All in all, I liked this for what it was: an un-subtle manipulation of theater patrons. The main enemy in this serial is Japan, and the Japanese are diminished to Japs and Nips (always said with a slight sneer), while the Chinese are simply Chinese. There's a German ubiquitous female agent who fancies herself to be in command of the Japanese, but she is just one dimensional: harsh, nasty, humorless.
The plot is a bit thin. A peace loving Chinese province bordering the Himalayas has a secret passage (the Stillwell Road?) of some sort to India, through which vital troops and supplies could be funneled to fight the Japanese. The spiritual leader of the province agrees to reveal the secret to the Chinese and British, with numerous conditions, and the Axis tries to kidnap or kill him before he can talk. There is delay upon delay for no reason but to string this out to 13 chapters.
There are the usual hairbreadth escapes after each cliffhanger episode, and some of them are pretty silly. As in all serials, the viewer is cheated, in that a bit of film is held back, film in which the hero escapes death in the nick of time. There are also the usual fistfights without a knuckle getting skinned, the usual chases, etc.
As serials go, this is fairly standard, directed toward the puerile audience that filled theaters on Saturday afternoons.
The plot is a bit thin. A peace loving Chinese province bordering the Himalayas has a secret passage (the Stillwell Road?) of some sort to India, through which vital troops and supplies could be funneled to fight the Japanese. The spiritual leader of the province agrees to reveal the secret to the Chinese and British, with numerous conditions, and the Axis tries to kidnap or kill him before he can talk. There is delay upon delay for no reason but to string this out to 13 chapters.
There are the usual hairbreadth escapes after each cliffhanger episode, and some of them are pretty silly. As in all serials, the viewer is cheated, in that a bit of film is held back, film in which the hero escapes death in the nick of time. There are also the usual fistfights without a knuckle getting skinned, the usual chases, etc.
As serials go, this is fairly standard, directed toward the puerile audience that filled theaters on Saturday afternoons.