials that include one 'clip show' episode that reprises events from prior chapters (thus only giving more work to the editor, and sparing all the rest of the crew - hence, saving money), this serial had TWO such episodes. Way to bail on even a modicum of believable credibility, writers! Overall, 5/10

In this sequel to the 1937 serial ( and a heck of a lot better ), Tracy is on the trail of Pa Stark ( Charles Middleton gives a great performance ) and his five sons. After killing a rookie G-Man, Tracy goes after the youngest son ( aptly named the Kid ) and through out the serials he battles the enemy agents and saboteurs Stark is mixed up with to bring the master criminal to justice. Very action packed, but it does contain some corny scenes, but anything was better than the previous entry. In terms of serials, 8 out of 10.

There are good serials and there are mostly bad ones. The bad ones are cheaply made and very boring and use lots of "stock footage". This is the exception. The storyline is very original and is full of action. There are also lots of location scenes and the special effects were used here for the first time and not made for some other serial and reused here. I can see why serials were discontinued around the early fifties. TV came along and by then the serials were nothing like this one. It would be nice to get a nice print on a DVD of this one. My only problem and the reason I would give this a 9 instead of a 10 is the background music. For most of the scenes it is great but when they start fighting it goes to some speeded up uncomprehensible music that should only be used in a cheap western, otherwise it is terrific.